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Was it my imagination, or did this episode have a distinct Close Encounters of the Third Kind homage when all the spaceships are whizzing around over Stonehenge. There's a shot with a spinning-lights spaceship that's framed exactly like one of the iconic shots from close encounters. Also Rory is one sexy-rear end Roman in that centurion getup. MikeJF fucked around with this message at 08:40 on Feb 11, 2015 |
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Feb 11, 2015 08:36
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What the hell?
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Feb 11, 2015 08:52
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Warriors of the Deep has some of the worst production quality out of any story in the original series.
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Feb 11, 2015 09:08
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They should've put some big cheap rubber-foam monsters in the background of the Alliance crowd scene, just too out of focus to see how poo poo they are.
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Feb 11, 2015 09:08
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MikeJF posted:Was it my imagination, or did this episode have a distinct Close Encounters of the Third Kind homage when all the spaceships are whizzing around over Stonehenge. There's a shot with a spinning-lights spaceship that's framed exactly like one of the iconic shots from close encounters. It's very likely, but I think the spinning-lights ship you're talking about is a Dalek ship, they've got the very stereotypical flying saucer with lights. I'd love to see a listing of all the ships seen in this episode if it exists; Doctor Who seems like a show that would've pulled up a number of old ships for the shots of the alien fleet, and Doctor Who fans seem like the sort to be able to identify them. I remember there's a similar scene in a much later episode (I'm not certain on the rules to this sort of thing here, so I won't name which, but people probably know what I'm talking about) where my dad and I actually paused the show for several minutes just to try to identify any ships we could.
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Feb 11, 2015 09:13
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Cleretic posted:It's very likely, but I think the spinning-lights ship you're talking about is a Dalek ship, they've got the very stereotypical flying saucer with lights. Maybe. It's about 16:45, when they run up to the surface. Also, Occ, please livetweet the next one too (and/or post occ/oxx chatlogs again), that's hilarious. MikeJF fucked around with this message at 09:27 on Feb 11, 2015 |
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Feb 11, 2015 09:18
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Production of Warriors of the Deep was a...bit of a cock up.
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Feb 11, 2015 11:18
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There's also: This wonderful critter is from the otherwise-wonderful Caves of Androzani, an episode that was, before Vincent and the Doctor, the gold standard for "story least in need of a monster that got one anyway".
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Feb 11, 2015 12:33
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CobiWann posted:Production of Warriors of the Deep was a...bit of a cock up. An electrical fault in the lighting would have done wonders for that serial.
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Feb 11, 2015 13:45
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Sushi in Yiddish posted:Pyramids of Mars was one of the first 4th doctor serials I watched and it's great! Since they didn't have to spend money on making futuristic sets for the most part they actually were able to make some creative costumes. Sutekh is such an enjoyably evil villian. Mick Jagger funded a lot of the sets for Pyramids of Mars
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Feb 11, 2015 14:10
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Lycus posted:I bet he was so happy when he saw Rory. Occupation: CYBER KNOCKOUT DART this is how chumps cybermen are Oxxidation: well this one's kinda dead-ish Occupation: they're beaten by a nearly unconscious amy YEAH ALL RIGHT gently caress YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU Oxxidation: no it's a trick a sneaky roman trick romans are a tricky people
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Feb 11, 2015 15:30
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You should just post the whole chat. I'd read it.
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Feb 11, 2015 16:00
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Bobulus posted:You should just post the whole chat. I'd read it. These chats are almost as much fun (in some cases even more fun) than the reviews! I'd love to see the chats on notable episodes posted, too.
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Feb 11, 2015 16:12
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With all this talk of Season 1 Plastic Men, I feel this is a perfect time to post someone doing a great job impersonating the Ninth Doctor giving the Pandorica Speech. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yboaJYXisGY
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Feb 11, 2015 18:18
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Wow that sounds crazy like Eccleston
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Feb 11, 2015 18:22
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Sounds like he's bored doing it. Lame.
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Feb 11, 2015 18:27
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ashpanash posted:Sounds like he's bored doing it. Lame. So a perfect impression of what Eccleston would've sounded like after 5 years on Doctor Who?
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Feb 11, 2015 18:29
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ashpanash posted:Sounds like he's bored doing it. Lame. He's got the voice down but the guy is a terrible actor.
