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I know that he made a couple of documentaries touching on his Alzheimer's, "Living with Alzheimer's" and "Choosing to Die"... I haven't watched either one yet, though, just because... the thought of watching them makes me sad. 
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Mar 13, 2015 18:07
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howe_sam posted:Alzheimer's is the worst gently caress Alzheimer's 
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Mar 13, 2015 22:21
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WAIT A FUCKIN' MINUTE. I sent one of you my predictions for Toxx's reviews up till Series 7! WHERE AM I ON THE CHRISTMAS CAROL LIST!?! WHEEEERRRRRRRREEE???
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Mar 14, 2015 04:10
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Grouchio posted:WAIT A FUCKIN' MINUTE. I'm in a similar boat, except for just this season.
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Mar 14, 2015 04:17
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Grouchio posted:WAIT A FUCKIN' MINUTE. Did you not include your name in the email, and did you give A Christmas Carol an A? There's two ???'s and I must be one of them, but they have the same score right now.
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Mar 14, 2015 04:17
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adhuin posted:also: To be fair, I remember the fairy episode being one of the good episodes of Torchwood.
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Mar 14, 2015 06:53
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Rochallor posted:Did you not include your name in the email, and did you give A Christmas Carol an A? There's two ???'s and I must be one of them, but they have the same score right now.
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Mar 14, 2015 09:35
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Rochallor posted:Did you not include your name in the email, and did you give A Christmas Carol an A? There's two ???'s and I must be one of them, but they have the same score right now. I assumed I was the other since I'm not on the list for As, but I am on the final score listing so who knows.
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Mar 14, 2015 13:23
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Grouchio posted:I believe I sent an email back in December to Little_wh0re as such. Ask him, I can't find my list. Found and added to my spreadsheet, if I don't get around to editing the previous post you should still be on the next one fine. (You guessed B and so got 0) Rochallor posted:Did you not include your name in the email, and did you give A Christmas Carol an A? There's two ???'s and I must be one of them, but they have the same score right now. Found you, you hadn't included your name but I worked out which one was you Prison Warden posted:I assumed I was the other since I'm not on the list for As, but I am on the final score listing so who knows. You were on the number part but I missed you off the other bit for some reason. Sighence posted:I'm in a similar boat, except for just this season. I can't find a submission from you, can you e-mail again so I can look into it?
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Mar 16, 2015 14:21
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Oh MAN I let this thread get away from me. I gotta catch up- kind of been playing my anime fanfiction vidja games a bit too much. On the plus side I am now a cyborg frost demon who punches cat gods in the face on the weekends. ...so how wrong has the thread been while I was away!
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Mar 16, 2015 16:11
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Burkion posted:Oh MAN I let this thread get away from me. I gotta catch up- kind of been playing my anime fanfiction vidja games a bit too much. Judging from your last post you have missed exactly one episode.
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Mar 16, 2015 16:16
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Regy Rusty posted:Judging from your last post you have missed exactly one episode. Speed reading through the thread tells me holy poo poo you're right. Also man I hated this episode of Who, for so many reasons but more importantly... God I didn't even HEAR that Terry Pratchett had died. Goddamnit. Well I know what books I'm rereading later this week.
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Mar 16, 2015 16:24
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Okay, are you guys certain you like the summaries, ever since Moffat took over as showrunner I feel like the summaries have spun out of control wordcount wise because his episodes are, as a matter of course, way more dense as narratives To me, and this is just my opinion, they've become bloated unwieldy messes and are just a block of like 1-2k words that completely gently caress up the pacing of the review from the beginning Please be honest, I'm not fishing for what I want to hear I'm just saying in my personal opinion they've grown monstrously large because of the differences in Moffat as showrunner versus RTD as showrunner
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Mar 16, 2015 20:13
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Toxxupation posted:Okay, are you guys certain you like the summaries, ever since Moffat took over as showrunner I feel like the summaries have spun out of control wordcount wise because his episodes are, as a matter of course, way more dense as narratives It helps for those of us who haven't seen the episode in ages. That said, if it allows you to do more reviews, I'd be up for you skipping it and just linking the relevant wiki article for that episode which usually has a plot overview. I'd honestly say give it a try for a few episodes and then re-evaluate.
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Mar 16, 2015 20:16
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I tend to skip past the recaps, so I could definitely do without them.
