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I hated this episode, just hated it. I found the patriotic overtones and the lionizing of Churchill to be so embarrassing they made me cringe. Having said that I liked Spitfires in space. Gravity wells whatever. Wheeee! Pew pew pew!
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Jan 11, 2015 00:56
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HopperUK posted:I hated this episode, just hated it. I found the patriotic overtones and the lionizing of Churchill to be so embarrassing they made me cringe. Having said that I liked Spitfires in space. Gravity wells whatever. Wheeee! Pew pew pew! Surely they were as much a part of that bullshit as everything else. They certainly made me bite my fist in vicarious embarrassment. Actually, personal embarrassment as well, because I was watching it. Luckily no-one else was in the room at the time.
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Jan 11, 2015 01:06
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HopperUK posted:I found the patriotic overtones and the lionizing of Churchill to be so embarrassing they made me cringe. This episode is really a love letter to old world war two set movies like A Matter of Life and Death, with the posh accented pilots* and the patriotism and all that. But yeah all the Churchill stuff does sit a bit uneasily with me. However I love Daleks and I love spitfires in space so overall I like this episode. *Movies gave us this stereotype, when in reality most WWII RAF pilots were working class.
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Jan 11, 2015 01:13
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Using a random number generator is stupid as gently caress. You should have written each grade on a slip of paper, flipped 'em, mixed 'em, and concentrated all your thoughts and feelings to flow through your index your finger until the psychic energy guides your true selection out from your subconscious.
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Jan 11, 2015 01:18
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adhuin posted:But he was awesome in this episode. Winston Churchill was a horrible person by the standards of the time for a whole lot of reasons.
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Jan 11, 2015 01:42
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Doctor Who "Victory of the Daleks" Series 5, Episode 3 Yes, it's another middle-of-the-road adventure into the past with Mark Gatiss. Please try to contain your excitement (odds are you won't have to try very hard). "Victory of the Daleks" is one of Gatiss' weakest outings as far as I'm concerned, and while it still wouldn't come within a mile of my bottom ten - give Gatiss one thing, his work usually won't blow your mind but it'll never turn your stomach - it's left in that uncomfortable, tapioca-flavored zone that houses episodes like "The Idiot's Lantern" or "The Poison Sky." Episodes where I have to spend a bit thinking of what I'm even going to say, especially when Occupation's already taken up most of my oxygen. Occ already made it clear that this was the first episode filmed of the series, so what we're seeing here are the show's three major stars (the Doctor, Amy, and Amy's lower half courtesy of Doctor Who's spectacularly unsubtle costuming department) interacting onscreen for the very first time. It's a credit to Smith and Gillan that they pick up well enough so that you'd barely notice the early rockiness unless you knew about it beforehand - the worst that can be said about this warm-up performance is that it's oddly bloodless, as though the two of them are addressing each other as props instead of actors. Compared to their interactions in "The Eleventh Hour," with Amy's barely-contained fury and the Doctor's half-playful half-apologetic responses, the performances in "Victory of the Daleks" are pretty tepid, with the Doctor reserving all his Emotions for the Daleks themselves and Amy mostly just sauntering about Winston Churchill's bunker while all its residents quietly wonder where her pants went. Smith, also, does have a distinctly Ten-ish feel to him as Occ noted, though that's excusable because a) the Doctor is never having a good day when the Daleks are around, and b) Smith does apoplectic rage a lot better than Tennant does, mainly because you're not expecting it as much. When the Doctor's frustration with the Daleks innocent-squaddie act boils over and he starts whaling on them with a wrench, his sudden screaming at the confused tin can is the only thing that keeps the scene from turning ridiculous. And then it turns ridiculous anyway when he practically drop-kicks the thing across the room, but hey, it was a