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So have you seen End of Time yet Toxx?
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Nov 28, 2014 00:40
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PriorMarcus posted:It's not a first draft, Davis had to remove a scene where the Master picks up a gay guy, takes him into a public toilet, and kills him. So it's at least a second draft. See this is the thing with RTD, right here, the man sometimes slides into sheer offensiveness, not because of any genuine malice on his part but because of genuine obliviousness.
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Nov 28, 2014 00:44
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Lipset and Rock On posted:See this is the thing with RTD, right here, the man sometimes slides into sheer offensiveness, not because of any genuine malice on his part but because of genuine obliviousness. I don't think it's offensive, it just has no place in a family show.
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Nov 28, 2014 00:47
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PriorMarcus posted:It's not a first draft, Davis had to remove a scene where the Master picks up a gay guy, takes him into a public toilet, and kills him. So it's at least a second draft. hahaha this isnt a joke?
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Nov 28, 2014 00:48
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Big Rusty posted:"What if instead of eating him out John Simm just ate him?"
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Nov 28, 2014 00:52
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Lets focus on the real questions. Did the pavement slab girl become part of the Master Race or was she left alone in an even more torturous existence?
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Nov 28, 2014 00:58
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Please God tell me that is not a real quote.
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Nov 28, 2014 00:58
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egon_beeblebrox posted:Please God tell me that is not a real quote. It's not.
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Nov 28, 2014 00:59
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PriorMarcus posted:It's not a first draft, Davis had to remove a scene where the Master picks up a gay guy, takes him into a public toilet, and kills him. So it's at least a second draft. This wasn't something he seriously considered or scripted: 'So, I think the Master should disguise himself. He could dye his hair blond. In a public toilet. He's scrubbing away at the sink. That puts in mind an Ortonesque, post-watershed scene where the Master is dying his hair like a rent boy, and a smart businessman comes in cruising, and the Master takes him into a cubicle, and murders him. Maybe after sex. That won't happen, for obvious reasons, but I thought of it anyway. Why do I think of things that will never happen?' (from a bit in Writer's Tale where he's just throwing out ideas into his email correspondence)
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Nov 28, 2014 01:13
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That sounds like he liked the idea, and was sad that he wouldn't ever be able to actually include it
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Nov 28, 2014 01:27
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Hewlett posted:Not to mention....so, do they think Obama's gonna end THEIR recession? Why's everyone so personally excited about it? What do you mean, "some financial scheme"? Yes, the U.S. and UK economies are completely separate and events in one could not possibly affect the other.
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Nov 28, 2014 01:47
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You could probably speculate that, since the events of Last of the Time Lords, in which (as far as the rest of the world knows) the U.K. Prime Minister went completely insane and murdered the U.S. President (Elect) while the entire world was watching, there might even be a reason why the U.S. might have more authority than usual over the inner workings of the U.K. Though I think the better solution is to write it off as more 'subtle' satire from the mind that brought us "Massive Weapons of Destruction", roll your eyes a bit, and move on.
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Nov 28, 2014 02:04
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I'm a bit worried about how long this review is taking, I think the end of the RTD era has finally broken him. Don't stop now, you're so close to the first Moffat series.
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Nov 28, 2014 02:11
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Senor Tron posted:I'm a bit worried about how long this review is taking, I think the end of the RTD era has finally broken him. It's Thanksgiving, most people in the US have families to quietly resent around this time.
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Nov 28, 2014 02:12
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Oxxidation posted:It's Thanksgiving, most people in the US have families to quietly resent around this time. The MST3K marathon on Youtube today has taken up all my time. Way better usage than dealing with the family.
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Nov 28, 2014 02:16
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Oxxidation posted:It's Thanksgiving, most people in the US have families to quietly resent around this time. Poor bastards, that's what Christmas is for.
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Nov 28, 2014 02:33
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Senor Tron posted:I'm a bit worried about how long this review is taking, I think the end of the RTD era has finally broken him.
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Nov 28, 2014 03:38
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g0del posted:Isn't he taking a break until next year before he starts the Moffat run? He has to take a month off to think about what he's done.
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Nov 28, 2014 15:42
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g0del posted:Isn't he taking a break until next year before he starts the Moffat run? I'm more worried about him burning his computer to remove all evidence of Who ever having touched it after this two-parter.
