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Sydney Bottocks posted:That depends on whether or not RTD retcons the Timeless Child bullshit, because otherwise it's not just a planet of stodgy old bureaucrats, but a planet of people that tortured the poo poo out of the TC and stole their regeneration secrets. Makes going back there a bit awkward if that's still the case. I mean, the timeless child stuff is unmitigated horse poo poo, but this particular objection... Not really? That is supposed to have happened at the very beginning of time lord society (before there were really time lords, just Gallifreyans). So its like saying the doctor should avoid the US because of how the american settlers treated native americans, or that the doctor should never visit Britain because of how britain has treated... Well, everybody really, if you give me a minute I'll dig out the map of everyone the UK has never been to war with. Except seperated by thousands (millions? hosed if I know) of years instead of just a couple of hundred. The Time Lords have done worse to the doctor more recently without making it particularly weird he sometimes goes to Gallifrey (hell, he visited Scaro relatively recently too). And "tortured the poo poo out of the timeless child and stole their regeneration secrets" is at best an extremely colourful way of describing what we actually saw on screen. The timeless child is a bad enough idea we dont need to make up reasons for it to be bad. The actual idea is bad enough.
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Oct 31, 2021 02:41
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 04:57 |
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Sydney Bottocks posted:"The Time Lords have done worse to the Doctor more recently" exactly how? I mean, about half the interactions we've seen him have with them in the entire run of the show? I was specifically thinking of Dabir posted:Well there was the time he spent 2 billion years in a clockwork torture chamber... but again, as the timeless child stuff is supposed to happen pre hartnell, pick any bad thing the time lords did to the doctor and its more recent than the timeless child stuff. Oh, and I looked it up. This stuff is supposed to have happened while Gallifrey had a society but before they mastered time travel, so "The End of Time" pegs it at more than ten million years ago, but less than a billion years ago. Which gives us a hell of a margin of error because I dont think that RTD really thought about how long a billion years is, but there we are; I stand by my comment that deciding the doctor shouldnt visit gallifrey because of the actions of one time lord somewhere between 10000000 and 1000000000 years ago is frankly ridiculous when the doctor spends most of their time on earth and we've (as a species) murdered untold numbers of kids. This isnt a The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas situation here. A better reason for the doctor to not visit gallifrey without a retcon is that theres nobody there because apparently the master somehow killed all of them because, and I cant stress this enough, the timeless child was a loving stupid story. Sydney Bottocks posted:Also the Doctor should avoid the US over what they did to the Native Americans, if I'm being perfectly honest If I'm being perfectly honest I think the doctor should spend more time in places where they see injustice, not less.
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Oct 31, 2021 03:18
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It begins.
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Oct 31, 2021 19:25
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The problem with Chibnell starting in media res is that the adventure they tell us they've just been having is pretty much always more interesting sounding than the adventure he's made an episode about.
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Oct 31, 2021 19:29
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Our baddie appears to be spikey red skeletor.
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Oct 31, 2021 19:38
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Are you not supposed to keep chillies in the fridge? I keep them there, I assumed they keep better there.
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Oct 31, 2021 19:47
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Oh good, chibnal has gone back to the "the doctor has important things in her past that she doesnt remember" well.
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Oct 31, 2021 20:11
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Well, that certainly was a bunch of things happening one after another. Felt like the scripts for about 4 episodes got shuffled together and they just filmed it. Possibly two of those episodes script pages seemed quite interesting! But as presented nothing had any time to breathe, no tension was built for anything. It looked nice overall, but the dog aliens mask movements when it spoke were... inconsistent at best. I'm glad we're back to angels transporting people in time instead of flat out killing them.
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Oct 31, 2021 20:20
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Jerusalem posted:Looking forward to the end of the season when he finds out the reason the Doctor doesn't remember him is because he's just one of a few dozen forgettable aliens she ran into a couple thousand years earlier as Ruth-Doctor before the Time Lords regenerated her into Pertwee and dumped him in Epping. Honestly I'm assuming that the series ends with her locking him on a rock in a containment field at the dawn of the universe, and the reason she doesnt remember him is that this is the first time they've met from her perspective, while he's locked in a time loop or some such. I like your idea better to be fair, but I dont think chibnells got the self awareness to do that to his big bad.