nice moment while it lasted. The side performances are a mixed bag. You have the other soldiers, who are mostly set dressing. Bill Paterson's turn as secret-cyborg-super-scientist Edwin Bracewell is about as remarkable as a rice cake and his Scottish accent is much too weak to make up for his muttery pop-eyed performance. Then you have Ian McNeice, who turns in a loving uncanny performance as Churchill. McNeice himself appears to be about 80% jowl, and while I could just watch the hypnotic movement of his lower chins for ages, he still puts across an excellent, if most likely sanitized, portrayal of everyone's favorite/least favorite fat bastard. Churchill was an exceptional wartime politician for much the same reasons as being an exceptionally bad peacetime one, and the way McNeice's character plays himself off as a jolly old wag who thinks of absolutely everything in terms of "how well does it murder Nazis," up to and including the Doctor's own tech, reflects that impression well. The British patriotism dripping off the Doctor and Churchill's interactions is off-putting at times, and presumably the only reason Churchill didn't try to invade Amy's personal space was because everything around them was exploding, but really, the presence of Nazis makes most forms of historical sanitizing at least partly excusable. On one hand, yes, Winston Churchill was a bloated old boor who had his brief moment in the sun during WWII and spent the rest of his career tripping from one awful policy and societal opinion to another. On the other hand...Nazis. That aside, I don't much like the sets or the setting of this episode. As Occ mentioned, I found the war rooms way too drat cramped for any interesting camera work - most of the scenes in Churchill's bunker consist of people very pro-actively walking and talking at the same time - and most of the episode is just spent with people standing or walking in some tiny rooms, whether it's the bunker or the Daleks' spaceship. The actual war is a glorified green-screen, glimpsed at for only a few seconds. Maybe it's because we already had two episodes set during the Blitz, and they did a hell of a lot more to create atmosphere than this one, but there was very little to grab my attention during this episode's run. That includes the transcendentally silly space-Spitfires scene and just tedious love-bomb-defusal bit; I admired the former for its sheer audacity, but the latter dragged on for-e-ver and Paterson's acting was really not up to the task. If you're going to defuse a bomb with emotions, then you'd got to actually emote! Oh, right, this episode's got Daleks in it. What about them, then. I thought the Daleks' master plan was quite clever, given the intelligence they had on hand and the fact that their nemesis was a time-traveler - they just had to pick a suitably high-profile location and then play innocent until the Doctor showed up and flipped his poo poo at them. The way they threw that "I AM YOUR SOL-DIER" refrain into the Doctor's face at every opportunity, playing off his now-established anti-soldier sentiment as a way to twist the knife even further, was a level of subtlety that the screamy little squids haven't shown thus far, and they delivered more than a few golden lines on top of that ("WOULD YOU CARE FOR SOME TEEEEEAAAA" there I quoted it you can put down those guns now). The way they used their ship's limited power to just light up London and give the Germans a wide choice of bullseyes rather than bomb the place themselves was likewise an uncharacteristically deft piece of critical thinking. The show talks up the Daleks as a race of evil geniuses, but in the revival thus far they still prefer raw force and attrition rather than actual strategy; bereft of their usual advantages, they need to use lateral tactics to get the Doctor into their net and then keep him at bay long enough for the New Dalek Paradigm to am-scray. Ohh, yes, the New Daleks. There have been a lot of jokes made about the Dalek redesign, and honestly, I'm sick of them and the people making them. The commentary on the new Daleks is tired, facile, and counter-productive; it shows far more laziness on the part of the wisecrackers than on those who did the redesign in the first place. I prefer actual, reasonable analysis to begin with, and given how played-out this piece of humor is already, you can at least expect that I'll be tackling my viewpoints on the new Daleks as seriously as MAST-O-DOOOOON! PTER-O-DAC-TYYYYL! TRI-CER-O-TOOOOOOOOOPS! SA-BER-TOOTH TI-GERRRRRRR! TY-RANN-O-SAUR-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA The Exterminatin' Dalek Rangers are by far the most memorable bit of this episode, and given that they have never made an appearance