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Mar 16, 2015 20:22
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You can probably aim for something in between cutting them altogether and being that hugely specific. I'd say most movie reviewers will throw out maybe 300-400 words at most for a summary. Time travel can be complicated to summarize, of course, so if you think about it and feel word-bloat coming on, maybe just toss it away and whatever plot summary you need will come out naturally in the course of the review. I personally enjoy your bullet points under random thoughts, as well as your overall thoughts on why you liked/disliked an episode more.
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Mar 16, 2015 20:23
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Toxxupation posted:Okay, are you guys certain you like the summaries, ever since Moffat took over as showrunner I feel like the summaries have spun out of control wordcount wise because his episodes are, as a matter of course, way more dense as narratives I'd say an extremely high level summary is fine, and only delving into the points you want to actually give your opinion on. A summary dump followed by your overall opinion, while never really connecting the two, isn't really all that great, I'll admit. Which is what they appear to have occasionally become. edit: I actually agree, the bullet points are usually my favorite parts, as well as the last couple of paragraphs that actually sum up how you feel. thrawn527 fucked around with this message at 20:38 on Mar 16, 2015 |
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Mar 16, 2015 20:35
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I've learned things my ADHD-addled brain didn't know about this show reading your thoughtful recaps. But given the nature of this season, you might as well trim them down.
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Mar 16, 2015 20:37
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Toxxupation posted:Okay, are you guys certain you like the summaries, ever since Moffat took over as showrunner I feel like the summaries have spun out of control wordcount wise because his episodes are, as a matter of course, way more dense as narratives I'm also in favour of a high level summary so you can better use detail where the review needs it, the devil with Moffat is often very much in the details.
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Mar 16, 2015 20:47
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I really don't care if you skip the summaries. I can always go to a wiki if necessary.
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Mar 16, 2015 20:51
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i straight up don't care, do you and we'll figure it out
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Mar 16, 2015 20:55
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Doing full recaps of this season's episodes has to qualify as some kind of self-harm, so yeah, of course I want you to do them.
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Mar 16, 2015 21:01
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I would rather you skip the summaries than continue playing Monster Hunter instead of reviewing episodes 
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Mar 16, 2015 21:05
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I like the summaries but I'm going to watch along ahead of the reviews anyway so I could survive without them pretty easily.
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Mar 16, 2015 21:17
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I don't mind a long review at all, and a detailed summary can highlight things I didn't notice when I watched, but it's not strictly necessary. The majority of people reading the reviews have already watched the show after all, so they wouldn't need a lot of detail to catch up.
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Mar 16, 2015 21:26
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Yeah a short summary is fine, you don't need to go scene by scene. A few sentences is more than enough.
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Mar 16, 2015 21:28
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Unless you really need the summary for one of your points to make sense, I'd say you should just leave it.
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Mar 16, 2015 21:28
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Soothing Vapors posted:I would rather you skip the summaries than continue playing Monster Hunter instead of reviewing episodes oh man, play monster hunter? good idea SV
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Mar 16, 2015 21:29
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I say write the summaries if it helps you order your thoughts/make points in your reviews. If it doesn't, then don't - sounds like you're finding the summarizing part a burden on your reviews at the moment, so if that is the case then drop them. Don't feel like you're stuck with some hard and fast rule though, if a few episodes down the line you think,"Actually a summary would be helpful here.... but I said I wouldn't do those anymore!  " then include the summary!
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Mar 16, 2015 21:31
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If nothing else playing Monster Hunter will get you in the mood for the series 6 finale, in which the Doctor beats Dire Miralis with an Ananta Boneblade
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Mar 16, 2015 21:37
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Toxxupation posted:oh man, play monster hunter? good idea SV what have i done 
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Mar 16, 2015 21:55
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The only thing saving me from sinking all of my free time into Monster Hunter is Persona Q. Which I've been sinking all of my free time into. Crap. Also, the reviews? Whatever makes you happy. If cutting down on the recaps would help writing them go better, then by all means.
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Mar 16, 2015 23:31
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Toxxupation posted:Okay, are you guys certain you like the summaries, ever since Moffat took over as showrunner I feel like the summaries have spun out of control wordcount wise because his episodes are, as a matter of course, way more dense as narratives I like them, but yours do run on too long. Set yourself an arbitrary word limit. Then write the thing, then mercilessly prune it until it fits. WORD LIMITS ARE GOOD, word limits challenge you to condense what you're saying, and give you focus. Also it's good practice for writing in general, if that's one of your interests.
