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Face the Raven The multiple angles on the death scene were stupid. There, the only valid criticism of this episode. A 2house2fly Alkarl Angela Christine BSam cargohills DoctorWhat Howe_sam Jet Jaguar jng2058 Mind the Walrus mycelia NeuroticLich Organza Quiz Paul.Power Weird Sandwich B Ajax 99 And More AndwhatIseeisme blasmeister Enourmo C Lottery of Babylon onetruepurple Red Metal Regy Rusty ThNextGreenLantern Xenoborg D Nada F Nope Overall Average Guess: 3.4 Standard Deviation: 0.8 Current rankings: And More: 7 Red Metal: 8 Weird Sandwich: 8 blasmeister: 9 Jet Jaguar: 9 jng2058: 9 onetruepurple: 9 Ajax 99: 10 AndwhatIseeisme: 10 Howe_sam: 10 Regy Rusty: 10 Alkarl: 11 mycelia: 11 Xenoborg: 11 Organza Quiz: 12 ThNextGreenLantern: 12 2house2fly: 13 DoctorWhat: 13 Enourmo: 13 Lottery of Babylon: 13 Paul.Power: 14 cargohills: 15 Mind the Walrus: 15 NeuroticLich: 16 Angela Christine: 19 BSam: 23 OK, And More takes the solo lead! It's not by much, though, so we could well see a reversal across the next three episodes. What will happen?  EDIT: I'd used last time's scoresheet by mistake. OOPS. idonotlikepeas fucked around with this message at 03:56 on Mar 14, 2016 |
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Mar 14, 2016 03:44
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DoctorWhat posted:
Hey I spotted the guy who didn't watch the Americans season 3, Fargo season 2, the leftovers season 2, the jinx, the final season of mad men...
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Mar 14, 2016 03:59
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I've never heard of any of those so they can't possibly be good. Oh, wait I've heard of Mad Men and I know it's not good.
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Mar 14, 2016 04:02
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Or Better Call Saul. I still think Face The Raven is bad, but it's nowhere near the other lows of this season. Hell Bent is great and I like it quite a bit, but it's gotten a bit overrated around here. It's not the best episode of Who, it's not even the best episode of the revival, but it's definitely Capaldi's best episode.
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Mar 14, 2016 04:03
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Toxxupation posted:Hey I spotted the guy who didn't watch the Americans season 3, Fargo season 2, the leftovers season 2, the jinx, the final season of mad men... Hey I spotted the guy who didn't watch Better Call Saul Edit 
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Mar 14, 2016 04:04
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Dabir posted:I've never heard of any of those so they can't possibly be good. The leftovers has Nine as a reverend with a comatose wife and he's the like fifth or sixth best thing about the show
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Mar 14, 2016 04:11
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Dabir posted:I've never heard of any of those so they can't possibly be good. fuckin' doctor who fans i swear to god
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Mar 14, 2016 07:21
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I've heard of Doctor Who and I know that's not good either
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Mar 14, 2016 07:44
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Escobarbarian posted:fuckin' doctor who fans i swear to god Best Ep was when doctor who had to battle against hypnodisk and razer.
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Mar 14, 2016 07:44
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The multiple angles on the Raven death scene made me laugh out loud by the third or fourth one. A crowd from Monty Python shouting, "Get on with it!" would not have been too far out of character for it because of them wanting to make it all big and final and important. THIS IS CLARA YOU SHOULD FEEL BAD NOW.
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Mar 14, 2016 08:17
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BSam posted:Best Ep was when doctor who had to battle against hypnodisk and razer. i really used a bad example because i actually like robot wars. btw its hypnodisc with a c
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Mar 14, 2016 08:37
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Escobarbarian posted:i really used a bad example because i actually like robot wars. btw its hypnodisc with a c I know right. At least it wasn't Mortis. He cost a lot.
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Mar 14, 2016 08:50
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Toxxupation posted:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaven_Sent_%28Doctor_Who%29 (The word 'BIRD' is written in the soil. It fills you with determination.)
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Mar 14, 2016 09:41
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BSam posted:I know right. At least it wasn't Mortis. He cost a lot. Was Mortis the one made by Cambridge students who left in a huff basically the very second they were knocked out?
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Mar 14, 2016 09:51
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Fil5000 posted:Was Mortis the one made by Cambridge students who left in a huff basically the very second they were knocked out? Allegedly.