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Oct 31, 2021 20:45
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EdBlackadder posted:Honestly this wouldn't be a bad ending for it but doesn't really jive with 'our battles over thousand of years' in a satisfying way. It does if she now fights him for thousands of years, leading to her beating him then regenerating at the end of the season! For the record, I dont think this would be a good or satisfying ending, its just my prediction for what they're going to do. I'd say overall I liked bits of it, its just easier to pick out the bits that I didnt like. Maybe once I've seen the whole season I'll feel differently. John Bishop was fine, Yaz had some stuff to do, Whittaker is always a delight when the script gives her even the tiniest crumb to work with, the weeping angels back to time displacing people, the overall look of the show, all good. The pacing, tension building and storytelling of the episode on the other hand did not work for me at all. The redesign of the Sontarans has made them look more comical instead of less, but thats my personal take on the aesthetics, others may disagree.
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Oct 31, 2021 22:24
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Jerusalem posted:I loved the redesign of the Sontarans when I saw the image, and I still like how they look... but I'm confused as to why they redesigned them to look like the more serious/dangerous versions from the 70s.... and then wrote dialogue where they're being comical again. I guess next episode we'll see what tone they choose to take. It seems to me they've changed the proportions of the torso and arms somewhat, so they are less squat (as well as changing the shape of the heads). But to me the effect has been to make them look less like they are built like space dwarves, and more like they are built like space toddlers.
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Oct 31, 2021 22:49
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Previously on Doctor Who: A bunch of loud noises and flashing lights with no coherence whatsoever.
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Nov 7, 2021 19:17
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Okay, I'm just going to say it; They need to give up on the sontarans being taken seriously as a threat. I dont care how many revamps they give them, that ship has absolutely sailed. Also, I'm assuming the water in the background is the Crimea River.
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Nov 7, 2021 19:21
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At least this week we're being given enough time to take in whats happening.
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Nov 7, 2021 19:36
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Every time he says "REPAIR!" all I think is "we look for things. Things to make us go"
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Nov 7, 2021 19:43
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I'm glad the general stayed up all night making up his elaborate plan of... having all the troops run straight towards the sontarans on foot, trying to stab them with bayonets, and occasionally shooting his single cannon.
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Nov 7, 2021 19:53
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Jerusalem posted:Apparently the Sontaran Commander hasn't heard of "shifts". To be fair, the Sontarans would probably lose their minds at the idea of having to stand guard instead of fight, but.... come on! Yeah, 2 shifts would make it 15 minutes out of 27 hours which doesnt seem unmanageable.
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Nov 7, 2021 20:10
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So that was... Okay? Not great, but better than last week. At least the plot was more or less coherent, even if it did rely entirely on the sontarans being loving morons who havent heard of the simple concept of "not having the entire army sleep at the same time", and it did involve a battle that they very much did not have an adequate budget to make look good (one cannon, zero horses, and a thousand ctrl+C ctrl+V sontarans). Again, they need to give up on the Sontarans being any kind of serious threat. They've been jokes too often in nu-who for us to take them as anything other than comic relief or, at a push, henchmen for the actual villain of the week. If they want to use them like they're the cybermen or daleks they need to give them a rest for a few years then bring them back with a revamped look. Revamping the look does absolutely gently caress all to rehabilitate them as threatening villains if you have them missing at point blank range AND being beaten up by pensioners bopping them on the head with cookware IN THE SAME EPISODE. A loving phone socket has a sliding thing to protect it when there isnt a lead in it, the sontarans never thought of that for the neck vent thing? Plus the revamped heads make them look like the bastard child of a turd and a potato. Dan being saved by doggy ex machina was narratively poo poo, but made me laugh so it gets a pass. I wasnt entirely clear on why he was scouting the docks, he has no relevant skills or abilities, and its not like most companions where they can be like "I'm the only one who knows something about this because of my travels with the doctor", because hes met the doctor for about 20 minutes and everyone else in liverpool has more experience with the sontarans than he does. I like Disco Red Skull and his sister, the sugar skull gang, I look forward to the Passenger taking off his mask and revealing hes actually... gently caress I dont know, Dan, The Doctor or the Master at this point. Comedy prediction is the Curator. He just turned up and was off hand introduced ("this is the passenger, hes here now too" essentially) and either thats the worst storytelling ever (and believe me I'm not ruling that out), my memory is going and he was introduced last week and I forgot, or theres a dramatic reveal coming. tldr: More coherant as a story than last week, but still nowhere near a top tier episode. Broadly inoffensive so in the top half of chibnell eps.
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Nov 7, 2021 20:34
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Jerusalem posted:Thanks JaKiri Azure I think? Something like that, because I was again slightly underwhelmed that the lady with the blue skins name is effectively "blue".