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Mar 16, 2015 23:37
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My feeling is that you only need a quick overview. Enough to remind us of which episode it is and to give those who haven't seen it a general idea of the kinds of things that you'll be talking about.
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Mar 16, 2015 23:53
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Doctor Who "The Impossible Astronaut" Series 6, Episode 1 This is a really interesting episode to write about, and presents its own unique challenges. Not because the episode, itself, is difficult to determine a grade for- it's a fantastic episode and easily earns an A -but because of how un-Who-like "The Impossible Astronaut" ends up being. It's an episode that works almost entirely due to the fact that every other episode of Doctor Who isn't ever really like this; episodes can be sad, miserable even, but they're usually not infected with a sort of dour pathos to the whole thing, a rough and ugly cynicism, a dire sense of foreboding. As either Oxx or I have mentioned before (gently caress, even I'm getting us confused now), Doctor Who is an optimistic, "Up with people" show, where there's always a way to resolve a crisis relatively peacefully, with minimal bloodshed. Then "The Impossible Astronaut" comes along and envisions an episode of a different Doctor Who, the mid-two-thousands HBO miniseries version of Doctor Who, and realizes that show fully formed. It's an impressive feat, especially for a season premiere. "The Impossible Astronaut" opens to Amy and Rory making a new life together- apparently The Doctor has been out of touch with them for months. All that changes when they receive a mysterious letter in TARDIS blue with a date, time, and map reference, that directs them to some remote location in America. River, just as mysteriously, receives the exact same letter in her prison and gets ready to leave. Rory, Amy. River, and The Doctor- now clad in a Stetson -all meet up in the middle of the desert, where The Doctor informs the other three that he had summoned them all at this spot to go on a brand new adventure- a journey into "Space, 1969". Before they leave, the foursome decide to have a picnic- where Amy encounters an odd vision of a mysterious alien creature, which just as quickly passes from her mind. Just as quickly, an old man in a truck drives up, while out on the lake there suddenly appears a figure clad in an astronaut suit. The Doctor orders the other three to stay back as he approaches the suited figure. After a short, unheard conversation, the astronaut pulls out a ray gun and shoots The Doctor- multiple times, to prevent his regeneration and permanently kill him. The astronaut then walks back into the lake as Amy, Rory, and River attempt ineffectually to revive him. The old man approaches the three and hands them a can of gasoline- apparently The Doctor already knew full well beforehand that he'd be killed and wanted his body to be burned, so as to prevent any malevolent influence from being able to glean any Time Lord secrets. The other three incinerate his body all Viking funeral-style, then River turns and asks who the old man is and what he's doing there. He introduces himself as Canton Everett Delaware III (William Morgan Sheppard) and presents another one of The Doctor's letters before abruptly leaving, explaining that they'll be seeing him again soon. River realizes that the letters were numbered- Rory and Amy got 3, she got 2, and Canton had 4. Therefore, someone got number 1- someone who didn't show up to The Doctor's death. That someone ends up being...The Doctor himself. The Doctor who died (who was in his mid-1100s) sent a message to his past self (who was only 909) to arrive at that date and time, but didn't indicate who the sender was so as to keep The Doctor's personal timeline "clean" and free from paradox. The Doctor et al travel back to 1969- but not before The Doctor, aware that there's something that the other three aren't telling him demands an explanation. For once, though, he doesn't get what he wants as Amy insists that it must be kept a secret from him. The Doctor, pacified, drives the TARDIS on into the past. Canton Everett Delaware III (Mark Sheppard) turns out to have been an ex-FBI agent who was kicked out of the Bureau for undisclosed reasons (although it's heavily implied that it's because he was gay). Six weeks after his firing, he was called back by President Nixon (Stuart Milligan) for a private meeting. It turns out that Nixon is being called every day, at the same time, no matter his physical location by a young child asking for help from the "spaceman". The child calls himself "Jefferson Adams Hamilton" before hanging up. The Doctor accidentally disembarks in the middle of the Oval Office as Delaware and Nixon are talking, and is able to talk his way out of getting shot. As The Doctor attempts to puzzle out where the child is (he's positive it's somewhere in Florida, due to the aforementioned "spaceman" line), Amy looks around and suddenly sees another one of the alien creatures, this time dressed in a Secret Service outfit. The memories of the morning out in the desert come flooding back to her, only to get interrupted when Rory blocks her line of sight. Feeling ill, Amy goes to the bathroom- only to encounter the alien yet again. Amy realizes that she only remembers the existence of the alien creature when she's staring directly at it- if she turns away or her line of sight is otherwise broken she immediately forgets