past this series (as I already told Occ), they're probably one most viewers would rather forget. I initially thought this technicolor nightmare was the product of a toy deal gone wrong, but the BBC keeps the liches in marketing away from the actual creatives, so that theory was out. Moffat wanted to re-design the Daleks for a while, and probably got help from Gatiss, so we can thank/blame them for the new look. Moffat's main reason was understandable - the old Daleks were built to be eye-height with Rose, who's dwarfed by Smith and Gillan, so he wanted to remake them taller. The colors are probably a callback to an older Dalek model that really was a bit more colorful than the drab browns, blacks, and greens of the revival. Everything else is at once inexplicable and terrifying. The height thing I get, but the new Daleks' proportions are a goddamn mess. Their bottom halves are too wide and their eyestalks way too short, making them look like the Dalek equivalent of your average Wal-Mart shopper; you'd expect a single tuba to play every time they skate across the floor. The colors, callback or not, really don't suit the brutalist, militaristic Dalek "culture" in my mind, and that goes double for the half-assed hierarchy they mentioned (Drone, Eternal, Supreme, So-so, and the Ugly One). The Daleks' homogeneity and NO CON-CEPT OF EL-E-GAAAAANCE was part of their perverse charm, testament to the fact that they were a singularly murderous mono-culture that just bulldozed everything in their way, and this new look and Digimon-esque ranking system flies in the face of that. There's probably a way to remake the Daleks so that they're not quite so tiny and significantly less ridiculous, but fellas, this just ain't it. Even if you think the plunger-arm and eggbeater-laser and long-rear end cumbersome eyestalk are sacrosanct (and really, I have trouble imagining them any other way), painting the pepperpots primary colors and making them gain about two hundred pounds does nothing for their look. But eventually the Daleks gently caress off, their scientist-bomb is defused with love, and Churchill waddles away to no doubt make all his female subordinates wish for a bucket of cold water. The crack is there too, ominous as always. "Victory of the Daleks" ultimately felt like a whole lot of nothing with only one or two deeply regrettable somethings breaking up the monotony, and while I wouldn't be too cross if I saw the laser-Spitfires screwing about, I can go a long, long time without the new Daleks. Oxxidation fucked around with this message at 05:55 on Jan 11, 2015 |
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Jan 11, 2015 01:46
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Remember when Tennant first appeared, and in season two he had all these scripts that felt like old Eccleston scripts? It wasn't until after the alternative universe Cybermen were done and Mickey left that the Tenth Doctor had his own character. This episode also feels like some old episode Gatiss had hanging around during the Eccleston era, tossed aside due to a lack of a budget under RTD. The premise largely falls under The Doctor's disgust of Daleks existing in the universe in any capacity, flipping out at them, and being completely pissed with himself that he still hasn't put them all away yet. That is very similar to Eccleston, more than Tenant who was often watching Daleks create new hybrid species with amused bewilderment before his goofy happy face turned into an angry scowling face and he destroys all but one of them which escapes into the next episode. It's also got a really silly End Of The World device that seems to raise stakes for no particularly great reason, which also makes it feel like RTD leftovers. It's a real Ninth kind of moment that The Doctor refuses to even entertain the idea that Daleks might turn the tide of World War II. It is always cited by critics or especially critical fans as one of those easy plotholes: "well if this guy could change the past, why doesn't he go head off our greatest catastrophies?" Here he has the chance to, but can't because his vendetta against the Daleks get in the way. The Daleks only real workable ultimatum is to promise to kaboom humanity with them, so driven is The Doctor to eradicate their entire species. "You would make a good Dalek." Craptacular! fucked around with this message at 01:50 on Jan 11, 2015 |
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Jan 11, 2015 01:48
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The inspiration for the new style daleks was the daleks from the 1960s spin-off movie with Peter Cushing as the Doctor- But yes as you say the colours aren't the problem with the redesign, it's the weird proportions.