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Mar 14, 2016 09:53
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Fil5000 posted:Was Mortis the one made by Cambridge students who left in a huff basically the very second they were knocked out? There was a whole host of drama around Mortis, eg. the time it got immobilised by spikes that they had allegedly been told wouldn't be there, so they let them have another go but the guy who drove it normally refused to do it again, so they did poo poo and then the house robots helped them finish the challenge so they didn't get knocked out. The whole thing was a complete mess according to Rex Garrod, basically no safety standards resulting in multiple people being sent to hospital (as well as Clarkson nearly being killed in series 1, of course) quote:When we studied the recording in slow motion, we found that the blade, rotating at a more than 6000 rpm, had missed the Clarkson scalp by less than two inches.
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Mar 14, 2016 12:18
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MrL_JaKiri posted:There was a whole host of drama around Mortis, eg. the time it got immobilised by spikes that they had allegedly been told wouldn't be there, so they let them have another go but the guy who drove it normally refused to do it again, so they did poo poo and then the house robots helped them finish the challenge so they didn't get knocked out. I assume that's why it's Dara now. Easier to see his scalp to get an accurate measurement.
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Mar 14, 2016 15:00
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MrL_JaKiri posted:There was a whole host of drama around Mortis, eg. the time it got immobilised by spikes that they had allegedly been told wouldn't be there, so they let them have another go but the guy who drove it normally refused to do it again, so they did poo poo and then the house robots helped them finish the challenge so they didn't get knocked out.  What could've been...
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Mar 14, 2016 15:23
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And More posted:Why do you insist on planting mines all over your reviews, Occ? But yeah, in hindsight there are a lot of bad ones in series 9.
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Mar 16, 2016 12:53
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Paul.Power posted:Under The Lake/Before The Flood were pretty decent. A bit by-the-numbers, but they had some decent character work. the full2parter idea didnt pan out well in the end
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Mar 17, 2016 00:02
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Paul.Power posted:Under The Lake/Before The Flood were pretty decent. A bit by-the-numbers, but they had some decent character work. That two parter and the opening one kinda determine how people feel about the series. Most everyone likes Heaven Sent, thinks Hell Bent is kind of messy at best, largely positive towards Face the Raven, and middling to poor for Sleep No More, Woman Who Lived*, and the Zygon two-parter. (* I liked Girl who Died personally but a lot of people felt it was too wacky)
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Mar 17, 2016 00:06
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Wrong thread? I'm fairly sure that's an upcoming episode.
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Mar 17, 2016 00:15
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Eh, Occ will either be watching that episode within days anyway or he will do the sensible thing and accept Heaven Sent as the show's finale and draw a big line under this whole thing.
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Mar 17, 2016 00:49
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Doctor Who "Heaven Sent" Series 9, Episode 11 Edited By: Oxxidation More than anything else, "Heaven Sent" reinforces how terrible of an episode "The Snowmen" was. Companion departures are not an uncommon occurrence for Doctor Who. Companion deaths are significantly rarer, considering we've only had three so far. Regardless of how they leave the story, though, the Doctor needs to process the loss. Especially when the Companion leaves violently, and not on their own terms, like with Amy, Rory, and Clara. No one's prepared for death - not even the Doctor, though he should really know better by now - and so when a Companion leaves his company by dying, he needs a little more time to work through the inevitable reaction. Grief, in other words. Doctor Who has to address The Doctor's grief, and the sooner the better. The inevitable post-Companion grieving process differs depending on the situation, but it's always a tricky moment in the series, because grief is a powerful, resonant emotion. It's on a different level than ordinary sadness or depression. Depicting it requires consideration and understanding. It's a very difficult thing to fake. And it's why "The Snowmen" is garbage. There's a bunch of other reasons that "Snowmen" sucks, like how it has the tone of a bad Tim Burton flick, or has embarrassing and laughable antagonists, or that Clara Oswin Oswald is a garbage character assigned to perform a single task and then die. But, more than anything, it's a misguided episode. It's