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Nov 28, 2014 16:13
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Senor Tron posted:I'm more worried about him burning his computer to remove all evidence of Who ever having touched it after this two-parter. I don't think this episode is bad, per se, just incredibly over the top and campy. In other words, why wouldn't Toxx like it? Okay, he won't know who the gently caress Timothy Dalton is playing.
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Nov 28, 2014 17:27
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Jurgan posted:I don't think this episode is bad, per se, just incredibly over the top and campy. In other words, why wouldn't Toxx like it? Okay, he won't know who the gently caress Timothy Dalton is playing. Yeah, I really kind of like this two-parter, even though it's pretty bad. It's kind of lovably bad in how silly it is, and Wilf is always great. Also, Timothy Dalton can be terrible anywhere he wants, I will still watch him.
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Nov 28, 2014 18:29
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Jurgan posted:I don't think this episode is bad, per se, just incredibly over the top and campy. In other words, why wouldn't Toxx like it? Okay, he won't know who the gently caress Timothy Dalton is playing. I thought Toxx had watched both parts, but rereading it seems like he might not have yet, so that can wait until after he has.
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Nov 28, 2014 18:48
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The second part is actually pretty good except for one scene.
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Nov 28, 2014 22:16
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He hasn't watched part 2 yet. Therefore, do not talk about part 2.
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Nov 28, 2014 22:23
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Doctor Who "The End of Time, Part One" Series 4, Episode 17 "It is said that in the final days of planet Earth, everyone had bad dreams." This is the first line of "The End of Time, Part One". This is how RTD decides to introduce us, his audience, to the final two-parter of his run, his very, very last grasp at a legacy. That line. That ridiculous, insane, stupid line, with its horrid overdelivery by narrator Timothy Dalton. The first line of an episode of Doctor Who isn't usually a general indicator of quality, but in this specific case "It is said that in the final days of planet Earth, everyone had bad dreams." operates as one huge warning sign, an urgent message to stop watching this episode on account of being almost criminally retarded. Because that's what we have here, a criminally retarded episode of television that is, perhaps, just the absolute worst way for RTD to close out his run on Who. It's stupid, incoherent, poorly acted nonsense that fails to please in, really, any way whatsoever. This is RTD's works. This is his legacy. Come with me, friends, as we examine the nuclear explosion that is this two-parter in greater detail. It won't be fun, I can assure you, but it will be enlightening. "End of Time Part One" opens to The Doctor disembarking on the Ood planet, having been warned by Ood Sigma at the end of "Waters of Mars" that he needs to contact them immediately. The Doctor meets the Elder of the Ood, who inform him that the Ood, as well, are having bad dreams. The Ood warn him that The Master is reviving himself- as the events at the very end of "Last of the Time Lords" foreshadowed -and that The Master's actions could lead to the titular End of Time itself. So, The Doctor rushes back to the TARDIS, desperately trying to get back to Earth to prevent The Master from reviving himself, but he's too late -an, I guess, cult that The Master-as-Saxon founded before his death is able to break Lucy Saxon, The Master's former wife who killed him, out of jail and use her as an unwilling catalyst to revive The Master. Lucy, however, has planned for this eventuality and throws an anti-potion (yeah) that disrupts The Master's regeneration cycle, but also kills herself and everyone else in the building...outside of The Master. The Doctor quickly, urgently arrives on Earth, intent on stopping The Master. What follows is a series of incredibly distracting and flat-out unnecessary scenes that are clear padding until the halfway point of the episode, wherein The Doctor and The Master finally face off in what looks to be an abandoned train yard. Their confrontation is cut short, however, when The Master is kidnapped by a squad of goons working for Joshua Naismith (David Harewood). Joshua wants to make an eternal-life machine (in a conceptually interesting twist, not for himself but for his daughter, Abigail (Tracy Ifeachor)) and needs The Master's help to complete it, which The Master enthusiastically agrees to. The Doctor then continues hunting for The Master, Wilf now in tow, and are finally able to track The Master down- but not before he puts his Patented Evil Plan into motion, involving recalibrating the eternal-life machine to broadcast The Master's genes as the genetic signature, all around the world, turning the entire human race except Donna (with her being half Time Lord and all) and Wilf (because