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Feb 11, 2015 18:31
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Daleks working with other monsters is kind of silly, especially since they kind of won the last round. It's just so, un-Dalek. Also, people think this is the peak Matt Smith Speech, but while I'm a fan of this Doctor it wasn't too special to me. It's him yelling at a bunch of vaguely defined shapes and lens flares. I get that being known and feared by the galaxy is kind of this Doctor's thing and that he doesn't always quite know why but ehhh. It's a good scene, but not "let's imagine Tom Baker reading this" good. While I still got some enjoyment out of this episode, this reached the point where I felt like Moffat's head disappeared up his rear end and I never saw him again. It probably has to so with binge watching. If I saw these episodes live and read the goon posts picking them apart, and had a week until the next episode to think about it, I'd probably like it better. Last of all, I'm kind of surprised it took Doctor Who this long to do something with Stonehenge. Craptacular! fucked around with this message at 19:44 on Feb 11, 2015 |
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Feb 11, 2015 19:30
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Craptacular! posted:Also, people think this is the peak Matt Smith Speech, but while I'm a fan of this Doctor it wasn't too special to me. It's him yelling at a bunch of vaguely defined shapes and lens flares. I get that being known and feared by the galaxy is kind of this Doctor's thing and that he doesn't always quite know why but ehhh. It's a good scene, but not "let's imagine Tom Baker reading this" good. I remember thinking at the time that this was just a retread of what he said in the Eleventh Hour, so it wasn't as impressive...until we got to the ending. Then it was revealed that essentially, it's his ridiculous bluster that gets him into this situation in the first place. They weren't intimidated by his speech; if anything, they were comforted by it. We got him, exactly where we want him.
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Feb 11, 2015 19:47
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ashpanash posted:I remember thinking at the time that this was just a retread of what he said in the Eleventh Hour, so it wasn't as impressive...until we got to the ending. Then it was revealed that essentially, it's his ridiculous bluster that gets him into this situation in the first place. They weren't intimidated by his speech; if anything, they were comforted by it. We got him, exactly where we want him. Yeah, if anything, it's the same kind of thing that he does in the Angels two-parter and in Eleventh Hour, but it's coming back to get him. I think this first part has a little too much going on, but actually, it's a pretty good finale. It manages to capture the RTD years "Let's assemble all the baddest bad guys for the most important battle in the Universe!" season finale but manages to actually make it feel like they raised the stakes, by turning one of the Doctor's strengths on its head and into one of his biggest weaknesses. I don't think the speech itself is impressive, but that the plot of the show is telling the Doctor to blow his speeches out of his rear end is actually pretty cool.
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Feb 11, 2015 19:53
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Solvency posted:With all this talk of Season 1 Plastic Men, I feel this is a perfect time to post someone doing a great job impersonating the Ninth Doctor giving the Pandorica Speech. How has this been posted but not the video of actual Sylvester McCoy doing the same? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9_OkgWaRIs Listen to him roll those rs.
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Feb 11, 2015 20:34
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Lipset and Rock On posted:How has this been posted but not the video of actual Sylvester McCoy doing the same? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9_OkgWaRIs It fits SO WELL with McCoy. The end, especially.
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Feb 11, 2015 20:37
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Lipset and Rock On posted:How has this been posted but not the video of actual Sylvester McCoy doing the same? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9_OkgWaRIs Here's the version edited to fit the scene. I do enjoy Sly's delivery, and it's a very Seventh Doctor-y speech, little dude could be quite the blusterer from time to time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nG9Z5djon7w
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Feb 11, 2015 20:55
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Poor Micky, even his plastic duplicate gets shown up by Rory's.
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Feb 11, 2015 21:22
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Doctor Who "The Pandorica Opens" Series 5, Episode 12 The really bizarre, and kind of unsettling, side effect of this whole review experiment thing is its permanence. Right now, right this very second, as you're reading this, you, me, or anyone else can just pull up the very first review I wrote about Doctor Who, "Rose". That was six months ago. That's a long time, objectively speaking. It's odd, reading back, because I wrote so many reviews, so consistently- I don't think there was a single week outside of established breaks when there were less than two episodes covered per week -that even subconsciously a reader can see how my opinions about Who changed over time. There's an actual evolution of opinion that I have, and that's kind of unnerving- the Occupation that wrote "Rose", if you were to sit him down right next to me right now and we were to watch "The Pandorica Opens" together, would hate it. And it's really freaky because of how relatively short of an amount of time six months is- I've spent about eight times as long devoutly hating Doctor Who then I've spent watching it. I never really expected this thread, this idea, this experiment or whatever it is, to gain traction- the LMS review thread was moderately popular, true, but the insane level of attention this thread has gotten is genuinely overwhelming. But even