its existence. The creature (which somehow knows her name) tells her to tell The Doctor "what he must know. What he must NEVER know" before she rushes out of the bathroom- immediately forgetting everything that happened. The Doctor figures out that "Jefferson Adams Hamilton" isn't the child's name- the child clearly sounds like a girl, after all -but street names- the girl was trying to list her location by looking out the window at relevant cross streets. The main group with Delaware in tow then jump into the TARDIS and zoom off to an abandoned building right off those streets. Inside the building River finds some wires leading into a manhole and underground and deicdes to follow it. In the catacombs underneath the building, she finds an enclave of the alien creatures that Amy saw. She scrambles back above ground, in terror, only to immediately forget her fear (because she forgot of the existence of the creatures) and declare the underground "all clear", only to ironically take "another look around" below the surface just to make sure she didn't miss anything. Rory decides/is forced by The Doctor to follow her underneath the surface. River and Rory both discover a locked hatch, which River quickly sets to unlocking. Inside, they find a bizarre alien device, where River makes the discovery that the tunnels aren't running just underneath the building- they're running underneath the entire planet. Just then, the alien creatures fall in on River and Rory's position. Up above ground, Canton, Amy and The Doctor are searching the building when they hear the child yell for help. Canton rushes off to try and find the source, and gets knocked unconscious for his troubles. As The Doctor attempts to revive him, Amy reveals that she is pregnant. The astronaut that killed The Doctor then walks into the room, so Amy reaches for Canton's dropped gun and fires- only for it to be revealed that the person inside of the astronaut suit was the child. Cut to credits. As I mentioned in the beginning of this review, much of the reason that "The Impossible Astronaut" is as good as it is is in large part due to how different of an episode tonally it is from the norm. The inciting event of the episode- The murder of The Doctor- casts a noticeable pall on "Astronaut". "The Impossible Astronaut" is very much an episode about grief and handling grief in all of its various forms, so as a result the episode feels spare, more quiet and subdued than usual, in keeping with its theme. Many of the traditional Doctor Who hallmarks, especially The Eleventh Doctor hallmarks, aren't in play in "Astronaut"- there's no huge musical interludes to punctuate scenes (in fact, there's zero background music that plays during the sequence where The Doctor is murdered, in a bold and effective decision on the show's part to focus solely on the action happening onscreen), there's no scene where Eleven has a smug monologue about how hosed the enemy is if they mess with him, and all of the humor falls flat-intentionally so. In fact, there's a longish scene right after The Doctor comes back where he attempts to crack wise and be his normal, amazing self and it all lands with a thud (much to his displeasure). This is an important sequence to the episode at large because so much of "The Impossible Astronaut" deals with the concept of how the characters of the world of Doctor Who deal with a situation where The Doctor isn't around. I mean, sure, he's technically still there, but since River, Rory, and Amy had just watched him die literally hours prior The Doctor becomes a living reminder of his own, future, mortality- a ghost with flesh, in other words. What's most fascinating to me about "The Impossible Astronaut" is that it takes the central guiding theme of the atrocious Doctor Who episode, "Turn Left", and handles it in a way that makes it palatable. RTD tried for very much the same overarcing idea in that piece of absolute dreck in trying to conceive and execute a world in which The Doctor doesn't exist and how such an event would affect other people, most importantly Donna, but immediately fell into cheap melodrama and tragedy porn- need I remind you that a literal plot point of that literal episode of literal television was literally a second Holocaust starts to happen. Such overstatement of theme not only made it laughable instead of moving, but also undercut its own point- an episode all about Donna and her struggles became, instead, an hour-long wake of The Doctor. In contrast here Moffat realizes how to handle the concept of the loss of The Doctor with appropriate nuance and earned grief, so the episode focuses solely on how his Companions react to his death. The Doctor's return to the story mere minutes later comes across not as a cheat but as a brutal reminder of how dead he really is- his Companions aren't able to "move on" because he's not even technically dead, can't mourn because they could literally destroy the universe in doing so. Every Companion's response to his death is both unique and suits them- Rory walks around with an expression of stunned loss, unable to even recognize and cope with the enormity of what's happened, while still focusing on getting the job done. Amy reacts with characteristic denial and anger- her Raggedy Doctor, the hero of all her stories, her icon, got destroyed in the blink of an eye and she attempts to compensate for that by pretending that it both never happened in the first place while desperately seeking out any and all possible solutions that would prevent it from ever happening, temporal causality be damned. Most