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Nov 7, 2021 22:10
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Mass Effect: Who Edition.
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Nov 14, 2021 19:35
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The more the passenger lurks ominously the more I think about how great it would be if he takes his mask off and its tom baker.
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Nov 14, 2021 19:40
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I need the man in the top hat to understand that when I refer to him as "budget geoffrey rush" I broadly speaking mean that as a compliment.
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Nov 14, 2021 19:48
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They are really making the most of their green screen and harness budgets this week.
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Nov 14, 2021 19:55
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Jerusalem posted:No goddammit the Cybermen shouldn't care about command and rule, they should literally only ever be obsessed with survival for its own sake and nothing else Agreed.
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Nov 14, 2021 20:05
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"You lost me quite early on" - Direct quote from the episode, or me talking about this episode?
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Nov 14, 2021 20:11
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Okay, so. Some initial thoughts. First the good; As usual the cast are doing a power of work with the material they are handed. I'd watch the Vinder and Lassie From The Irregulars Whose Character I Dont Think Was Given A Name This Week Show, which this felt like a pilot for. Would have to maybe punch up that title a bit. The character and set design is absolutely on point. Disco Red Skull is fun as a villain. Reckon people would buy a toy of the space tamagochi which played Vinders video. I feel like john bishop probably had the time of his life pretending to be a space marine for a day. I like Ruth!Doc. The Bad: Theres no kind way to put this, but... Writing a coherent story with nonlinear time is hugely difficult. Chibnell struggles telling a compelling doctor who story with a conventional linear timeline. What on earth made him thought he could pull this off I have no idea. There was no real through line, stuff just kind of happened. While Vinders stuff was at least flashbacks that gave you some idea who the character was, Dans stuff revealed nothing that we didnt know from the first episode (he fancies the woman from the museum! He's from Liverpool!) and Yas' told us nothing interesting or useful at all. She's the only returning companion from last season, how is she STILL given gently caress all? The passenger was revealed (extremely quickly through dialogue) as being... A container for captive life forces? Or something? Way less interesting that I was hoping. Fan servicey villain cameos kind of backfired for me. As Jerusalem mentioned they got the cybermens motivation badly wrong, the Daleks were so brief and pointless that its only going to fuel that old "Daleks must legally appear at least once a season!" rumor, and the angels at the end... Okay, someone needs to remind the writers that the angels dont move every time anyone blinks. They move when no-one is watching them at all. Thats why the rest pose is covering their eyes, so they dont accidently lock each other by looking. If there are 3 people in the control room one angel shouldnt be a threat at all. Now they immediately solved this by having the lights flash off, but the initial "dont blink!" (it moves) "I think I blinked!" thing was really silly. I still think Ruth!Doc being a pre-hartnell incarnation of the doctor is an incredibly bad idea, and, like all the timeless child stuff, reeks of someone being absolutely desperate to leave a permenant mark on the show without having the skill to do it by writing something good enough that future writers will call back to it. RTD resurrected the show. Moffat created the Weeping Angels. Chibnell... retconned things from before he was actually born. Basically I'd put this on par with two weeks ago. It was a bad episode, a badly written story, with threads of like... 3 other, better, episodes mashed together. Now, writing yourself an excuse to have an incoherent story doesnt make the story any less incoherent. The cast deserve better than this nonsense.
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Nov 14, 2021 20:43
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Once again, its NOT blinking that makes the angels move, its being entirely unobserved. 3 people backed into a corner with a light source are in no danger whatsoever unless they all happened to blink with both eyes a the exact same time multiple times.
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Nov 21, 2021 19:26
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Is that an inbetweener? (also Yaz can look while Dan fixes the torch because its BEING TOTALLY UNOBSERVED THAT AFFECTS THE ANGELS but I dont want to go on about it...)
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Nov 21, 2021 19:35
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"early part of the 20th century?" John Bishop, a man who was born in the 1960s, "So almost a hundred years before we are alive?"
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Nov 21, 2021 19:43
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Meanwhile, in the now obligatory quarry.
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Nov 21, 2021 19:52
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Jerusalem posted:Yeah, giving them a voice is kind of pants. Yep, a voice and a society (or at least enough of one for them to form a squad). Any mystique they had left is rapidly being pissed up against the wall.
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Nov 21, 2021 20:04
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Can I just make the point that this can gently caress entirely off?