he stood in a literal magic plastic box that made him immune) into Master clones. It's like the plot of "The Doctor Dances", but stupid as poo poo. There's so many problems with this episode I don't really know where to start. "End of Time, Part One" is an episode written with far, far too much excess included within it. The plot summary I've detailed above is accurate, and yet it only details roughly half of the events within the hour-long episode- it's just a bloated pile of garbage. For instance, there's a whole subplot all about how "President Obama is gonna fix the economy" (I guess, since this aired in December 2009 and was written roughly a year beforehand, it was topical when written) that doesn't seem to have any real purpose throughout this episode. The President Obama subplot is so detailed that Doctor Who literally casts a (really terrible and fake looking) Obama stand-in for this episode, so detailed is this utterly pointless substory within the episode- Obama gets Masterified, same as everyone else, so it's all the more confusing why so much time is spent on it. And that's not even the worst example, there's so many sideplots and extra scenes in "End of Time, Part One" that one wonders if RTD wrote this script in the middle of a schizophrenic episode. Wilf randomly decides to organize a party of old people to track The Doctor down, which seemingly only exists for an extremely awkward payoff involving an old woman grabbing David Tennant's rear end. Joshua Naismith's meta-narrative throughout the episode, the one that solely consists of having David Harewood staring at screens while rubbing his chin, wastes Harewood in a completely dead-end story that reveals no more information beyond how cartoonishly evil Joshua and his daughter are in the obvious, utterly inept way RTD so favors utilizing. On board Josh's secret base, there's two minor scientists characters who are inexplicably cactus-aliens in disguise who serve literally absolutely no purpose whatsoever within the episode, so unnecessary that I didn't even bother noting their character or actor names. And yet we are subjected to their own little five-minute arc in the tail end of this hourlong televised dreck, mostly consisting of their bad acting or worse comedy bits. Why are the cactus people here. What purpose do they serve. Can I shove this screwdriver into my eyeball far enough to make the bad parts stop happening. There's other problems with this episode; this episode uses a bunch of easy narrative, well, cheats to progress its story that create logical plot holes all over the place. One example of many is how The Doctor decides to hide the TARDIS away from The Master, so inexplicably decides to invisibility cloak the TARDIS using an ability that's never been brought up before or since. So, wait, the TARDIS could go invisible this entire time? Why has The Doctor never used this function before? How many times has the narrative thrust of an episode revolved around the TARDIS being stolen, lost, or otherwise inaccessible to The Doctor? It's just this weird, random, completely unnecessary narrative failure that exposes the episode's logical inconsistencies all the clearer. "End of Time, Part One"'s largest failure is in its supporting cast. John Simm as The Master, yet again, is just a failure- he's, well, he's just not a very good actor. His ham shtick was already worn out by the end of his second episode, and in "End of Time" he's outright intolerable. It certainly doesn't help that RTD decided to make The Master all the more ludicrous and exaggerated- the effects of Lucy's anti-potion turn him into an electricity-shooting skeleton man who's ALWAYS HONGRY -but even besides that Simm just never, ever throttles that poo poo back. As a result he's an absolute chore to watch onscreen, constantly cavorting and chewing all available scenery and just being a pill. To be fair, John Simm as aforementioned has always been an incredibly convincing physical actor, and the scenes of him eating food- in which he rips into said food, tearing it apart and stuffing his mouth like a savage -convey The Master's newfound feralness very well. Simm's scenes of him eating- which the episode, in recognition of the quality of his physical acting, focuses on and frequently repeats throughout the run of "End of Time" -aren't exactly pleasant to watch, but they're not intended to be and on an objective level I was impressed by the pure craft I was watching onscreen. Even if simultaneously I was utterly repulsed by those scenes. Really though, I started off not much liking John Simm and his ridiculous, overmuch camp, and by the end- watching Simm maniacally laugh (oh by the way, his maniacal laugh isn't the least bit threatening, just annoying) as I watched greenscreened clones of John Simm in various costumes, including Simm-as-Obama -I was just tired of The Master and his really stupid, idiotic scheme. I can't really stop thinking that literally the entire reason that RTD plotted out this episode was so he could give Simm the "Master Race" pun, which I simultaneously find really really tasteless- the entire episode was leading to a lovely Nazi joke? Really, Davies? -and really really stupid. Having Simm turn terrible when he was already shaky in his second-ever appearance isn't a surprise, but the