an hour that doesn't, and doesn't try, to understand what grief is. It thinks it knows what grief is, but that is not what grief is. Amy Pond and Rory Williams were two of the most, if not the two most, important characters in Eleven's life. The way he internalizes their absence is by glaring at the camera as he adopts the personality of a child who's just been told he can't see the R-rated movie. Eleven doesn't come across as grief-stricken, he comes across as temperamental and crabby, which ends up dishonoring Amy and Rory's memories. The funny thing about grief is that it's personal to the point of selfishness. It's not like grieving our dead changes anything. I mean, they're dead. It's not like feeling horrible over someone else being dead brings them back, it's not like they end up judging you for it. No,what grief does is it allows the ones who are grieving to place value on the departed's life by, paradoxically, realizing how important the dead person was to them. We view others through the prism of ourselves, and the strange irony of grief is that it allows one to be selfless by being selfish. This person was there for us, and now they're not, and what we grieve is not necessarily their death, but their absence. People grieve when they break up, for instance. It's the same emotion, just made more or less important based on scope. The magnitude of loss. This is, essentially, why "The Snowmen" is so bad. The hour never focuses on Eleven processing Amy and Rory's death, because the story simply has no space for it. Instead, the script diverts us with wacky shenanigans with the Paternoster gang, or figuring out what's going on with The Snowmen, or Clara Oswin Oswald's awful gimmicks. Eleven is too rushed to ever have time to commiserate on the loss of his two best friends, instead making do with vague shots of him looking mildly irritated or throwing temper tantrums. The scale of the episode is too large to allow him to properly grieve; Eleven can't, for instance, sit in the corner and have a good cry about the death of the Ponds, because the world is literally at stake. In contrast, "Heaven Sent" is an episode that, from beginning to end, is about The Doctor dealing with and processing his grief. The restriction of the scope to a one-man show doesn't just create a fantastic acting showcase for Peter Capaldi. It also means that "Heaven" can confront The Doctor with his feelings for Clara, repeatedly and without compromise. The world isn't at stake, there's no weird comic relief characters. There's no random atonal bits like, say, an idiotic scene of a woman walking on a staircase leading up to a cloud as overly twee music plays. No. "Heaven Sent" wants Twelve to really think about Clara, and what she meant to him, and so it imprisons him in a glorified puzzle box with zero distractions. Well, there's also the Veil, to be fair. But even then, the Veil is both a voiceless antagonist that is singularly focused on murdering The Doctor and "Heaven"'s most blatant grief analogy. The Doctor is being chased by a personification of his greatest fear (which happens to be a dead person), one that follows him relentlessly and can't be stopped, trapped, tricked, or reasoned with. It only gives Twelve a moment's relief when he's with honest with it and, more importantly, himself. Although it's stereotypical, one could easily see Twelve's confessions to the Veil as "Acceptance", the final and most important stage of the five stages of grief. He's internalized and understood a greater truth, and each time he does so he progresses a bit further in the maze. The most important thing to note about grief is, again, its highly personal nature. It's a process that comes from within, not without. Other people can't do your grieving for you, it's a process that can take months or even years to go through, and some people never overcome it at all. But the point is, there are no shortcuts, and each person's grieving process is highly individualized. I spoke in "The Snowmen" review how creating Clara Oswin Oswald was an illegitimate way to resolve Eleven's feelings about the end of "Angels Take Manhattan". I specifically mentioned how COO came off as explicitly a "Doctor Fixer" and nothing else, someone who was brought into the narrative to make Matt Smith make a smiley face instead of a frowney face. Then, and most insultingly, when her usefulness to narrative was done, she was killed off. I was and am still right about how awful the COO conceit was; looking back at "Snowmen" from a writer's perspective those criticisms still hold true. Moffat cut the legs out from under Coleman by never giving her her own agency within "Snowmen", writing her not as a person but as a character. Such artificial writing exposed the whole hour for the falsity that it was, giving the whole program a manufactured air. You are not watching people live and grow and change in their own internal universe, you are watching characters on a television screen perform acts for your amusement. You are not immersed in fiction, you are watching a TV show. But, even more importantly, COO ends up being a disservice to both The Eleventh Doctor and the Ponds. I vaguely mentioned this in "The Snowmen" writeup, but let me clarify. Grief is the way we pay tribute to our fallen. It's a form of respect that humans pay to the people who have