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DVRed this and watched it today because Halloween night was for horror flicks. Pretty fun, it's a strong start- like others have said, it's whether they'll stick the landing that's at issue, but here we get to see a lot of cool things happening and the Doctor gets to be active and do stuff and have fun banter with Yaz. I liked "synchronize watches- never mind, I'm not wearing a watch." Dan has potential. They maybe overpush how nice and sacrificing a guy he is (the show's Up With People attitude is often overdone, especially in the Chibnall years) but the actor is good. At first I was annoyed with the dog-alien because it was "Oh another villain we don't take seriously" but then it turns out he's a good dog so that's actually a decent twist. The one plot hole I'll argue is, if the ships can weather the flux and there are enough of them to form a shell around the Earth, why not do that right away? Why did someone have to suggest it? Overall, strong start. Lots of wild crazy things.
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Nov 1, 2021 21:00
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| # ¿ May 17, 2024 20:58 |
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Khanstant posted:still watching the episode, stalling before spoilers, but, what is the memory capacity of a human/timelord brain of the mass the brains are? Memories seem to be highly compressible or mutable, and are wildly unreliably in terms of recording the actual physical facts or reality of anything it remembers or perceives, so I don't know if that means it needs more or less space to do whatever it is doing. Point is, it's hard to believe the Doctorses could physically remember their lifetimes, let alone including any other Doctors' life. As a plot device that one seems totally fair to overuse along with "hey name, remember crazy event at outlandish place in whatever time that demonstrates character quirk and the fun we had together?" Also whatever else one may say about the Timeless Child stuff, it sets a precedent for the Doctor having had multiple lifetimes of adventures she has no memory of. I think that's always been one of the ideas, the Doctor's history is deeper than she even knows.
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Nov 1, 2021 21:02
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SiKboy posted: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. In fairness that was like 90% of European military strategy through WWI.
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Nov 8, 2021 05:17
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I don't think the Sontarans have ever really been a terrifying villain on their own- their stories usually have some other hook, like Time Warrior is "what if an alien soldier landed in medieval England", Invasion of Time they only show up near the end as a surprise, The Two Doctors is mostly about the Androgums, etc. They're generic enough to be slotted in various kinds of stories. Anyway the one plot hole I thought I noticed had nothing to do with shifts, but is rather this- okay so the one Sontaran that Mary treated was captured, for long enough for her to observe his sleep cycle. But if that cycle is specifically because they have to recharge their suits, why was he showing no ill effects from being away from the ship for multiple cycles?
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Nov 8, 2021 05:26
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See I liked this episode better than the past ones. We're starting to see more of the form of what's happening even if the specifics still aren't explained to us, it involves something the Doctor did in her Division years, various other species are just trying to do what they do in the midst of the chaos- everyone's trying to rule in Hell, basically. I kinda like that.
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Nov 15, 2021 07:25
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Jerusalem posted:I also dug the scenes of actors playing different characters, particular Whittaker telling a boring work story about her war with a retail worker That was the highlight yeah. She was hilarious.
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Nov 15, 2021 18:38
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Angel stories are tough because they do have these very hard/fast rules that other monsters don't. You can run away from a Dalek or duck laser shots from a Cyberman but an Angel *will* catch you if you look away so the writer has to work harder to contrive ways out of that situation. (Though yeah, nobody's tried blinking one eye at a time. I remember Colin Baker bringing that up at a panel.) I liked the story. It's hurt a bit by the Flux thing because they had to leave a lot of things in the air (why are the Angels so interested in the Division?), but it was tense and atmospheric and has a very nice cliffhanger (albeit one that BBC America's commercial breaks kinda stepped on.)
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Nov 22, 2021 05:38
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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?
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Nov 25, 2021 20:24
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This felt kind of messy. Obviously I never suspected Chibnall was going to instantly walk back Timeless Children or have had it be a fake-out all along. But having the entire Flux be about the Doctor's evil adoptive mom wanting to... do something makes it all feel kinda small and insular. Like the Division didn't need much explanation, Time Lords interfering in other worlds despite claiming they don't is both something the series has done before and also kinda self-explanatory. And I think the main issue is, I have no idea what the Hell Tecteoun was even trying to do in all this. Like okay she's basically in charge of the space-time-CIA that is The Division, she's willing to sacrifice this universe because there are others, but like, what's the gain? What's all the effort in aid of? Best I can piece together is she wanted the Doctor to come back in the fold but that's a real messy way to do it and if so it's not very well stated/conveyed. I got no sense of her wanting this to happen. And the Doctor once again gets stuck doing nothing while people exposit at her. Good news this time I guess is that this wasn't the finale so she still may yet get to take action, but ugh. And the Doctor spends most of the time arguing about being taken as a child which, sure, viable argument here but it feels just like it's slotted in here because there was no other place it could be. Also I don't get why they spent so much time on the Serpent and him infiltrating the ranks of UNIT so that he might one day... give the OK for the Sontarans to invade? I guess? Did they need permission? I dunno the finale may redeem some things but it was drat sloppy on its own.
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Nov 29, 2021 04:17
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I feel like the actual resolution of the Flux (it's antimatter so it just needs to be pointed in the direction of enough matter) was good, logical, though I coulda sworn I'd heard that the whole plan was to destroy Earth last so the Sontarans' plan wasn't gonna leave much. If I mistaken in that detail then it works. And yeah you can tell this was supposed to have more episodes, they left way too much to tie up. But again, I feel like I understood the basic thrust of the story, the main problem was resolved, it wasn't just a delivery system for Shocking Revelations like last year's finale. Though I do think it goes to show that so far all this Timeless Child stuff hasn't added much to the show. It's not really mystery since we know the gist, and the way it was teased in this story wasn't really interesting. OTOH it only really got in the way in Episode 5.
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Dec 6, 2021 04:06
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I mean the basic idea that the Doctor has past selves she doesn't know about or what they did and might run into them at any time, I still like. It just hasn't led to much of anything, it doesn't actually add a lot of mystery since we know the outline of what her past on Gallifrey was (did a bunch of ethically questionable poo poo for The Division, eventually got sick of it, but also got mind wiped) and any details are going to be tricky because how unethical do you want the past Doctors to be? Like there are other issues with this making the Doctor too special and messianic, but I feel like you could overcome that if the results were fun enough, and while Jo Martin's Doctor is neat, the rest has just been a lot of clumsy exposition.
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Dec 8, 2021 10:07
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The writer of the 1996 TVM was British so Daphne Ashbrook had to keep correcting the dialogue she had, like "it's just gone ten".
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Dec 17, 2021 08:26
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Aisling Bea was amazing. Really added a lot to the episode. But it was good! Very focused and intense and found a lot to do within its limited confines. I did get a bit tired of the "DALEKS DO NOT ____" lines, maybe if there'd been some payoff to the running gag.
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Jan 2, 2022 09:14
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