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You know, I really liked Dark Water, I thought it was one of the best first parts of a two-parter the revival's had. This is just a better version of Dark Water, and I love it.
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Jan 2, 2020 15:15
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It's a bit rich for people to say 'Yaz does nothing' for this episode in particular, where she rather explicitly does get to be the most useful of the three companions, being better at the spywork than the Doctor herself to boot. If anything this episode lays down a pretty good groundwork for what all three companions bring to the table.
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Jan 2, 2020 22:29
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I feel like when a British actor gets a call and walks out with that reaction, there's a very small list of things that could've happened.
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Jan 2, 2020 23:47
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Strom Cuzewon posted:I find 14s constant "I don't know" and "I dont understand"-ing really annoying. It feels very un-Doctory to be constantly admitting a gap in her knowledge like that. I'm all for the Doctor being stunned and confused when something bonkers happens (and Tennant's "what?!?" face is almost as good as Whittakers) but it just gets tiresome when it happens all the time. This actually didn't occur to me, but now that you mention it, I like it. This Doctor is someone who actually can outright admit that she doesn't know something, rather than bullshitting with what little they do know. It's ultimately a difference of degrees, Thirteen still knows about as much and is just less willing to jump to conclusions, but it shows a humility that most Doctors just don't have.
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Jan 4, 2020 02:45
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The_Doctor posted:It occurs to me that in both this story and the last, they mention UNIT being defunct. By dint of calling attention to this, it means these would otherwise have been UNIT stories. I think it means that they're going to do something with it. I'm not sure what--maybe setting up a status quo where the Doctor really does have no major groups to rely on and really does just have to deal with a full-scale invasion by herself. Possibly a new organization they can set up as a new anti-alien force with some kind of new direction (maybe just SUPER shady, like Torchwood was implied to be early on). Or it could just be setting up for an 'I'M NOT DEAD BITCH' moment later in the season.
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Jan 4, 2020 17:09
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happyhippy posted:1. Ok, some good Bill and Ted time fixing stuff. Like that. However how did the Doc know to put the stickers for Ryan to see? I just wanted to go back to this and point out: The Doctor doesn't necessarily need to know how she saved them from the crashing plane. If everything she ended up doing is a reasonable series of steps for her to do (and they are, in their way), then she can just trust that the choices she's naturally making are the right ones, because she already knows they worked. If her instinct is to put little plates to tell Ryan to look in a specific seat, then damnit, that'll work, because apparently it already did! I love every single time the show actually uses time travel as a problem-solving mechanism. It doesn't do it nearly as much as you'd assume a show about a time traveler would, so it's always a bit special. Cleretic fucked around with this message at 15:14 on Jan 6, 2020 |
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Jan 6, 2020 15:09
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Also, the Master probably doesn't care enough about human conflicts to actually bother influencing most of them. Why should he care about World War 2, except as a backdrop to gently caress with the Doctor in front of? Which gets a largely separate answer right at the end: if you don't care about the world you land in, the Doctor will gently caress you up with the fact she does. I really like that her way of beating the Master was going 'so it turns out this is World War 2, and you're not gonna enjoy World War 2'.
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Jan 7, 2020 01:49
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Rochallor posted:I'm not gonna say I don't like Sacha Dhawan; he's having fun with the part, but I do think that he's not covering any ground that John Simm didn't already cover. The scene with him forcing the Doctor to bow felt like an outtake from The Sound of Drums, minus the homoeroticism I guess cause the Doctor's currently a woman. It's a less interesting choice than Missy but then that's the Chibnall era in a nutshell isn't it, which I suppose makes me a 4 after all. Dhawan's Master specifically feels different from Simm to me because... well, the actor is having just as much fun, but the Master sure as gently caress isn't. He's getting his kicks where he can find them, but he's mostly playing it straight in front of others. Gloating when he's winning, but not on the way there. Until something goes wrong, which he takes in stride way less than Simm or Gomez. Dhawan's Master spends most of part two of Spyfall fuckin' pissed that he has to go play damage control to stop things unravelling. And honestly I love it, he's the only villain I can remember who just seems really frustrated by the Doctor and her bullshit.