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Nov 21, 2021 20:12
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Okay. That was bad. Partially its a general show issue; The diminishing returns (and multiplying complications) of the Weeping Angels. Not all of this is Chibnells fault, which is why I'm calling it a general show issue. Blink is a stone cold classic episode, and a great introduction of a new enemy. Nothing they have added to the basic set up of blink has made anything better. "These angels are just flat out killing people! (because we dont want to have to deal with the complications raised by them moving people in time" was meh, whatever I guess, but then "the image of an angel becomes an angel" which is an ambigious statement that is poorly defined at best (what if you copy a video cassette that has a recording of an angel on it? If you had access to a DVD pressing factory could you run off a couple of million angels? what if you streamed an angel on twitch?), and the whole "you have an angel in your eye" thing was originally really a cheaty way to add tension to a single episode that could be quietly forgotten as "a weird thing that happened once" rather than just its a thing they can do now. The statue of liberty is an angel because gently caress it, why not. Then this episode took all of that, aimed it at a wall and hit the nitros. Despite the Doctor stating out loud that they are quantum locked when they are being observed (and reminding us that they can quantum lock each other if they come face to face) the writers forgot both those rules for basically the whole episode. The angels moved if anyone blinked regardless of other people watching, they grabbed people when their hands couldnt be seen despite the camera plainly showing that Yaz and Dan could clearly still see their MASSIVE loving WINGS over the old couple. Every flaw from a later angels episode puts in an appearance in this one; There are a hundred angels here, which (like Daleks or Cybermen) makes them less scary instead of more. Now a drawing of an angel counts as an image of an angel (how good does the drawing have to be? what about a stick figure? Or someone representing an angel with emoji?). Someone has an angel in their eye! Except this time its because they... Had a psychic vision of an angel? I think? And now they can do the time stealling thing if you brush against them while looking directly at them, which would be news to those angels in previous episodes who had to put the scary face on and be unobserved otherwise they might for example statue up while their hand is around a companions wrist... And also when they put you into the past they may give you a clue to pass on to the doctor for no particular reason. Dust from an angel falling in your eye will do it too. And also everyone is put back pretty much the exact same amount of time despite them saying theres no way of telling how far back they'd send you. And hey, just in case you still thought the Angels had any trace of mystique left, lets have one of them talk. And talk. And loving talk (rationally I know the episode only lasted a total of 55 minutes, how did that scene on the brain beach manage to last for 6 hours? Just so dull, exposition pointing the camera at whoever is talking at the time). So now they have individuality, and enough society they can form a squad and work for others. And they're now just the sontarans with a musical statues gimmick, good job show. Last week someone (sorry, I forget who) suggested that they thought it was going to turn out that the angels found themselves unable to feed due to the flux loving up the timestream, and they would turn out to actually be helping the doctor out of desperation. That would have been about a thousand times better than this nonsense. I have other issues with the episode (and with the season in general) but gently caress I'm super annoyed about how badly they hosed up the angels. Tying it in with the division/timeless child nonsense really just was the milky drip on the end of the infected dick that was this script. Bel and Jinders stuff was meh, whatever. Wasnt bad, but wasnt particularly great either, and interrupted whatever flow this episodes A-plot tried to have.
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Nov 21, 2021 20:58
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Full disclosure, I forgot entirely about angel bob! But gently caress, again, much like "theres an angel in your eye" that should have been quietly relegated to the "They did this once but we decided not to make it a thing" bucket. Plus at least angel bob was a little unnerving had at least some pathos.
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Nov 21, 2021 21:12
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Vinylshadow posted:Yes, but if it goes completely dark, when even if you're looking you can't see them... Yes, but there is no need for them to BOTH simultaneously stare wide eyed at the angel while dan tries to fix the torch without looking at it is my point. That was dumb as poo poo. My point is that as long as Yaz doesnt look away or blink dan can look down, fix the torch and then it wont be completely dark as they would then have a working torch. "Hey yaz, you dont blink for a minute while I try and fix this".
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Nov 22, 2021 17:58
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Edward Mass posted:I think Village of the Angels is the best traditional Doctor Who episode of the Whittaker era, and that's just sad. What do you consider the criteria for a traditional doctor who episode, just out of interest?