left us. By creating Clara Oswin Oswald, by injecting her into the story to make Eleven feel better, Moffat bypassed all of Eleven's grief. Eleven never honors Amy and Rory, never processes their deaths, because a nineteenth century Jenna Coleman does it for him. It disrespects Rory and Amy's memories and relevance as characters because it outright states that they're not worthy of the grieving process. That a magical maid can scrub away all the dark feelings over losing them. If I were to be honest, this is probably why I hate "The Snowmen" so much. Oxxidation despises "Journey's End" because RTD disrespects his best Companion by creating a Doctor clone for his pet Companion. I despise "The Snowmen" because Moffat disrespects his best Companions by creating a Companion clone for his pet Doctor. But that's only half of it. "The Snowmen" disrespects The Doctor, as well. Grief does not work the way that it's portrayed in that episode. Again, its resolution has to come from within, not without. By allowing Eleven to be "fixed" by Clara Oswin Oswald, it lowers who The Doctor is as a person. It implies that his character is shallower than stated, because his emotions are so easily fixable. Characters need conflict and nuance to be interesting, and not allowing the audience to experience Eleven's grief over the death of the Ponds robs him of both. It reduces his agency by implying that parts of it simply don't exist. Unlike "Heaven Sent". There's nobody around to "fix" Twelve, so he ends up having to do all of it himself. With no distractions, both the Doctor and Clara (as a figure of importance to his life, not as a character) are given center focus. As a result, the audience is able to experience every painful step of Twelve's grieving process, and by the end of "Heaven" it's plausible that he came out the other end having gone through catharsis. It was earned, in a way that "The Snowmen" was not. Eleven's catharsis feels authored, mostly because it is. Confronting his demons, over having his demons resolved for him, makes for a better and more interesting character resolution for Twelve. "Heaven Sent" also takes its time. The grieving process is a lengthy one, which presents a neat conundrum when dealing with a time traveler like Twelve. Time as a length, as a fixture to imply significance to a narrative, is almost impossible to do with the Doctor. Grieving for years is an unimaginably short period for him. Grieving "to the end of your life" has no practical meaning to a man who can regenerate endlessly. For the process to have weight, it needs to be for an incomprehensibly long time. As the wall that most obviously represents the layers of sorrow and anger he feels, Twelve needs to punch his way through it, taking billion of years and millions of lives to do so. It's the only way that gives Clara's death any importance. I think, on the whole, I consider Clara one of the weaker Companions of the revival - her first half-season was a disaster, she only had one season to really shine (and even Series Eight was filled with absolute stinkers for her character like "In the Forest of the Night" and "Kill the Moon"), and here in Series Nine she felt barely extant before "Face the Raven". With "Heaven Sent", though, I'm willing to give her the respect that her character deserves, solely because of how strong of a eulogy she gets here. If there's a better compliment to give this episode than that, I haven't seen it. Grade: A Random Thoughts:
NieR Occomata fucked around with this message at 01:42 on Mar 17, 2016 |
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Mar 17, 2016 01:11
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hey just so you all knowToxxupation posted:Oxxidation despises "Journey's End" because RTD disrespects his best Companion by creating a Doctor clone for his pet Companion. I despise "The Snowmen" because Moffat disrespects his best Companions by creating a Companion clone for his pet Doctor. these are the two best sentences i will ever write. i have hit my peak. nowhere to go but down from here
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Mar 17, 2016 01:14
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I think "hell of a bird" might be Moffat's best line but that might just be because it comes at such a moment of catharsis. I'm going to watch Heaven Sent again tonight. Edit: the Doctor's freak out in the mindTardis is a wonderful scene as well, I don't think any revival Doctor could do a line like "can't I just lose?" as well as Capaldi. And it makes me blub when he says he can remember it all every time, with the bit that really makes it unbearable being "and you'll still be gone" 2house2fly fucked around with this message at 01:27 on Mar 17, 2016 |
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Mar 17, 2016 01:24
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Yeah this episode hits some nice emotional notes with me. I also loved the almost Silent Hill/Survival Horror atmosphere it has going on at times, and getting to see into the Doctor's thought processes was pretty great too. I just love this episode.
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Mar 17, 2016 01:31
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This episode deserved a way better review than this which is basically just a second review of The Snowmen.