movingly, though, is River's reaction; Eleven's death causes her to wax nostalgic about her own imminent mortality; she has a beautiful scene with Rory in the catacombs where she notes how the way The Doctor/River relationship works, every time she meets him he knows less and less about her- "The day's coming when I look into that man's eyes, my Doctor...and he won't have the faintest idea who I am. And I think it's going to kill me." The thing about River is that her character is, and always has been, The Doctor's character in "The Impossible Astronaut". River is introduced within the Library two-parter by dying, so to the audience every single scene we've seen with her subsequently has been of a dead woman walking. The Doctor knows this and always has, but has never been able to tell her- via both temporal necessity and overriding guilt. This inversion of The Doctor/River dynamic in "The Impossible Astronaut" allows us to see how River would react when placed in The Doctor's shoes, which turns out to be that she's able to finally admit a greater truth- she isn't scared of dying, she's scared of losing The Doctor. It makes both more poignant and more crushing her sacrifice in the Library two-parter- because she wasn't dead when she decided to kill herself to save everyone. She was dead the instant that she saw Ten's big doofy face and realized that he had no idea who she was. To me, this is why the episode is as fantastic as it is- it deals with a concept as huge and as upsetting as the loss of The Doctor in a way that feels earned and appropriately dour instead of so cartoonishly broad as to become mockable, and it focuses the episode entirely around the dual themes of loss and grief. Even the antagonist of the episode- which initially felt like a retread of The Angels until I realized their symbolic significance -is largely another facet of the process of grieving. Learning to deal with and overcome the loss of a loved one is largely dealing in how to forget, if not the event itself but the pain and overwhelming despair attendant of that loss, which is what the alien creatures literally do in this episode- wipe out memories, eliminate pain. But you can't "just" forget your pain, you have to move through it, deal with it in a productive or healthy manner or it will destroy you -literally, in the antagonists' case. The fact of the matter is Doctor Who is, no matter what, always going to be about The Doctor and he's always the biggest force for good the show has, he's optimism and hope made flesh. So, in "The Impossible Astronaut", because it dealt so forcefully with the concept of the death of The Doctor and how it would affect the people around him, it needed a textural and pacing change. So even beyond the tone of the episode being so dour, so depressing and sad, there's stuff like how the cinematography is noticeably different- with wider and longer shots, to emphasize the sort of understated futility that permeates the episode as a whole. The color palette of the episode- sandy deserts, plain and dark rooms, with lots of greys and blacks feeds into that ever-present sense of doom. So many of the scenes of "Astronaut" feel deliberately stilted, underemotional, tense and quiet- as if something is bubbling to the surface just underneath. There's all these bum notes to scenes, where people awkwardly stare at each other without talking, or mumbling, to reinforce this omnipresent wrongness. Especially in contrast to a regular episode of Who especially a regular Eleven episode of Who, who usually operates at a million miles a second constantly babbling and cavorting all over the place, the disparity is striking, but it all feeds into this central narrative of how fundamentally dark and depressing of a show Doctor Who would be without The Doctor lighting the way. "The Impossible Astronaut" is an excellent episode of Doctor Who because it's entirely not an episode of Doctor Who, because it's so intentionally murky and grey and depressing. It's a great tonal piece, that only really works once. Luckily, the one time it was tried was a massive success. A fantastic start for the sixth season of Doctor Who. Grade: A Random Thoughts:
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Mar 16, 2015 23:55
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You make an excellent point in how everything is colored (for the viewer AND for the characters) by the knowledge that the Doctor is on an inevitable path to his death some 200+ years into his future. That makes the fact that the Doctor - ignorant of this - is carrying on completely as normal all the better, because it takes away from the certainty that the Doctor is always going to figure a way out of things (for the characters at least, the viewers I'm sure always knew that OF COURSE he'd figure a way out of things). That scene where he suddenly just stops and refuses to do anything further, and warns them to never for a second think they're cleverer than him is such a great moment too, since it hints at how much of the Doctor's characteristics can be surface posturing (particularly when it comes to River) - the goofy, silly old man in the young body who sometimes seems a little buffoonish doesn't like having secrets kept from him or people thinking they can manipulate or misdirect him.... at least not without his knowledge that they're doing so, or his complicity in the act. Also while it was already apparent in season 5, the massive improvements in the visual quality of the show during the Moffat era really become noticeable starting with this story - it looks incredible.