fact that Bernard Cribbins-as-Wilf is almost as irritating in "End of Time, Part One" is genuinely shocking. Although, honestly, I should've seen it coming; Wilf works best as a grounding force for Donna, and in all of his previous appearances he's only appeared in scenes that she's in. With Donna unable to interact with The Doctor, explicitly, as the result of the events of "Journey's End", Wilf is forced to hang around with The Doctor as his temporary Companion all episode, and his weaknesses become completely evident. He's a one-note, rather flat, explicitly unskilled character; he spends the entirety of "End of Time, Part One" stumbling ineptly around because he's too old and forgetful to do anything of any real value. Oxx and I referred to Wilf as "Old Man Yells at Cloud" in his first appearance, and "End of Time, Part One" made me realize that Wilf is essentially the Abe Simpson of Doctor Who. I don't like Abe Simpson-centric episodes of The Simpsons, and I don't like Wilf in this episode, and it's for pretty much the same reason- both characters are explicitly written as comedic relief that help balance a main character, but once they're thrust into the spotlight both characters just play all their tics over and over and just stumble around aimlessly until someone else does everything for them, making them useless to their episodes' progressions. This episode is bad, but what makes it worse is in its plot progression- or, rather, its complete lack of plot progression. At points, it doesn't even feel like an episode, just a collection of disparate scenes. Characters literally teleport from point to point, and the fact that the episode over-relies on Timothy Dalton's utterly wretched narration to keep the episode flowing, sort of, feels like the whole episode was ADR'd in post because RTD realized how The Doctor just loving disappeared from inside a cafe to somehow reappear instantly in front of electro-Master in the very next scene. It makes a tedious, poorly acted, poorly written episode all the more intolerable due to its dearth of any sense of a narrative throughline- as I mentioned before, The Doctor appears on Earth hunting for The Master at minute 12, but the episode spends 20 minutes bullshitting around before having The Doctor and Master meet up. So why is this episode a D if I hated so much of it? Two reasons: Simm's physical acting (and nothing else) deserves specific praise, but more importantly there's a scene roughly halfway through the episode with The Doctor and Wilf in a cafe that is genuinely fantastic. The Doctor is forced to confess his secret fears about death- in a scene that feels uniquely Tenth Doctor-y, Ten has always come off as more self-centered and afraid of death than Nine ever was -and it's an utterly fantastic scene, that really illustrates Tennant's dramatic range. Watching Tennant burst into tears as he recounts his desperate need to be around other people, and his soul-crushing sorrow over having lost Donna, is an incredibly powerful moment in an episode otherwise bereft of them. But in being so good, the cafe scene underlines how bad "End of Time", overall, is. It's the emotional climax of the episode, barely a half hour into it, and literally everything else about this episode is grating at best and downright mind-numbing at worst. The cafe scene is also emblematic of the schizophrenic plotting of the episode- it's completely disconnected from the rest of it, progression-wise, and as a result although the scene is fantastic it's also utterly pointless. But that's "The End of Time, Part One" writ large- utterly pointless. It deigns to end with John Simm clones laughing annoyingly, in an overlong montage, as Timothy Dalton- who turns out to be a Time Lord, oh wowzers, plots the "END OF TIME". loving gag me. Thank god RTD's run is almost over, because I don't know if I can handle even one more hour of this bullshit. Grade: D Random Thoughts:
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Nov 29, 2014 00:13
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Doctor Who "The End of Time, Part 1" Series 4, Episode 17 Tick, tock, goes the clock. We raise Eleven's pennant. Tick, tock, goes the clock For Ten and David Tennant. Tick, tock, goes the clock Your what-ifs and your maybes. Tick, tock, goes the clock For musty "Rusty" Davies. So here we are, four months, four seasons and probably around 140,000 words later, at the end of Rusty's run. When I first hatched my diabolical scheme to march Occupation down the sole-lacerating roads of Who until Stockholm Syndrome set in, I didn't really know or care how far we'd get, but still, what a milestone, huh? I feel like the monstrous waste of time and effort that is this thread has brought us all a little closer together, which, as those of you who get to listen to your racist relatives every Thanksgiving know, is not a wholly positive thing, but since you're still reading and I'm still writing, we'd might as well keep going until our center ceases to hold. I don't know enough about television or the whole "showrunner" concept to speak from experience, but to me it's always felt like Doctor Who was divided into epochs marked off by three separate criteria - the Companions, the Doctors, and the showrunners. The Companions are the most minor of the three (especially