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Jan 9, 2020 04:45
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That felt like an episode with a couple of okay ideas, none of which worked together and none of them enough to carry a story by itself, but all of them desperately working together to fill a full episode. I think I do know what happened with Benni, though. It might be almost foreshadowing, except that it doesn't really provide enough information: The Dregs need carbon dioxide like humans need oxygen, so it might be that they're holding him as a pretty safe and clean source of carbon dioxide. Meanwhile, he's feeling pretty good because around them, he can finally breathe without the oxygen tank.
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Jan 13, 2020 16:16
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I will say, I actually liked the old woman occasionally just having turns for the badass. And that it didn't really feel like it was some 'true self' coming out from behind the mask or anything, she really is just a sweet old lady that can lay down some loving menace. You probably didn't need most of the rest of the cast, honestly, just focus on Hardass Grandma and her willingness to fight for her man.
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Jan 14, 2020 00:41
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Cojawfee posted:Her willingness to fight for her man got two people needlessly killed when she started shouting "BENNI BENNI WHERE ARE YOU" when they had just discussed the necessity of remaining totally silent to escape to the tunnel. I did not say she was a smart woman.
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Jan 14, 2020 01:02
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I agree that twist wasn't needed (although I admit I cracked up that for Ryan, the reveal was a 'MADE IN CHINA' label), but I disagree with the notion that it breaks the show's concept of time travel. The show's been implicitly agreeing with 'the future can change even after it's been observed' ever since they destroyed Atlantis twice, it's just that nobody's really mentioned it directly before now, and time is evidently stubborn enough that minute changes don't cause huge aftereffects. Which is pretty easily justified; did Martha need to know that the futures she saw weren't set in stone? Did Amy? Hell, Amy literally saw that the future can change while they're not looking in Vincent and the Doctor. This time, it was worth telling her companions that the future can change, because the thing worrying them is not inevitable. Just because it's a bad and unnecessary twist, doesn't mean it's a wrong twist.
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Jan 14, 2020 05:39
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I'm up for that title if they go just FULL cornball. Lean into it in some way or another. It's not an unsalvageable name, it's just a very silly one.
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Jan 14, 2020 06:04
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Rochallor posted:"I usually do most of the talking anyway," and her running out of oxygen first because she never stops talking are great bits. While I think this episode could do with a little bit more explanation in places (again, I think there's a lot more logic to Benni than was actually said just as an example), I think this one not actually being said elevates it so much. Shine a light on it and you take away the dramatic impact of the moment, that for once the Doctor is the first one to succumb to the present danger. But let it sit where it is, and it makes a perfect, quiet sense while being a joke about as light-hearted as the other lighter parts of the episode.
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Jan 14, 2020 12:47
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superLINUS posted:Fear Her bad. I don't think so. I mean, I didn't like it, but Fear Her is embarassingly bad, I feel bad just watching it that everyone had to be part of that. And it's not insultingly bad like Forest of the Night. It's just sort of uninspiringly bad, basically just absent of good more than anything else.
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Jan 14, 2020 22:51
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Der Shovel posted:I also liked that he was on a planet with no breathable air and yet had been breathing A-OK for ~half an hour by then, and on that planet with no breathable air there were numerous ~*~moody fires~*~ burning in the tunnels. Again, I think that was undercooked foreshadowing. Benni's 'thing' was basically that he was having trouble breathing, probably because even in the resort the oxygen levels are only borderline breathable. We learn later that the dregs produce oxygen, so Benni's probably handling pretty well right next to them. And meanwhile, Benny's giving them a clean-ish source of carbon dioxide to breathe as well.
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Jan 15, 2020 11:48
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Ither posted:Orphan 55 was one of the worst episodes of Modern Who. Again, I'm not sure it is. Because while it's bad, there's a few different types of 'Bad New Who', and Orphan 55 kinda just lands at 'boring bad'; like Tooth and Claw or something like that. It's not doing anything egregiously bad, it's just got nothing good in it to make up for any of its stumblings. It doesn't have any really embarassing performances or ideas, like Fear Her or Love and Monsters. It's not offensive like Forest of the Night, or insulting to your intelligence like the Monk stories. It's just sorta 'meh'. I wouldn't dread this episode in a rewatch, but I'd also completely forget it was coming until it turned up.
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Jan 17, 2020 12:37
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Gravastars posted:Benni! Benni!! Oh, Benni! Where's my Benni? Is she really down there with Chloe Webber, though? I mean, be honest, really?