beyond that I never expected the thread to last this long- Oxx assumed the same as me that this would be a thread that would be summarily dismissed by the Doctor Who fans in TVIV, and that we would get probably to, like, somewhere in Series Three at most before we both decided to give it up out of boredom. The irony, of course, is that we both fully expected the other to give up first- speaking from my own personal interactions with him and his stubborn unwillingness to watch television at the best of times, I was steadfast in my belief that at some point Oxx would grow bored with it because of how antithetical the concept of rewatching television is to him. I can't speak for Oxx but he was probably counting on my frustration with Who eventually overwhelming me to the point of quietly asking him to stop, which then meant he would be able to hang it over my head forever. I feel like context is really important in this specific case because of how much I need to stress how utterly unusual this experience has been for me. Watching television is so usually a passive, personal experience- sure, there are rewatch threads here in TVIV, sure there are people who post in say the Breaking Bad or The Wire or, yes, even the Doctor Who threads about their experiences watching that specific show for the first time, but it's not the same as making a thread where you write two thousand-plus word reviews dissecting every element of a single episode of television, and there's a large community that provides context to that episode and their own opinions on it. The specific way in which I've watched this show means that I more than anyone can read an old review, and it's a time capsule- that's how I felt, right or wrong, good or bad, about that episode in unbelievably extreme detail. It's most important here because of how much "The Pandorica Opens" is an episode looking back on the series, looking back on Doctor Who in general and the revival in specific, and deciding to take the overriding themes present throughout and taking them to their natural extremes. It's a triumph. "The Pandorica Opens"...opens with numerous figures throughout history and, specifically, Series Five of Doctor Who- Churchill, Liz 10, River, and Van Gogh -all attempting to transport a painting that Van Gogh made of the TARDIS exploding to The Doctor, to warn him. River eventually gets a hold of it, then travels to the oldest planet in the universe and leaves a message to The Doctor of where and when she can be found, figuring that The Doctor couldn't possibly resist such a tempting offer. The instructions lead The Doctor and Amy to 102 AD, where River is pretending to be Cleopatra, in charge of a Roman legion that's invaded Britain. River delivers the painting to The Doctor, then further explains that this date, time, and location were all written down by Van Gogh onto the side of the exploding TARDIS he painted- with the portentous title of "The Pandorica Opens". The Doctor, Amy, and River soon ride off looking for whatever it is Vincent wanted to warn them about, and end up at Stonehenge, which is in fact the secret hiding place of the titular Pandorica, built to contain "the most feared thing in all of the universe". River eventually uncovers the entrance to the underground chamber where the Pandorica is being kept, and as The Doctor describes its use and function- which Amy adroitly notes sounds almost exactly like the legend of "Pandora's Box", down to the name, which was one of her favorite stories as a kid -of containing some powerful, unbelievable evil. The problem is that something is causing the Pandorica to open, and The Doctor et al only have a couple of hours at most to stop it. If this weren't bad enough, The Doctor comes to the realization that the Pandorica- which as an added security measure was broadcasting the dangers of its imminent opening to every timeline and reality at once (which is how Vincent had the vision that allowed him to paint the TARDIS exploding in the first place) -could attract any number of nasty ne'er-do-wells that mean to steal the Pandorica's power for their own. Indeed, The Doctor runs up to the surface of Stonehenge and sees that every single Doctor Who villain in history- every single one, the Daleks and the Cybermen and the Silurians and the fuckin' Slitheen are probably there too, gently caress those motherfuckers -has surrounded the planet and are about to attack, all at once. River rides off to grab a squad of Roman volunteers willing to help (since her Cleopatra disguise has been uncovered). In the meantime, Amy badgers The Doctor with questions on who the jewelry box he had that she found at the end of "The Lodger" was for, and reveals that she feels some unknown sense of connection to it and the ring inside (illustrating that somehow, some memory of Rory has survived the purge of time). Unfortunately, before Amy can make any breakthroughs, a derelict Cyberman that was abandoned inside of the Pandorica chamber attacks The Doctor and Amy. It manages to shoot a sleeping dart into Amy's neck and is about to kill/Cyberize/whatever her when it's suddenly destroyed- by Rory, now in full Roman gear. The Doctor and Rory's reunion (Amy is unconscious, and also still doesn't remember Rory) is cut short, however, when the Pandorica reaches its final stage and is about to open, coinciding with every single alien fleet deciding to invade the planet all at once. The Doctor, luckily, of course, has a plan- but he needs the TARDIS, so sends River out to go fetch it. In the meantime, to buy some extra time he goes up to the surface and gives one of his patented Eleven speeches, at the time when such a speech is most necessary: "Hello, Stonehenge! Who takes the Pandorica, takes the universe. But bad news, everyone...COS GUESS WHO?! Ha! Listen, you lot, you're all whizzing about, it's really very distracting. Could you all just stay still for a minute? Because I...AM...TALKING! Now the question of the hour is, who's got the Pandorica? Answer- I do. Next question: Who's coming to take it from me? (pauses for a beat) Come on! Look at me, no plan, no backup, no weapons worth a drat. Oh, and something else, I don't have anything. To. Lose. So if you're sitting up there in your silly little spaceship, with all your silly little guns, and you've got any plans on taking the Pandorica