in the old serials, where they came and went with a lot more frequency and sometimes didn't even last a whole episode), but their status as the most consistently available side-characters in the show means that they still lend a distinct flavor depending on who's currently occupying the role: the blundering Series 1 Rose was a little different from the more competent Series 2 Rose; Martha's presence either buoyed episodes with her no-nonsense practicality or dragged them down with Davies' consistent reminders that she wasn't Rose and this, for some reason, was terrible; Donna made our world amazing every time she appeared onscreen. Obviously a new Doctor changes things up much more drastically, as we could tell during Occ's jubilation over "The Christmas Invasion." Eccleston's hefty acting chops and bittersweet moments of drama were wonderful to watch but often acted in opposition against the showrunner's tone elsewhere, so Nine felt like a refugee from a totally different series sometimes and made Series 1's faults that much more apparent even as he uplifted every line that came out of his amazing Northerner mouth. Tennant, with his pop-eyed spazoid cavorting through every scene, was a much better match for Davies, even if his overall acting skills arguably weren't as strong as his predecessor's. But the most drastic change is a change in showrunner. Doctor Who is still Doctor Who, regardless of who's running it - there's always a blue box, there's always a Companion and a Time Lord, there's always a lighthouse in a terrible overrated video game run by a hacky cash-hemorrhaging drama queen wait no wrong title - but each showrunner brings their own tone, method, motifs, cosmology, and philosophy to the series, which is a hell of a lot more comprehensive than just having a new shouty Englishman as the head alien character. New Companions and new Doctors change up the residents of the house of Who, but new showrunners change the whole architecture. With that in mind, I'd say that "The End of Time" is, in most ways, an appropriate way to cap off Russell T. Davies' time as Doctor Who's leading light. That's not entirely backhanded, either; for all his faults, I still have to acknowledge that this plus-sized doofus is the man who inflicted Doctor Who on the new generation, and the show repaid him by nearly grinding him to a paste with work and setbacks in his final stretch. The man was often so aimless and attention-deficit that it's sometimes hard to tell if he had a method to his directing, but if he did, "The End of Time" would be a fair encapsulation of it, good and bad. Mostly bad. This two-parter has one thing that kneecapped it right out of the gate, and it's called "Journey's End." Davies summoned up his entire personal portion of the Doctor Who universe for the end of Series 4, and on top of completely failing to exploit any of those returning characters or devices, he also blew his load when it came time for this, his true and final finale. This means he had to create a whole menagerie of new faces and plot devices for "The End of Time," and almost none of them work. I heard it passed around that this script was either a first draft or something very close to it, and while I originally thought that this was laziness on Davies' part, I'm not so sure anymore given what I know about the extended car accident that was the Year of Specials' filming schedule. Still, the slipshod nature of the script definitely shows, as Occ has attested. I managed to completely forget about the Obama part until after reading Occ's writeup, it was so extraneous, and I watched this thing two days ago. Also? That political subtext tastes really drat sour five years later, doesn't it? Christmas miracle in-loving-deed, the less I think about that optimistic time the better. This is one of those episodes that I can barely discuss, because there's scarcely any coherent throughline for scenes, characters, or plot developments. It's all just stuff happening with no buildup or explanation, here it comes, there it goes, say your lines, mug the camera, next scene, next scene, next scene. It almost feels desperate how many hasty plot devices are thrown in just to get us to something resembling a finale: the Master's asinine, impromptu cult; the mysterious "Church Woman" giving us our requisite cryptic foreshadowing; the evil billionaire du jour; the totally-not-a-nanogene medical machine; the cactus-aliens; the Master. Especially the Master, whose failed regeneration (and, presumably, the berserk Time Lord metabolic reaction that resulted) has turned him into a cross between a Hunter from Left 4 Dead, a Sith Lord, Skeletor, and a Hungry Hungry Hippo. John Simm's "crazy man" performance here is exceptionally weak, partly because of the lines he's given (though god drat, I will admit they made me hungry), muttering syllables like "hot" and "juicy" and "greasy" into the camera with a lot of sudden cuts to throw off the tempo of his lines. The man just doesn't bring a lot of intensity to the screen in the way Jacobi or even Tennant can, and the way his head randomly changes to a poorly-rendered CGI skull doesn't help matters. And his evil laugh is awful, a watery, gurgling chuckle that goes on for way too long. My laugh sounds like a manic-depressive pixie getting its enchanted