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Jan 11, 2015 01:53
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Gee, I'm so glad I started participating in the contest the season you literally started picking the ratings at random.
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Jan 11, 2015 01:56
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Barry Foster posted:Surely they were as much a part of that bullshit as everything else. They certainly made me bite my fist in vicarious embarrassment. Oh they were, yeah, I just really loving love Spitfires.
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Jan 11, 2015 02:02
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thrawn527 posted:Gee, I'm so glad I started participating in the contest the season you literally started picking the ratings at random. Oh, suck it up, his reasoning for that stunt was perfectly sound and he's not going to do it again (seriously, I'm not going to let him do it again).
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Jan 11, 2015 02:03
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thrawn527 posted:Gee, I'm so glad I started participating in the contest the season you literally started picking the ratings at random. its alright. i'll refund your entry fee
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Jan 11, 2015 02:12
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Oxxidation posted:The height thing I get, but the new Daleks' proportions are a goddamn mess. Their bottom halves are too wide and their eyestalks way too short Hmm, I wonder if this was intended to make them less uncomfortable for the actors inside? Taller, more spread at the base means less hunching over or banging your knees as you move.
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Jan 11, 2015 02:34
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Toxxupation posted:I don't usually write reviews like this, and I'd like how people think it works in comparison to my "normal" reviews
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Jan 11, 2015 03:18
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thrawn527 posted:Gee, I'm so glad I started participating in the contest the season you literally started picking the ratings at random. I can't believe people are actually pissed off about this. Pfft
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Jan 11, 2015 04:20
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Toxxupation posted:every time a crack has shown up at the end of episodes this season I roll my eyes because it always comes across as kinda hokey Every time? You mean... once before this episode?
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Jan 11, 2015 04:35
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MikeJF posted:Every time? You mean... once before this episode?
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Jan 11, 2015 05:24
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howe_sam posted:You see the crack at the end of both of the first two episodes. Once on the monitor in the Tardis, and once on the side of Starship UK. I don't think the monitor counts since its just an image that he was scanning
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Jan 11, 2015 06:28
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Pretty much everything in this episode is incredibly dumb, but I did like the fact that the Daleks wanted the new Daleks to destroy them because they'd become impure, because that's very Dalek. The fact that they need the Doctor to call them Daleks to access their technology is really dumb though. But at least it's not as dumb as defusing a bomb with the power of love. That may be the stupidest thing that's ever happened on Doctor Who. I haven't seen every episode, but it would take something pretty astounding to top that. And how does the phone on the TARDIS work? What made Churchill's call go through at that moment instead of literally any other time? When did the Doctor even give Churchill his phone number? Has he given it to anyone else? Why hasn't anyone else ever called him? I know the phone call was technically in the previous episode, but it's clearly part of this story. You can tell by how incredibly dumb it is.
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Jan 11, 2015 07:00
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Dammit, I thought the planes in space would win you over with how dumb it is.
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Jan 11, 2015 07:07
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Couldn't remember much of this episode outside of the first 10 minutes + the dalek redesign, so I hedged with a C, cant be too unhappy with the result. The episode feels realy slow on a rewatch - the reveal happens about 10 minutes in, and then there's a pile of random exposition about paradigms and the dull scientist guy gets way too much screentime and still doesn't earn the bomb plot's resolution. At least the contractually obligated Dalek appearence for the season is satisfied. Definitely an episode I've been hoping we can just get out of the way so we can get through to the meat of the season.
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Jan 11, 2015 07:18
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GonSmithe posted:Dammit, I thought the planes in space would win you over with how dumb it is. Not an emptyquote
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Jan 11, 2015 08:26
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Occ, I would say, though, that you could've easily left out telling us that you picked it at random and we probably wouldn't have been able to tell. A D is a completely justified grade for an episode that's that wildly confusing to figure out.