tonight, just remember who's standing in your way. Remember every black day I ever stopped you. And then, and then, do the smart thing. Let somebody else try first." Back at the TARDIS, River attempts to pilot it back to The Doctor, but instead the TARDIS dumps her back at Amy's house the night that she leaves with The Doctor- her wedding. At the Pandorica, Rory, in an anguished funk over Amy not knowing who he is at all, is consoled by The Doctor, who gives him his ring back and encourages him to win her back. River decides to investigate the house, and comes to a chilling discovery- everything that's occurring back in 102 AD is a product of Amy's memories- the Roman soldiers are based off books she read, the conceit of the Pandorica being near-identical to Pandora's Box, all of it. Somehow, some way this scenario has been constructed out of Amy's thoughts- a trap, in other words. She warns The Doctor, but it's too late- the Romans reveal themselves to have been Autons implanted with false memories, truly believing they were Romans until such time that they've been activated. The Auton/Romans then restrain The Doctor, as every single Who villain phases in. It turns out that they all agreed to an alliance, as the cracks in the universe are traced back to the TARDIS exploding (as the end of the Silurian two-parter foreshadowed) and since, well, there's only one being in the universe that can pilot the TARDIS, that limits the potential culprit to solely The Doctor. The ironic thing is that the alliance was formed not to destroy The Doctor once and for all, but to stop him- the cracks would destroy and undo all universes, forever, simultaneously, which is the only reason why The Doctor's rogues gallery agreed to work together at all- to prevent Armageddon. The Pandorica was constructed by this alliance to imprison The Doctor himself- to prevent the cracks from ever forming in the first place. The entire scenario was also constructed by them, the Autons made to kill The Doctor's Companion (so she couldn't possibly help him escape), to lure The Doctor to be exactly where they needed him to be and to stall him long enough so they could successfully imprison him. To save the universe. And it works. As "The Pandorica Opens" ends, Rory and Amy, who now remembers who Rory is, are reuniting as the Auton directive to assassinate Amy overwhelms Rory's restraint and he ends up killing her. The Doctor, against his strictest, most desperate protestations, is imprisoned inside the Pandorica. River, trying desperately to land the TARDIS and prevent it from exploding, has her controls overridden as she "lands" inside a wall of bedrock, as the console behind her goes up in flames. Everything is lost and the situation has never been worse for The Doctor and his pals. I could go on about everything that "Pandorica" does right. I could go on about the acting, or the dialog, or the setting- which is uncharacteristically vibrant, the rolling hills in and around Stonehenge give the episode life and a sense of awe-inspiring scale that this episode needed. I could sing praises in the way that Rory is brought back, or how incredible his scenes are, or how heart-breaking and emotional his reunion and eventual murder of Amy is. I could talk for days about how incredible the plotting is on Moffat's part, how it brings together all the disparate elements of the past season into a tidy, logical conclusion. I could ruminate endlessly on how this episode was able to run the gamut from hilarious to depressing and everything in between. I could, but I won't. Because, to me, the greatest triumph of "Pandorica" is the context of what it means as a five-season capper to my experiences with Doctor Who. The greatest accomplish Moffat made was in taking the themes that were always present throughout the entire run of the revival from way back in the Eccleston days and realizing every single moment of this episode to be an expansion and examination of those themes. Doctor Who has always been a show that, despite its universe-spanning conceit and execution, has always had as a base a set number of themes and ideas. The Doctor is, despite who is playing him, largely, overarcingly the same; the differences come from the nuances in portrayals and writing, but broadly speaking The Doctor has always been a character that is more confident in himself than in anyone or anything else. The Doctor has always been vaguely smug, self-satisfied, and steadfastly assured of his morality. He's always been someone who is quick to lecture and prove how much more right and just he is. Moffat and Eleven gets flak for the predilection to have The Doctor have some big, swooping monologue to impress upon the adversary how hosed they are if they mess with him, but that sense of superiority has been present since the beginning- even Nine's Eccleston, who was easily the most self-hating and restrained of the revival Doctors, spent the entirety of "Dalek" smugly shouting about how amazing and clever he is, and how doomed the Dalek is for crossing him. Because that's who The Doctor is, he's a time-travelling demigod with a phonebox spaceship. The theme of the show have always been about The Doctor and his Companions fighting against the tide of fate, often with success; the Companions want a better version of whatever lives they're leaving, The Doctor wants to go around fixing and preventing calamities. All this means is that the villains have all been, almost to a one, bad. The overarcing theme of Doctor Who prevents good, strong, layered villains because The Doctor is always in the right and always all-powerful. Villains exist, on Doctor Who, to lose, and not only to lose but to be crushed, to have The Doctor stress with a smirk on his face how foolish the villains are for even trifling with him. The ones that aren't are good almost entirely due to nostalgia- The Daleks look cartoonishly laughable and their motivations are so singular, samey, and repetitive it allows them zero dimension. Beyond that, The Doctor's rogues gallery is composed of the same sort of cartoonishly evil warmongering villains repeated ad infinitum. The villains can't be strong or interesting on Doctor Who because they can't be relatable, because if they were relatable it would mean they were sympathetic, and if they were sympathetic it would mean that