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Jan 17, 2020 14:42
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Ishamael posted:Interestingly, Tooth and Claw was the first episode of the show I ever saw and the one that got me hooked on it. I loved that it was a scifi show where the people seemed to be having fun instead of brooding, and the whole tone felt very Buffy (which was a show I enjoyed). So I will never speak badly of Tooth and Claw, that was my entrance into the show. Honestly, I'll speak very little bad about Tooth and Claw either, it's a solidly fun, like, high-C-grade episode that also manages to highlight what Doctor Who can do well that other sci-fi can't. Nothing special as far as Doctor Who goes, but it's everything Who special. I kinda just landed on it because I was trying to think of other 'boringly bad' episodes, the ones that aren't actively bad so much as completely lacking in good. And basically by nature none of those actually stand out enough to remember.
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Jan 17, 2020 16:04
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Okay, that episode was fun as hell. Not perfect, but I enjoyed every bit of it, and really that's all I can ask for. A little thing I really want to highlight: I like that the reason Yaz and Edison can outrun the scorpions is very visibly that the scorpions suck. They keep crashing into each other, because they're the worst at cornering, and it's funny every single time!
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Jan 20, 2020 13:49
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Astroman posted:But riddle me this: why the gently caress did she have to MiB flashpen Ada Lovelace and Noor Inayat Khan but not Edison and Tesla? Seeing all that stuff didn't change history or their future inventions at all? I can sorta justify this in a couple of ways. 1. Tesla and Edison didn't time travel or learn anything they shouldn't know yet, while Lovelace and Khan did. They saw aliens, sure, but going by the logic that essentially 'the alien ship was always going to be there' then there's no real impact on the timeline, while the Master just deliberately came charging into Lovelace and Khan's lives to gently caress with the timeline, even if he didn't really care that he was. 2. Tesla and Edison probably weren't going to stray from their paths after this one. We see them right in the swing of their work (probably on the way down; I don't know their timeline well, but I know 'Death Ray Tesla' was late-stage), seeing that aliens are real but getting no material from them probably just means they keep going about their lives. Meanwhile Lovelace and Khan saw future technology and history, Lovelace in a very formative time in her life and Khan right in the middle of a war that was still very iffy; you can easily imagine that if their memories weren't wiped, they'd probably influence the timeline in ways the Doctor wouldn't be a fan of.
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Jan 21, 2020 03:10
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Dr. Fishopolis posted:And this. I think even people who don't like Chibnall can agree she's a good Doctor. Not the people who've decided she's the worst ever Doctor and who keep spreading rumors that she will be/is being/has been fired along with Chibnall. Really, I have no idea why this trend kicked up around specifically Jodie Whittaker, and not any other Doctor. Truly, it'a a total mystery why some people are treating her so differently.
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Jan 24, 2020 03:36
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Rochallor posted:The Captain Jack cameo was so disconnected from everything else you could basically have dropped it into any episode this series. I would say at least it's nice to see him again, but honestly, if he's just there to drop a painfully obvious line of exposition, no it's not. Like if you're just looking for an old face to shout "Beware the Cyberman!" you can go weirder than that. Get the lady who was queen in The Beast Below, or the Doctor's clone daughter, or whichever of the old UNIT cast hasn't been credibly accused of rape. Save Barrowman for an occasion where he has more to do than stand in a room and pretend it's shaking under laser fire. I think the Captain Jack bit, yes from a plot perspective kinda works anywhere (although I think it works well here from a perspective of 'okay, get the companions out of the way so the Doctor's alone with Ruth'), but I think works best here in a metatextual way. If it were in Orphan 55 or something it would've felt WAY more out of place, but because he's in the Judoon's episode he fits a loot better just in terms of matching the tone and approach to the episode. Because I mean, yeah, if Jack's gonna turn up anywhere, of course he'll turn up alongside another RTD face, it just makes sense. And of course, his presence just helps to escalate the episode's overall insane what-the-fuckery and cloak any potential spoilers from that escalation. Because even if Captain Jack coming back leaks, or even if someone decides to pause the episode and go telling all their friends who like Doctor Who and don't mind spoilers (...which I did  ), surely that's the big one, right? There's nothing else the episode that brought back Captain Jack Harkness could be hiding!This episode went on an insane bender in 2007, and only just now got back into work, and I love it so much. I literally don't remember the last time I've had this much fun watching Doctor Who.