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Jan 11, 2015 08:38
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Tiggum posted:And how does the phone on the TARDIS work? What made Churchill's call go through at that moment instead of literally any other time? When did the Doctor even give Churchill his phone number? Has he given it to anyone else? Why hasn't anyone else ever called him? I know the phone call was technically in the previous episode, but it's clearly part of this story. You can tell by how incredibly dumb it is. The TARIDS works it out. It's not any less stupid than mobile phone calls between people in different eras getting routed correctly, which has been a frequent part of the revival. Also the Third Doctor previously gave a space-time telegraph to the Brigadier for emergency use.
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Jan 11, 2015 08:55
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I hated this episode. Hated. Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaated.  This was the one episode where I didn't try to play the game, I had to make a stand and give it the F it deserved. Thank you, random.org!
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Jan 11, 2015 09:04
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Mo0 posted:Occ, I would say, though, that you could've easily left out telling us that you picked it at random and we probably wouldn't have been able to tell. A D is a completely justified grade for an episode that's that wildly confusing to figure out. He's a constant victim of his own honesty.
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Jan 11, 2015 09:07
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Oxxidation posted:He's a constant victim of his own honesty. A man after my own heart.
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Jan 11, 2015 09:16
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Doctor Spaceman posted:The TARIDS works it out. It's not any less stupid than mobile phone calls between people in different eras getting routed correctly, which has been a frequent part of the revival. Those are kind of dumb, but they make more sense than the TARDIS phone. You just assume that if three days have passed for the time traveller then if they call home the call will be received three days after they left.
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Jan 11, 2015 09:45
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I always just assumed that the TARDIS was doing the routing for the mobile phones anyway.
MikeJF fucked around with this message at 10:08 on Jan 11, 2015 |
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Jan 11, 2015 10:03
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I have to agree that Victory of the Daleks is a tough episode. A lot of good, a lot of bad, and all of it shuffled together and stacked on top of each other. And unlike The Beast Below which had similar tonal issues, the throughline of the episode isn't strong enough to carry it. I think the big issue overall in the episode was one of pacing: it jumps to "the Daleks were totally faking the whole time" way too fast. We need time to build up menace. For example, in the often mentioned now Power of the Daleks, the Daleks don't start out as friendly helpers. No, they've got one deactivated on in a lab that they're poking at and don't know what it is and that makes the Doctor flip out. They turn on some of it's systems and the first thing it does is spin up its gun (which had a physical motion to indicate it was firing on the original Dalek design) and these scientists are staring down the barrel not realizing it's trying to kill them. Once they get it fully operational and it's pretending to be a servant, it "helpfully" offers to create more Daleks. The whole point there is that the viewer got to see (but can't see any more; thanks Mugabe!) a slow build up. They had about 90 minutes to use to build tension across a month, but there's no reason this episode couldn't have been similarly structured so that it's more gradual. So getting to bigger issues with the show's production, if RTD is one of those guys who likes Doctor Who, Moffat is one of those fanboys who has to decide between wearing his fourth Doctor scarf or his sixth Doctor coat before he goes out. The show has gotten a lot more self-referential already; The Beast Below picked up thirty-five year old plot points and this episode episode was a remake of a forty-five year old serial that doesn't even exist any more.
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Jan 11, 2015 11:09
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The trouble with prizes being involved is now people take a man writing reviews of Doctor Who incredibly seriously for no reasonRandom Stranger posted:So getting to bigger issues with the show's production, if RTD is one of those guys who likes Doctor Who, Moffat is one of those fanboys who has to decide between wearing his fourth Doctor scarf or his sixth Doctor coat before he goes out. The show has gotten a lot more self-referential already; The Beast Below picked up thirty-five year old plot points and this episode episode was a remake of a forty-five year old serial that doesn't even exist any more. I think you're overstating both of these connections significantly
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Jan 11, 2015 12:30
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MrL_JaKiri posted:The trouble with prizes being involved is now people take a man writing reviews of Doctor Who incredibly seriously for no reason Humbug! Every point we get is just a proof how bad toxxupations taste is!