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Mar 17, 2016 01:44
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Heaven Sent This is the episode that I felt finally used Peter Capaldi to his full potential. Whatever complaint anyone makes about this one (and there are few enough that could be made), nobody will ever say it didn't have enough Capaldi. A 2house2fly Ajax 99 Alkarl And More AndwhatIseeisme Angela Christine blasmeister BSam cargohills DoctorWhat Howe_sam Jet Jaguar jng2058 Lottery of Babylon Mind the Walrus mycelia NeuroticLich onetruepurple Organza Quiz Paul.Power Red Metal Xenoborg B Enourmo Regy Rusty ThNextGreenLantern Weird Sandwich I'm not even listing the rest of the grades, you all know nobody voted below a B, come the gently caress on. Overall Average Guess: 3.9 Standard Deviation: 0.4 Current rankings: And More: 7 Red Metal: 8 blasmeister: 9 Jet Jaguar: 9 jng2058: 9 onetruepurple: 9 Weird Sandwich: 9 Ajax 99: 10 AndwhatIseeisme: 10 Howe_sam: 10 Alkarl: 11 mycelia: 11 Regy Rusty: 11 Xenoborg: 11 Organza Quiz: 12 2house2fly: 13 DoctorWhat: 13 Lottery of Babylon: 13 ThNextGreenLantern: 13 Enourmo: 14 Paul.Power: 14 cargohills: 15 Mind the Walrus: 15 NeuroticLich: 16 Angela Christine: 19 BSam: 23 And More, still in the lead! Not much time left now, but I suppose we shouldn't have expected opinions on this one to differ much. The last two offer more fertile ground for disagreement.
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Mar 17, 2016 01:47
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Hahah even BSam couldn't stay with the gimmick for this one
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Mar 17, 2016 01:55
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_Bent_%28Doctor_Who%29 In which a story ends.
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Mar 17, 2016 03:30
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This episode is a loving mess but I really love the ending so I can live with it. Plus I appreciate them doing something different to the usual finale formula.
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Mar 17, 2016 03:37
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really did not think Id have to read 3 pages about the snowmen to get the heaven sent review Still a good review tho
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Mar 17, 2016 03:38
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Escobarbarian posted:Hahah even BSam couldn't stay with the gimmick for this one Wrong. I've been consistent. It's an episode of Doctor Who. It gets an A. 
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Mar 17, 2016 04:55
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The hybrid stuff was garbage and the Gallifrey scenes were a disappointing mess but the final characterization of Clara and The Doctor as adventure junkies who were addicted to each other finally shed light on what Moffat had been (mostly unsuccessfully) attempting to do with Clara for the last two seasons. It's too bad that we didn't see more explicit examples of how unhealthy their relationship was becoming, because that would have been a much more interesting story for Clara this season than what we got.
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Mar 17, 2016 05:18
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Clara Was no Donna But then who is
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Mar 17, 2016 05:21
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Lol, shut up about the snowmen and do some editing of your overwritten review. 75% of it is just you repeating yourself with slight variations
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Mar 17, 2016 08:12
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But Rocks Hurt Head posted:The hybrid stuff was garbage and the Gallifrey scenes were a disappointing mess but the final characterization of Clara and The Doctor as adventure junkies who were addicted to each other finally shed light on what Moffat had been (mostly unsuccessfully) attempting to do with Clara for the last two seasons. It's too bad that we didn't see more explicit examples of how unhealthy their relationship was becoming, because that would have been a much more interesting story for Clara this season than what we got. Yeah it throws a lot into context, especially series 9. Unfortunately that doesn't fix all the problems episodes had getting there, but it at least ties some things together better in retrospect and makes rewatching them feel a bit different. But enough about the season - the montage of the Doctor telling the story while breaking down the wall is one of the most amazing things the show has ever done. "That's one hell of a bird" is an absolutely stunning moment. Edit: Probably goes without saying, but Toxx please make sure you watch the Christmas Special too (and don't look up the name or anything about it till after you've seen Hell Bent) Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 08:25 on Mar 17, 2016 |
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Mar 17, 2016 08:23
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I feel sad to be so outwardly disappointed with an Occ review but gently caress the episode was so good I really want to see a review that talks about the actual episode and why the actual episode itself works
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Mar 17, 2016 08:52
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I really liked Clara's death, but I liked this other way for her to go out of the series a lot as well. Then again a lot of it is just that I really like Clara and the last three episodes were the most she had to do in the entire series so far. Even while she was dead for one of them. I did like the difference between the Doctor's headspace Clara in Heaven Sent being what spurred him to keep being defiant for two billion years, and then the real Clara's reaction of "holy poo poo Doctor what in the gently caress is wrong with you?".
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Mar 17, 2016 13:16
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