The Doctor could be wrong. And The Doctor can't be wrong, because he's the most brilliant person in all of existence. Trying to make The Doctor wrong is a divide-by-zero error; it's antithetical to what Who is. Oh sure, he can make mistakes, and errors, but he's going to correct them at some point. The Doctor is always going to win. The villains on Doctor Who are never good because at the end of the day The Doctor is the only true villain on the show; he's the only real narrative threat the show has. The most common theme, often implied but never stated on Doctor Who, is that he's the only one who can handicap his own greatness; the monster of the week is cut from the exact same cloth over and over and over and merely exists so The Doctor can be clever at them, can outfool them. His failures come from within and not from without, because on Doctor Who the good guys always win and the bad guys always lose, and he's a good guy. The Goodest Guy. It's part of what made this show so infuriating to watch when I started, because the stories told are so similar with only the details being switched around. The first episode I saw, "Rose", is as extreme an example you can show for this trend; it's an episode about some angry lava plastic that wants to take over all the other plastic on Earth to kill humans because it's evil and bad, and ends with The Doctor smugging it up and winning via his own cleverness. The fact that it had Rose being a stunned moron or plastic Mickey or mannequins with machine guns is almost besides the point, because it's as generic a Doctor Who template as there could be. "Pandorica" takes those omnipresent themes that define Who as a show and takes them to their natural conclusion. It for once posits the idea that the villains aren't the bad guys, that they're desperate and scared of this mythical godlike man who beats them every time and worse, rubs it in their face how stupid they are. What would happen if the idea that The Doctor is his own worst enemy becomes literally true? What if every reasonable sign one could draw is that the universe is being destroyed due to his own ineptitude? What is the villains, for once, don't operate to be generically evil for the sake of the story, but are acting out of their own fearful self-interest? And what if all the times The Doctor smugly proclaims superiority over some species or another finally comes back to bite him, at the worst possible time? This is why "Pandorica" is as incredible as it is, because it's Moffat recognizing the subtext that has permeated the story for five seasons and 71 episodes up until this point and laying out the story to examine them. It's Moffat giving the, on the whole, absolutely loving awful villains that The Doctor has and giving them the respect they deserve. It's Moffat honoring the audience for investing in this show for five-plus years and realizing how so much of the show revolves around the same ideas and deciding to invert them- but not in a way that feels gimmicky, but as a natural extension of the show's themes. And it's Moffat, with the love and care he gives to every aspect of the stories he tells, loving and caring for every character on the show. "Pandorica" resonated so hard with me because it felt like an episode five years in the making. It hit so hard with me, felt so real because I had seen so many aspects of this story before, but it felt appropriate and right and not given narrative short shrift. Rory's struggles with resisting his Auton directive parallels Amy's struggles to remember Rory parallels River's struggles with landing the TARDIS parallels The Doctor's struggles to plead to not be imprisoned in the Pandorica parallels the villains' struggles to capture and imprison him, and the mind-blowing thing is because of the way Moffat told this story, laid out what happened and how, nobody feels in the wrong. They're all acting in their own best interest given what information they have, and are all trying the very best they can to stop the inevitable. To resist fate. And that, that idea- to try no matter how ineffectually to prevent the worst from occurring, is Doctor Who. To me, that's what makes this episode so incredible. It's an episode five years in the making, and is completely, totally, utterly worth the struggles to get there. Grade: A Random Thoughts:
NieR Occomata fucked around with this message at 03:55 on Feb 12, 2015 |
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Feb 12, 2015 03:45
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The only thing you didn't touch on when talking about the things they were doing differently in this episode was using an actual honest to god cliffhanger. Cliffhangers in Who are often as not cheap tricks, and everyone involved knows it. They're situations that arise at the last minute, are solved in ten seconds on the following episode, and are on the level of Adam West Batman in terms of being taken seriously. This one goes way beyond that. Everyone is dead or dying or some horrifying limbo state. Not a single protagonist is in any state to recover. In a sense, the good guys lost... unless you look at it from the other lens, that the Doctor himself is the bad guy. In that lens, it's completely expected that they'd be capital D Doomed.
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Feb 12, 2015 04:00
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Toxxupation posted:And it works. As "The Pandorica Opens" ends, Rory and Amy, who now remembers who Rory is, are reuniting as the Auton directive to assassinate Amy overwhelms Rory's restraint and he ends up killing her. The Doctor, against his strictest, most desperate protestations, is imprisoned inside the Pandorica. River, trying desperately to land the TARDIS and prevent it from exploding, has her controls overridden as she "lands" inside a wall of bedrock, as the console behind her goes up in flames. Everything is lost and the situation has never been worse for The Doctor and his pals. It's funny you go through all this and don't even mention the universe blows up.
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Feb 12, 2015 04:01
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Toxxupation posted:900 years, never seen one yet. But this would do me. I always laugh when the Doctor says something like this. 900 years my rear end.