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Jan 27, 2020 11:00
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Marmaduke! posted:Could the alternative doctor that went to alternate universe with Rose regenerate? Not that I think it would be that. I don't think so, but after thinking about it I've landed on a not-dissimilar conclusion. I think this is the actual Doctor from the Cybus universe. Not the human Doctor that went off with Rose, but that universe's proper Doctor from Gallifrey, displaced dimensionally apparently without full knowledge of it. I'm actually basing this not on the actual events, but more on the fact that the entire episode was just Russell T. Davies As Hell, so why wouldn't the explanation for this one ALSO be Russell T. Davies As Hell? We've even got foreshadowing of a lone Cyberman; there's like six places a Cyberman could be from, but that's definitely one of them. I think any theory--but especially any alt-universe theory--has to grapple with Lady Gat, though. It's not too hard to buy an alternate universe's Doctor falling into 'our' dimension, since we've seen our Doctor do it several times. But Lady Gat isn't in the same position; she clearly has much more freedom to move and act, and yet is still absolutely certain of her mission and her place in the universe. If she'd also travelled across dimensions she'd either have done it intentionally (and so would've brought it up, probably to Lee), or somehow also done it accidentally but have at some point figured it out (and so probably still would've brought it up, probably to one/both of the Doctors). She's surprised that our Doctor saw Gallifrey in ruins, but other than that, she seems to know where she is.
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Jan 27, 2020 14:31
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Organza Quiz posted:Yeah this Doctor seems actually about as nonviolent as our usual one, what with the whole "the Doctor doesn't use weapons" "I know" exchange, but she's certainly more... militaristic? Less cheerful. Reads more to me like she may have split off around 8 rather than at a much earlier regeneration. Which would actually, in its weird way, track with the timeline Ruth gave. She says she left the lighthouse in December of 98; if we give Eight the same sort of presumed life the other Doctors get, where they keep returning to the present day at the time of airing, that'd be a couple years into his life. Of course, that doesn't fit cleanly either; Eight definitely knew what a sonic screwdriver was, and he had a very specific style for his TARDIS.
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Jan 27, 2020 15:31
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Jerusalem posted:I really dig this idea A high-stakes version of that time when everyone's too nice and willing to shoulder the burden and so nobody ends up just Doing The Thing. I'm into it.
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Jan 29, 2020 00:23
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Yannick_B posted:The first Chibnall episode to get really exciting for me. I'm really into Doctor Ruth and like the idea that Doctor Who can go wild with canon, While I just hope that, whatever this ends with, they go full-power on it. This is too insane a plot twist for them to half-rear end the resolution. Go full RTD melodramatics, or Matt Smith-run baffling temporal nonsense, I don't care, just as long as it blows up big at the end. This latest episode already felt a bit 'don't think too hard, just DO IT', just roll with that!
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Jan 29, 2020 04:32
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basicblack posted:So, if we're thinking like an archaeologist (hey, I get to use my undergrad today!) and thinking about the sticker for dating purposes, it would be after Hatnell/first Doctor, right? Or possibly, if a divergent timeline situation is true, some kind of alternate Hartnell. The timeline forking after the TARDIS gets its iconic shape (the light on top, I believe, would put it as a Hartnell TARDIS) but before the Doctor learns what a Saint John's Ambulance is enough to put it on manually. Because it's too specific a decal, too unlike other police boxes, for the chameleon circuit to have done it itself. Cleretic fucked around with this message at 04:10 on Jan 30, 2020 |
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Jan 30, 2020 04:07
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Yvonmukluk posted:Huh, is that the Adventures In Space and Time console? Might be more evidence for a divergence from Hartnell. Probably, but it's hard to tell how much of that is genuine decision and how much of that is 'well, we've still got this prop in storage'.
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Feb 1, 2020 01:54
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OldMemes posted:Pearl Mackie gave such an enthusiastic and engaged performance, it was great, even if Bill didn't have much of an arc. Maybe it's because that line took place in the classic TARDIS console room, but when Jodie said that line (and got a bit of a derisive response) I took it as a deliberate take on that actually being a very New Who concept, which doesn't work if you put it against Ruth, who's clearly a new version of a Classic Who Doctor. Time to post the thread favorite video on exactly this point! https://youtu.be/lzmnPs64K74
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Feb 1, 2020 22:37
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Wow, Orphan 55 isn't even the best environmentalist episode of the season. What the gently caress was it even good for, then? Echoing how creepy the disease effects were. I'm curious how exactly they did it, it feels like the sort of effect that's got some secretly really cheap and easy core components in it for some reason.