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Jan 11, 2015 12:59
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MrL_JaKiri posted:I think you're overstating both of these connections significantly
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Jan 11, 2015 13:03
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Oxxidation posted:Occ already made it clear that this was the first episode filmed of the series I thought that was next week?
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Jan 11, 2015 13:30
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MikeJF posted:I thought that was next week? Yeah, the next two episodes were filmed before the previous two.
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Jan 11, 2015 13:45
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Toxxupation posted:[*] So I came up with the grade for this episode differently than usual; I was so split on what grade to end up giving this one- I could literally see myself giving every possible grade to it -that I wrote the review first, then went to random.org and rolled a number from 1 to 5, with 1 being an "A" and 5 being an "F". At no time writing this review- not even writing the words you're reading now -did I have any idea what the grade would end up being, since I wanted this to be as pure an expression of my thoughts about the episode as possible. If I could, I simply would not have given this episode a grade- but that would throw off the contest, so here we are. I think you'll find that B is actually the objectively fairest grade. Also spitfires doing star wars xwing runs at the dalek secret WWII moon base while shouting THE SHIELD WILL BE DOWN WE GOTTA GIVE THE DOCTOR MORE TIME is basically the greatest thing ever.
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Jan 11, 2015 14:15
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I only just realised yesterday why these new Daleks were so out of place for me. And it turns out it's pretty much the same as Oxxidation. It's just out of character for them. Colourful, flashy stuff just isn't their style. They're big tanks. They fly around in B-Movie flying saucers. The gang which is supposed to be all creative and stuff tool around in a big ball. Why would they even want to experiment with their looks? Plus having their designations showing with bright colours seems pretty dumb. You'd think they'd go for some kind of subtle thing only Daleks could identify easily. On the other hand, I do actually like all the silly colours. Just maybe use them on something other than the genocidal tank-squids? fake edit: wait, don't Daleks in their shells only see in shades of blue? I'm sure all the Dalek POV shots I can remember are all blue. Ha.
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Jan 11, 2015 14:22
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McDragon posted:fake edit: wait, don't Daleks in their shells only see in shades of blue? I'm sure all the Dalek POV shots I can remember are all blue. Ha. Well New Dalek Paradigm don't have blue eyes.
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Jan 11, 2015 14:30
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Since you asked for opinions on the review: It felt more like you were trying to pick a letter grade than review the episode. And as a review I think it suffered for it. It was obvious you were working though your thoughts, which is fine by the way, but it felt like you were aiming for figuring out what letter to give it so us goons could play our li'l game. How different would your review have been if we weren't playing, and you could have just written how you felt about the episode and given it no letter grade? Or an NA or Q or whatever? Your reviews thus far seem to have more passion than this review did(if that's the best word). This seemed like you toned down YOUR highs and lows. What I love about your reviews(other that seeing your slow painful descent into DoctorWhat) is how unabashed you are in them. The only other review it seemed you were trying to convince yourself of a grade was the first A you gave and that begrudgingly acceptance and wonderment was amazing to read. I'd rather say "gently caress the Game" and have you give episodes A-'s and NA's then have you constrain the parts of your writing that I really enjoy. If assigning each episode an ABCDF is an exercise to make you a better writer, I understand that some constraint is necessary to that end, this is just the first review I felt suffered for it.
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Jan 11, 2015 16:30
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McDragon posted:fake edit: wait, don't Daleks in their shells only see in shades of blue? I'm sure all the Dalek POV shots I can remember are all blue. Ha. Fun fact, according to a comic from the 60s, Daleks cannot see the color red. I like to think that even to this day that rule still applies to them, and the reason why there are red Daleks is because they're supposed to be stealth fighters.
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Jan 11, 2015 16:35
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