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Feb 12, 2015 04:09
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Toxxupation posted:I never really expected this thread, this idea, this experiment or whatever it is, to gain traction- the LMS review thread was moderately popular, true, but the insane level of attention this thread has gotten is genuinely overwhelming. The thing is that no one has opinions on Last Man Standing. Every nerd worth his salt has some kind of opinion about Doctor Who. Loved, hated, mocked, worshipped; Doctor Who is a big part of the nerdy zeitgeist and that's going to bring feedback, arguments, and at the very least, attention. Not that I have any real feedback this time since, well, you covered it all... I loved the moment in this episode where they addressed one of my "How is that supposed to be working?" questions with, "Imagine my surprise to know that we've been hosting Cleopatra. Who is in Egypt. And dead." I don't expect Doctor Who to follow history but River pretending to be someone who had been dead for a 150 years to fool people played oddly to me at the beginning of the episode.
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Feb 12, 2015 04:23
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Toxxupation posted:[*] The thumbs-up from Eleven and the horrified response thumbs-up from Amy was the greatest loving thing. 
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Feb 12, 2015 04:25
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Toxxupation posted:
His delivery of this line is utterly astounding, Matt Smith is amazing. And as I said before, I so love that when the Alliance reveals their plans to him, the Doctor's first thought isn't,"So you captured me because you think I'm the monster" it was,"So you captured me because you want my help to fix everything?" - he simply can't conceive of himself as the "bad guy", and that is the reason that they were able to trap him, they relied on the fact that this is the one thing he would never actually consider, that HE is the "nameless, terrible thing, soaked in the blood of a billion galaxies."
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Feb 12, 2015 04:40
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I also really love that line from River: "I hate good wizards in fairy tales, they always turn out to be him." The first time you watch it's a cute joke, the second time it's foreshadowing
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Feb 12, 2015 04:55
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Pointless little production detail that was probably missed: The Cybermen in The Pandorica Opens have the Cybus design and branding, despite being the classic-series Mondasian Cybermen (as evidenced by the fact they have spaceships). They actually wanted a new iteration of the design for the Mondasian Cybermen, which they eventually got, but they didn't have time to even finish preliminary designs by this point, let alone make one. So yeah. Technically speaking, this is the first appearance of the 'Real' Cybermen in the new series.
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Feb 12, 2015 05:02
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Colonel Cool posted:Until this thread I completely forgot that Nestene were even a thing that had happened previously, despite having watched Rose. Since I started with Season 5 and went back and watched everything afterwards I was more "Wow, cool Autons" and then "This is pretty bad." Then again it took a lot of cajoling to get me to watch Season 5 to begin with considering the only episodes I had been forced to see were Love and Monsters and Daleks in Manhattan.
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Feb 12, 2015 05:27
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Mo0 posted:The only thing you didn't touch on when talking about the things they were doing differently in this episode was using an actual honest to god cliffhanger. Cliffhangers in Who are often as not cheap tricks, and everyone involved knows it. They're situations that arise at the last minute, are solved in ten seconds on the following episode, and are on the level of Adam West Batman in terms of being taken seriously. This one goes way beyond that. Everyone is dead or dying or some horrifying limbo state. Not a single protagonist is in any state to recover. In a sense, the good guys lost... unless you look at it from the other lens, that the Doctor himself is the bad guy. In that lens, it's completely expected that they'd be capital D Doomed. Yeah, one of the best parts of this whole episode is the ending, where Matt gives his desperate plea to let him save the universe, River runs into a brick wall, Rory holds Amy's body in his arms, and the camera lifts up into space all as some nice dramatic music plays... and then the stars all go out and the music cuts abruptly. Fade to black, the end. How the hell do you have a part two when part one ended with the universe, well, ending?
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Feb 12, 2015 05:32
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Very carefully!