balls cut off and I could probably do better. The tone, too, is all over the place. The Master manages to eat a food-truck server so daintily that her skeleton is still standing upright and then gobbles up two homeless people (also, where the hell were they? A landfill or something? What's a food truck and only two homeless guys doing in a landfill?), which is presumably meant to be threatening. We then get an unexciting chase scene, followed by a painful comedy bit with the "Silver Cloak" oh my God what a stupid idea that was, followed by a slow, soulful moment between the Doctor and Wilfred Mott, the latter of whom is pretty much the only person left in Ten's life that he hasn't either driven off or locked himself away from. Wilf has always been one of the less-developed recurring characters in Davies' series and he doesn't work very well taking center-stage the way he does for the pre-diner scenes; he was at his best among his family, urging on Donna's dreams of a better life while counteracting the venom of his horrible daughter-in-law. Now than Donna's been brain-wiped and Sylvia is at least making an effort to keep her personality in check, Wilf becomes the sole thread connecting the Doctor to all the people he's left behind, and when he's allowed to actually act instead of blunder around a bunch of senior citizens in a stupid reindeer hat, Bernard Cribbins does an excellent job at playing the role. The conversation between Wilf and Ten at the diner is the best scene in the episode and one more example of Davies' infuriating tendency to blindside viewers with competent, emotionally effecting moments in the midst of utterly disastrous scripts. Ten is coming apart at the seams after "The Waters of Mars," and Wilf is doing his best to comfort the man even though he knows he's nowhere near up to the task. Wilf is old, bumbling, and not terribly bright, but he's the only person that Ten has left. Ten's voice cracking as he tries to recount what happened with Adelaide, Wilf's attempt to comfort him, and Ten shrugging the whole thing off with a bitterly ironic "Merry Christmas" is a touching, subtle, realistic exchange, and stands out among all the noise, chaos, and lack of Donna felt throughout the rest of the episode. "Look at us," Ten mutters after he gets ahold of himself in the diner, and it's true, both he and the Master have fallen far. Ten's a dead man walking even without the "four knocks" prophecy, too miserable to travel alone and too self-absorbed to risk losing someone else, killing time with a washed-up grandpa on Christmas Day. The Master is a deranged electric murder-hobo with badly dyed hair (John Simm had to dye it for a different role, but I guess now it's Time Lord canon that a botched re-regeneration makes you look like a beach bum). And Davies, too, feels like he's barely holding on, throwing every bullshit piece of technobabble, irritating side-character, and half-baked nostalgia trip (yup, the Time Lords are the villains now, and they're kind of assholes apparently! Also, those headdresses make it impossible to take them seriously! Hooray!) he can conceive at the screen just to get to the credits. For a man who's spent four seasons and sixty episodes penning or editing crazy, silly, ramshackle scripts of such wildly varying quality you'd think he was actually ten different guys sharing a Welshman-skin suit, "The End of Time" is an almost tragically appropriate finish, with every one of Davies' quirks and shortcomings writ large - even the way it ends with about forty chroma-keyed clones of John Simm (give the man credit, putting on that many different outfits shows dedication, even the ones that don't involve a skirt) badly dancing across an apartment complex. This is Davies, for better and for worse, and given how I feel about the man's output you can bet I wasn't thrilled with this two-parter. But we're coming up to the end of an era - something that, as the caramel-voiced Ood elder said, has already happened and is happening now - and that deserves a little gravitas no matter how sloppy the script might be. The clock's striking eleven; please look forward to my rear end in a top hat friend and I writing a lot of words about it. Oxxidation fucked around with this message at 16:22 on Nov 29, 2014 |
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Nov 29, 2014 00:15
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Oxxidation posted:there's always a blue box, there's always a Companion and a Time Lord, there's always a lighthouse in a terrible overrated video game run by a hacky cash-hemorrhaging drama queen wait no wrong title I would totally watch/play this crossover.
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Nov 29, 2014 00:32
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oh god this is 72 minutes long wish me luck, everyone
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Nov 29, 2014 00:50
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Toxxupation posted:oh god this is 72 minutes long A clever play on the concept of the death of time.
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Nov 29, 2014 01:03
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Toxxupation posted:oh god this is 72 minutes long Just do it so you can then subject us to the desert of no new reviews for a month.