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Mar 17, 2015 00:23
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Toxxupation posted:Random Thoughts: EDIT: though to his credit Moffat played it up offscreen as well, he kept responding to people on twitter who asked him about it with "nope, he's definitely dead" etc. 2house2fly fucked around with this message at 00:38 on Mar 17, 2015 |
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Mar 17, 2015 00:32
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Doctor Who "The Impossible Astronaut" Series 6, Episode 1 Hi. Hello. Greetings. Salutations. Welcome to Series 6. Normally I watch seasons of Who in one solid burst, because I hate waiting for episodes, but this is the only one I caught episode-by-episode, which at once let me enjoy events completely spoiler-free and gave me the opportunity to make a very, very bad decision, namely, keeping up with the forums' reactions as they came. I like Series 6 for a great number of reasons, but I think that the biggest one would have to be sheer spite, because popping my head into the shrieking noise machine that was those megathreads was unbearable, and probably makes me a bit of a masochist on account of how I kept doing it. This is where Moffat's honeymoon period wore off and the bitching about him became inane and incessant to the point of performance theater. Why did the community turn against him with such vigor? 'cuz they're stupids, is why. That and other reasons. I said in my writeup for "The Eleventh Hour" that, while I believe Moffat's unquestionably a better writer than Davies, he's not half as good as a showrunner. Whereas Davies fed his blood, sweat, and tears to the Great God Who in order to expose its wicked influence to as many innocent people as possible, deftly controlling as many aspects of production and marketing as he could with whatever authority he was given, Moffat, from what I know, kind of faffed around until it blew up in his face. I don't know many of the specifics, since the story is obscured under stinking gobbets of tabloid headlines and hysterical forum posts, but the vague outline I've gathered is that Moffat, due to a combination of his other responsibilities (mostly Jekyll and Sherlock, at the time) and possibly less interest in the production aspect, delegated many of his showrunner duties to people that, as it turned out, didn't really know what they were doing. This led to Who's budget blowing out like John Hurt's chest in Alien over and over again and a number of far more critical staff members either resigning or getting fired, and Moffat's response to the whole mess was to have a number of very public, very embarrassing screaming matches with his chosen delegates followed by their complete ejection, you could say erasure, from Doctor Who. Series 6 and 7 were split down the middle, each half being parceled out over a year. This not only denied the slavering masses their Who fix, but snowballed to the cast and crew as well; many crew members, including Smith himself, left earlier than Moffat anticipated due to having other projects in their schedule. This played absolute hob with Moffat's precious extended plot arcs, and from Series 6 onward, you can almost feel the entire show straining to hold itself together under the combined strain of Moffat's production missteps and creative ambition. It's not until Series 8 that the schedule re-stabilized, and it can be a bit of a bumpy ride 'til then. But with that said, none of those issues are immediately apparent in "The Impossible Astronaut," in which Moffat, now drunk on his own terrible power, deliberately crafted one of the gloomiest episodes in the show's history and certainly the darkest one in the revival. You can already see him firing up familiar plot machinery in this opening - there's a mystery present that will require the entirety of the series to solve (the Doctor's death), a mysterious antagonist race with powers that seem to be based on perception (the Greys and their memory tricks), and River Song (River Song). This didn't play well with some people, and even less so given the nature of the mystery, because regardless of what Occ says I can assure you that no one believed the Doctor was going to cack it by the end of this series. What was the point, many asked, of even presenting such a mystery when we already know it's going to be solved? Well, says I, the fun is in what comes in between the problem and the solution. And while the Doctor's sudden death by astronaut fails to elicit much panic for the future of Eleven's character, the way Moffat presents the scene itself and its aftermath might be some of the best mood-setting Who's done yet. The entirety of the Lake Silencio scene (shot in Utah - Britain has just the one desolate wasteland to which people would only go to die and Wales is