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Feb 12, 2015 05:49
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Doctor Who "The Pandorica Opens" Series 5, Episode 12 Someone said earlier in this thread that Series 5 is something Moffat had been waiting his whole career to write. It's hard to argue - nearly everything from his pen during these last twelve episode has been remarkably focused and tight, some unfortunate nonsense with the Weeping Angels excepted. I gave Davies endless flak for his seasons, which could, while testing the utmost limits of linguistic charity, be called "improvisational," but odds are good that his sloppiness was in large part due to the rigors of having to script and shoot these episodes on such a punishingly tight schedule. The larger arc of Series 5 has almost none of that strained, ramshackle behavior; it feels like the product of someone who'd been mulling over these events and the minutiae of putting them onscreen for years. Occ and I and a squillion other nerds have pointed out Moffat's obsessive-compulsive need with Chekhov's guns and self-fulfilling time loops, and "The Pandorica Opens" is when we get to see those habits applied to an entire season instead of just one or two episodes, all that clockwork machinery ticking into place, a great big game of Mousetrap that ends with Amy shot dead by her plastic Roman boyfriend and our hero locked in a box while the universe explodes. It's some zany action. A crazy contraption. The first ten minutes or so of this episode is a decent illustration of Moffat's long game, as we basically get an ensemble finale of all the major side-characters who are still alive and their time-hopping machinations to get Vincent's portentous painting in the Doctor's hands. River's the star for this opening, and Occ was all but squealing with glee at her smug spy games. While I sort of raise an eyebrow at how ridiculously lax the security around River's cell is - seriously, a place called Stormcage shouldn't be dispatching newbies to the cell of a time-hopping action-archaeologist whose crimes are as big as her hair - Alex Kingston's effortless competence is still a pleasure to watch, and gives the episode a brisk, light action-movie pace that steadily drains and darkens as the mystery of the Pandorica ensnares the Doctor. River starts off casually breaking out of prison, chatting up Queen Lizzie (and oh dear Lord, those two women should not be in the same room at the same time, their haircuts would go to war), and planting explosives in the drink of a big blue fat man, and ends helpless and screaming as the hijacked TARDIS explodes around her. It's not a happy arc, and the other characters don't fare much better. The control of pacing and tone in "The Pandorica Opens" might be an even bigger achievement than the long-term foreshadowing payoffs, as it perfectly mirrors the central conceit of the episode itself - that the whole Pandorica legend and storyline was a fabrication of the alliance against the Doctor (I like to call them the "Silent Partnership" - eh? eh? no? okay then) to draw him in, let the Pandorica scan his biology, and then lock him in a perfect eternal prison forever. So we get River's little spy-girl sashay, the Doctor encountering a bunch of Romans, a big monologue standoff at Stonehenge, and an actually somewhat tense battle with a wrecked Cyberman - which is yet another mark for Moffat, being the first time in the whole Revival that a Cyberman was even remotely intimidating. But the gloomy lighting in all these close, claustrophobic sets never lightens up, the soundtrack eventually gives way to ominous chimes, mournful violins, and the occasional snarl of dissonant feedback, and by the time the Doctor actually twigs to what's going on, his latest adventure has ended up with everyone dead. "The Pandorica Opens" takes its time in turning the dial, and lures its viewers in with promises of hope and fun just like the Pandorica scenario does for the Doctor. For example, Rory! Remember him? He died. And he's still dead, even though it looks like he's back. Yes, in a hilariously audacious move that I firmly believe was intentional, Moffat took the most memorably retarded bit from the revival's pilot, the unconvincing plastic Mickey clone, and turned it into a heartbreaker that I like to call "Operation Ken Mk. II". After spending every episode since his death hinting at Rory's continued existence and Amy's inability to completely forget him, his comeback - impaling a Cyberman through a door and then awkwardly, politely waiting for Eleven's dumbass genius alien brain to realize what's wrong with this picture - is an absolute delight, one of the best of the season. Occ spent our chatlog half-jokingly yelling that Rory was the cause of the cracks in the universe, because, and I'm quoting here, "HE DIED AND GOT UNDID AND THEN HE GOT BETTER." That Rory was just so amazing that the universe started splintering at the impossibility of him. Even the Doctor uses him as evidence of the possibility of miracles in the universe, and off he goes to have a touching reunion with his fiancee - and then his plastic brain wakes up and he shoots her dead, thereby affirming Moffat's believe that all good love stories end tragically. Hi-five, you horrible Scottish goblin. Of course, the biggest and nastiest comeuppance is saved for the Doctor himself. Occ noted, and accurately so, that the Doctor's morality is often shown to be unwavering and sacrosanct, and this was especially true in Davies' seasons; we only got brief glimpses of the Doctor's capability to gently caress up in one-offs like "The Family of Blood," and it wasn't until "The Waters of Mars" that Davies himself finally nutted up and admitted that the borderline-godlike time alien may do some lovely things now and again. Moffat, on the other hand, has such a fetish for pissing on the Doctor that it would make R. Kelly raise an eyebrow - oh, Eleven's still wonderful and benevolent and saves the day with a frequency most people reserve for going to the toilet, but he also routinely makes mistakes, big ones, both to the ones close to him and to entire species that get set on fire for crossing his path. And in a hilariously ironic twist, his freewheeling lifestyle prevents him from ever escaping the consequences of his actions. That's what sucks about being a coward and a time traveler - you always wind up running to what you're running from. The anti-Doctor alliance is absolutely convinced that the Doctor is responsible for the universe going bang because he's spent his entire life, and their entire lives (sometimes