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Nov 29, 2014 01:05
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I was on-and-off with the 10th Doctor episodes (mostly due to being busy whenever it was airing, and never getting round to catching up with anything I missed) - The End of Time Part 1 is one of the ones I missed, until watching it to catch up with the reviews. Even by my extremely low standards of expectation for Doctor Who, I'm amazed at how shockingly lovely it's put together. Also massive kudos to the pair of you for making it this far. Toxxupation posted:oh god this is 72 minutes long Don't worry, it feels longer than 72 minutes 
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Nov 29, 2014 01:05
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I think you guys should review The Curse of Fatal Death before going on review hiatus... it was Moffat's first episode of Doctor Who, after all! And it will be a good palate cleanser thexerox123 fucked around with this message at 01:17 on Nov 29, 2014 |
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Nov 29, 2014 01:06
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Toxxupation posted:oh god this is 72 minutes long I literally cannot wait to see your reaction to this episode. Truly you are a hero, sir.
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Nov 29, 2014 01:10
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Toxxupation posted:oh god this is 72 minutes long In solidarity I will also rewatch this episode for the first time ever. I am just going outside and may be some time.
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Nov 29, 2014 01:12
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Prison Warden posted:In solidarity I will also rewatch this episode for the first time ever. Feels... different this time... ...Adric?
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Nov 29, 2014 01:15
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Yeah, End of Time Part One is astonishingly bad. It somehow manages to feel both lazily drafted AND overwritten which I didn't think was possible. The cafe scene you both mention seems to be the one part of the episode that most people seem to point to as the episode's only real saving grace, but even then its tone is so different from everything else in the episode that it feels like it belongs to a different (and far better) episode. As noted, part of the problem is that RTD already blew his load on the "big celebration of my era of the show" with Journey's End, and while it would have cost us Waters of Mars I really do find myself wishing that Tennant really had regenerated in (or at the end of) that story and we'd moved on into the Moffat era from that point. The Year of Specials was mostly a waste of time, and while there were good elements throughout and some interesting things to say... it all feels so excess to requirements. The sad thing is you can see the potential for something good (or at least interesting) in there if RTD had just taken the time (or had the time) to refine and rework his script. The Cult of Saxon is appallingly handled but an entire episode about a group of brainwashed/manipulated members of British society (Aristocrats, High Ranking Civil Servants, THE NAISMITHS!) could have been interesting. Believing that Harold Saxon was legitimately some kind of messiah who had gifted them magical powers, seeing them play around with bizarre technology they didn't truly understand and discovering too late that he was basically using their lifeforce (or even being willing sacrifices) to restore his own could have had legs. Instead there is this muddled, rushed and confusing sequence where you honestly can't tell if they're literally using magic potions to raise him from the dead and then they're all gone and what the hell just happened THAT is how they bring him back? The Classic series standby of just bringing him back and not explaining why works better than that! There is some fun to be had in the Naismiths' ill-defined characters and "nefarious" schemes being utterly upended by the Master just strolling in and co-opting everything and taking over the entire episode, but it makes the Naismiths themselves utterly irrelevant, which is why I think they would have worked better as Cult members or just been removed entirely. The closing reveal of,"THE TIME LORDS SHALL RETURN!" was a pretty cool OH poo poo moment but it also comes completely out of nowhere, and the infrequent narration by Timothy Dalton just makes no goddamn sense. I mean, this is a BAD episode. I always try to look to the positives and think people tend to use hyperbole about BEST EVER or WORST EVER but I can't think of any way that this episode could be considered anything other than bad. Bad for an episode of Doctor Who. Bad for an episode of television. Bad as an example of writing. Bad editing. The direction is... indifferent I guess. This is just a bad episode.
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Nov 29, 2014 01:24
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thexerox123 posted:And it will be a good palate cleanser The palate cleanser is the Year of Specials wrap party video imo.
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Nov 29, 2014 01:27
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howe_sam posted:The palate cleanser is the Year of Specials wrap party video imo. Is that the one with The Proclaimers? If so, then I agree wholeheartedly.
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Nov 29, 2014 02:31
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howe_sam posted:The palate cleanser is the Year of Specials wrap party video imo. It's the Ballad of Russell and Julie, surely.
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Nov 29, 2014 02:50
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Toxxupation posted:Can I shove this screwdriver into my eyeball far enough to make the bad parts stop happening. I've seen John Simm in other roles -- "The Devil's Whore" is the one I remember best -- and in general he's more of an underactor than an overactor. RTD often gets hammy performances from competent actors, so I think that must be what he asks for. Certainly Tennant gets worse and worse and worse during his run of Who. quote:Thank god RTD's run is almost over, because I don't know if I can handle even one more hour of this bullshit. e: Godspeed, Toxx. Arsenic Lupin fucked around with this message at 03:01 on Nov 29, 2014 |
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Nov 29, 2014 02:54
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