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Nov 24, 2021 23:52
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Edward Mass posted:Well, there's a villainous creature of some sort, and the Doctor has to use his/her wits to solve a mystery. With those criteria (which does preclude Demons of the Punjab and It Takes you Away I believe) I'd still say the witchfinders was better, as was the Tsuranga Conundrum (if you count the creature in that as villanous). Neither of those were great episodes, but they dont need to be because village of the angels was real bad. Real real bad. Orphan 55 and Nikola Teslas Night of Terror were also not particularly great, but I'd still argue better than Village of the Angels. I guess what I'm saying is I really hated Village of the Angels a whole bunch. Unrelated to this discussion, but related to Who, I assume we've all seen this display of bawbaggery? https://twitter.com/AdamBienkov/status/1463886950704820232?s=20 SiKboy fucked around with this message at 19:53 on Nov 25, 2021 |
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Nov 25, 2021 19:47
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Maxwell Lord posted:I’m legit curious as to why you think it’s that bad, other than an inconsistent application of the Rules. Like is it something wrong with the characters or themes? I'm not much of one for deep media analysis, you want themes and whatnot you're talking to the wrong poster, I'm not writing a high school book report. I'm watching entertainment for the story, this story did not engage me. It was bad because I didnt enjoy it, I didnt enjoy it because it was bad. I posted about the angels because a) its the easiest thing to point out, and b) the episode is largely about the angels (and c) nitpicking is fun when they make it so drat easy). But sure, for the sake of argument lets put to one side the episode loudly stating how the angels work and then immediately ignoring that, maybe I'm wrong and thats excellent storytelling instead of just sloppy writing. Me I like my stories to have internal logic, and see it as a storytelling problem when the villain can just do whatever ignoring their in universe limitations. How will the heroes escape I fail to wonder because there is no point considering it because gently caress it, they can just move whenever and if you brush against them you're hosed even if they are currently a statue. So, some of my other problems with the episode include, in no particular order; Some things I think they thought were twists were very much not; The little girl was the old lady, and if you didnt suspect that the old lady was a previous angel victim from her first or maybe second line then I dont know what to tell you. When they failed to introduce any other possible characters she could be it was then extremely obvious. Oh, and the weeping angel turned out to be a baddy after all and betray the doctor? How unexpected for one of the angels, who have never been shown to be anything other than vicious ambush predators, to in fact be the baddy. I found parts of it tedious; The scene on the exposition beach where the doctor and angel talked went on for, and I didnt check this precisely, but possibly 5 or 6 hours. All in shades of grey while we got alternating head and shoulders shots of the person talking which is like the second least interesting way of filming a conversation after just pointing a camera at the actors and calling it a day. Some stuff felt like it kind of happened because they had an idea for a cool scene and worked backwards; The angels are in the walls of the tunnel! For no particular reason, it doesnt make any real sense for them to be in the walls of the tunnel, but someone thought the image of the arms reaching out the walls would look cool and so it has to happen in the episode. To be honest the whole "You have a tunnel in your house you didnt know about, but is still very easy for us to access!" thing was faintly silly in a way I'd forgive in a better episode but by the time it happened I wasnt giving benefits of the doubt. And frankly, "The Angels are a hit squad sent by the Authority" or whatever was so ridiculous that it did make me laugh, so if thats what they were going for then it absolutely landed, but I suspect it wasnt. It was like if at the end of Jaws they'd very earnestly revealed that the shark was working for the CIA. Theres other stuff too, but I'm holding off on things like "Wait, if the angel infestation was actually a hit squad targeting the one woman with an angel in her brain (which she got because she is a clairvoyant who had a vision of an angel), why had they also disappeared that same village in 1903?" in case that gets explained this week, and stuff like "the side story with Bel and Jinder absolutely broke up any semblance of flow the main plot had and didnt feel like it had any ties to the main plot other than moving pieces to where they need to be for the finale" is more of a symptom of this series than it is this specific episode. Was the entire episode irredeemable? No, of course not. Much like the rest of the episodes this season there were a half dozen decent ideas in there, it just didnt do any of them justice. The main cast and professor did what they could with the material, and some of the stuff with the professor and the TV screen was legit good (although I did have a "Holy poo poo, did you just invoke the holocaust in your sub par doctor who script" moment when the professor compared the angels to... It was either Dresden or Belsen). It wasnt the worst episode of Doctor Who ever or anything, and arguably it wasnt even the worst episode so far this season (I would go so far as to say its in the top 4 this year). If someone liked it, I'm pleased for them and I'm not going to argue with them that they shouldnt like it. But them liking it doesnt change the fact that I didnt.
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Nov 26, 2021 01:14
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I know its nothing new, but... Has the show started at the same time twice so far this season?
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Nov 28, 2021 19:25
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I believe "Cover the dynamite with a couple of rugs" is the first thing police learn at Hendon.
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Nov 28, 2021 19:34
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