several times over, in the poor Daleks' case) terrorizing and annihilating them in his TARDIS, which is responsible for the explosion. The TARDIS is inseparable from the Doctor in their minds; they never even consider the possibility that someone else can pilot it, because the only people who know how are Time Lords, which aren't around any more, because the Doctor did what the Doctor often does and killed them all. The Doctor winds up trapped and undone by his own legend, within a legend of his enemies' devising, and it's River Song - an inconsequential bit player in the Doctor's centuries-long life - who ducks under everyone's radar and winds up inadvertently giving the TARDIS the juice it needs to flip out and explode. The Doctor's anguish as he pleads to be released from the Pandorica isn't just because he's about to be shut in a far more boring box for the rest of eternity as the universe is exploded out of reality, but because he's aware that he's in a prison of his own design, that there is no way in hell any of his pleas will be heard because his entire life is an argument against them. That's the large scale, but the Doctor's comeuppance comes from smaller places, too. As the alliance said, the whole plot was engineered from a bunch of disjointed memories of things Amy liked - a big stupid Roman-space-prison-Stonehenge plot cobbled together from storybooks and photographs, one that the Doctor probably could never resist and Amy definitely couldn't. The books used for the Romans and the Pandorica were children's storybooks, as we see when River's flipping through them, which makes the whole Pandorica plot one long warped children's fable, albeit with an unexpected walk-on in the form of Rory. In other words, after all the damage the Doctor has done to her mind, this is little Amelia finally taking her revenge - he jetted out of her life and turned into both a story and a severe psychological hangup, and in return, he's imprisoned within stories out of Amelia Pond's head. The Doctor had his chance to undo the damage he'd caused, and not only did he fail to take it, he screwed up even worse while keeping the secret behind the cracks to himself until the very last moment. So the man he'd killed is recreated fantastic in plastic and shoots his Companion dead, he's left alone, with no one to speak on his behalf, impotent, screaming, and out of second chances as silence falls. God, I love a well-told disaster. The way that the themes and devices Moffat has set up throughout Series 5 lock together in "The Pandorica Opens" is plenty impressive, but the production value of this episode's nothing to sneeze at, either - there's a huge variety of lively sets only briefly glimpsed during River's tour around the galaxy, and while the sets in Britain are small, dark, and sparsely populated, director Toby Haynes is able to affect a huge sense of scale with a few well-placed CGI wide shots and some great lighting. The crew was only able to shoot at Stonehenge itself for a couple of hours (I'm guessing that the initial visit in the episode was on-site, going by the moss on the rocks), which let us get a good look at the stones before being distracted by more bombastic events in subsequent visits. The Doctor's big-stadium howling to the gathered starships is fantastically lit, and the alien ensemble around the Pandorica in the end was actually the most aliens we've seen onscreen at once - apparently, all the best-quality props were fished out of the bins for one last farewell tour of the older aliens, though thank Christ we didn't see any Slitheen. River creeping through Amy's abandoned house is marvelously spooky just with the addition of blue-black night lighting and that creepy, chiming soundtrack. "The Pandorica Opens" is, all things considered, a very intimate story despite its huge consequences, and that intimacy is played to the hilt while giving us a few well-needed glimpses at the fact that, yes, the entire universe is aligned against the Doctor this time, and it was all for nothing. So, everyone's dead. Dead like Rory, who's still dead. Even the background music has gone silent. We don't have any TARDIS console switches to flip and make everything better, because the TARDIS is now exploded. It's quite a ball of string Moffat's placed in front of us, so how's he going to unwind it? He might be the biggest Time rear end in a top hat this side of Homestuck's creator, but this finale was clearly a labor of love and years in the making, and as he pulls out whatever stops he has left to see us to a happy ending, hopefully we'll have as much fun watching it as he did writing it. If nothing else, we can look forward to Occ attempting to summarize the plot of this thing. Whatever happens, it's sure to get complicated. Oxxidation fucked around with this message at 06:06 on Feb 12, 2015 |
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Feb 12, 2015 06:02
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Mo0 posted:The only thing you didn't touch on when talking about the things they were doing differently in this episode was using an actual honest to god cliffhanger. Cliffhangers in Who are often as not cheap tricks, and everyone involved knows it. They're situations that arise at the last minute, are solved in ten seconds on the following episode, and are on the level of Adam West Batman in terms of being taken seriously. This one goes way beyond that. Everyone is dead or dying or some horrifying limbo state. Not a single protagonist is in any state to recover. In a sense, the good guys lost... unless you look at it from the other lens, that the Doctor himself is the bad guy. In that lens, it's completely expected that they'd be capital D Doomed. One of my favourite cliffhangers is at the end of The Empty Child, where all of the gas mask zombies are converging on the heroes...and the Doctor tells them to GO. TO. THEIR. ROOM. It's the kind of thing that seems impossible to pick before it happens, seems obvious afterwards, and works within the very specific context and rules the story has set up. The best cliffhanger is, of course, the one in Dragonfire.
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Feb 12, 2015 06:02
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| # ? May 15, 2024 09:58 |
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AndwhatIseeisme posted:
"And that's how the universe ended in a parallel reality 99.999% the same as our own. ... Meanwhile, in our reality: farting aliens!"
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Feb 12, 2015 06:16
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