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Feb 3, 2020 15:00
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I think that there's explicitly a different writing system for Chibnall's run. They went to a writers room format of some kind, rather than basically just having one writer per episode.
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Feb 4, 2020 03:23
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juche avocado posted:Yeah, oops, that sounds right. I hate them both Chibnall's biggest flaw before he became showrunner was that his episodes rarely left the 'serviceable' range. They were never bad, but they were also rarely ever all that good. You could level the same complaint about him as showrunner, I guess, but I'd disagree on it.
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Feb 5, 2020 03:31
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Now I have to go look up why it is I hate Chibnall. ...did he write the stupid loving trees in london episode?
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Open Source Idiom posted:Yo, so I know this thread talks a lot about sloppy or lazy writing or whatever we're calling it, but is there anything worse that Bill's introductory story making a big deal about how much she loves scifi and then her very next episode see her needing literally everything about space explained to her? I don't fully remember the details of this, but I can imagine myself, as a sci-fi fan, still going 'what the gently caress, WHAT THE gently caress' and acting a little dopey during my first foray. Girl got thrown into deep space and the future on basically her second trip, I'd be surprised if she wasn't playing a bit of catchup. Also, wasn't Bill's second story Smile? I feel like your first two brushes with the Doctor being Pilot and Smile would put anyone in a status of 'I probably shouldn't pretend I know what I'm dealing with'.
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Feb 6, 2020 00:31
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I have to say, I like the helmet design. Feels like it deliberately calls back to the OG Cybermen's headgear, with the face inset instead of the whole thing just being one piece. If we have to do Battle Armor Cybermen, that's a nice helmet for ir. A nice Cyberman design means absolutely nothing to the quality of the story itself, though. Cybermen might have one of the most checkered track records in terms of story quality.
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Feb 7, 2020 16:38
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It almost feels like a metatextual prank on the audience that Dark Water is such a good modern remaining of the Cybermen, and yet they only exist as a feint for Missy to gently caress with everyone. I can't even entirely hate them for that. Like, I want a good modern Cyberman, but that's a ballsy ploy.
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Feb 9, 2020 01:38
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This is the sort of episode where I liked every individual thing it did, but it either didn't do enough things to create a cohesive story, or didn't do any of those things it did so well that it could be forgiven for missing some pieces. I'll echo that it's a weirdly great call that Ryan's fear uses Orphan 55. That nightmare is basically the good core of that episode in miniature, but also kinda can't exist without Orphan 55 itself, because it needs the Dregs as a 'face' for Ryan's fear of climate change.
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Feb 10, 2020 16:38
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The flying finger worked surprisingly well for me, honestly. Probably because it's such a perfectly nightmarish image. Not 'nightmarish' as in 'actually horrifying', of course. I mean 'nightmarish' as in 'your brain's conjured up this weird-rear end image that you're terrified of but will never really be able to convey the horrors inherent in'. It specifically works for me because it kind of doesn't work, and I love that.
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Feb 12, 2020 17:04
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I feel like a bigger compliment than it being a good Thirteen episode (which I think there's been plenty of) is that this is a really good Cyberman story. And not only that, it's a really good last minute Cyberman story; that's basically unheard of, them turning up for the last act of a story when that story isn't about seeing Cyberman conversion almost always turns out total garbage. I have to echo loving that for once, the person behind the incomplete conversion wasn't a good person in a bad situation. No, that guy's just a loving rear end in a top hat, a complete Cyber-conversion might've actually been an improvement in a lot of ways.
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Feb 17, 2020 13:17
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Burkion posted:What is with the Master and Cybermen I remember this discussion coming up around Dark Water/Death in Heaven, that the Cybermen are kind of the perfect extra 'piece' to a Doctor/Master conflict because they're essentially the antithesis of what the Doctor actually likes about humanity. The Doctor loves that humans are so loving, and clever, sometimes stupid, but always special. The Cybermen end up being a great thing to put alongside the Master in their conflicts, because they're basically humanity but with none of the things the Doctor enjoys about humans. Which gives the Master a lot to work with, while also giving the Cybermen a more charismatic, interesting 'frontman' rather than just being a faceless mass.
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Feb 24, 2020 13:33
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