the wrong color) is a masterwork in tone and framing - forget Doctor Who, this camerawork and sound mixing wouldn't be out of place in an episode of Breaking Bad. The strongly contrasting blue/orange coloration in the daytime picnic is eye-searing, which inspires a feeling of discomfort and unease even before the Grey shows up over the horizon. The astronaut itself reminds us of how cool astronaut suits look when you get past how unwieldy they are, and the suit immediately dominates the scene with its bulky presence and persistent, harsh respiration. The moment where Eleven gets shot is dead silent, as Occ mentioned, and the camera momentarily goes shaky over-the-shoulder to emphasize the panic of the witnesses. And the nighttime shots, when Canton shows up and the Doctor's body is burned, are almost McCarthyesque in their grim resignation of what's happened and what needs to be done; the image of the solemn-faced Rory marching towards the camera, outlined by the flames of the Doctor's pyre, is like a punctuation mark on Eleven's entire existence. Then Eleven shows back up and everything is hilarious again, but not really. Watching someone die in front of you sort of takes the fun out of listening to their jokes, but what's more, the gloominess of the side cast is reflected in the sets themselves. The initial picnic by the lakeside is the last time we see bright lighting on-set, with one exception; what other lighting we see is dim, soft, and murky, with people often huddled around the lamps or flashlights as though trying to warm themselves around them. Much of the dialogue is done in conspiratorial whispers, with Eleven himself being the only one who bothers to carry on shouting as usual, and even then, his theatrics take on a slightly desperate edge, as you can tell he's wondering and worrying why everyone around him refuses to play along. Everyone's concerned because the Doctor has, in effect, been undone by one of the bootstrap paradoxes that Moffat loves so much - because their witness to his death was both the origin and terminus of their involvement with the mystery, so if they solve the mystery, then they were never around to see the mystery to solve the mystery and the entire timeline implodes and everything is doomed again. Once again, the end is never the end, but time's been rigged so that it has to be the end of the Doctor. The only glimpse we get of the party responsible for this little trick are the Greys, who are basically a combination of the Weeping Angels and Slender Man except not quite as single-mindedly hostile as the former and not as absolutely god damned retarded as the latter. Whereas the Angels eventually gained a whole arsenal of weird metaphysical tricks and had little clue to their origin or motivation besides their hunger, the Greys distinguish themselves with exactly two talents - the ability to slip out of the memories of anyone who's not directly observing them, and FORCE LIGHTNING. They show off both to Amy in the White House bathroom - incidentally, the only other scene in the episode that's brightly lit, demonstrating further how effortlessly they're able to hide from others - and the reason given for their casual disintegration of that secretary is at once incredibly petty ("Joy") and coldly calculating ("Her name was Joy. Your name is Amelia"). In other words: "We know who you are, we know where you live, and if you don't do as we say then you'll wind up occupying the bottom layer of a dustbin." The Greys' design almost tries too hard to be terrifying, with their powers, fleshy skin "suits," and beady little eyes poking out of their mouthless hydrocephalic heads, but Moffat needed the terror of children to power his Dread Machine and subtlety ain't all it's cracked up to be when that device hungers. Also - the White House! We're in America again! And the accents aren't terrible! British people doing American accents properly tend to dip into a uniform, gravelly mutter for the task, but the performances of Mark Sheppard and Stuart Milligan (who has the advantage of actually being American, should have known you Brits couldn't carry off that plump warble without going full Churchill) as Everett and Nixon respectively still nail down the weary personalities of both men, and their rumbly voices just enhance the episode's claustrophobic, dour atmosphere. I'm not thrilled with any story that portrays Nixon in a remotely sympathetic light - seriously, the man was a loving monster, he was Thatcher with jowls much like Reagan was Thatcher with too many teeth - but if I rated episodes based on their adherence to my political agenda then I'd always have to dock points due to a consistent failure to portray the ritual slaughter of bankers, so I'll let it pass. Both Lake Silencio and the White House set feel properly American, as in, not British, as in, specifically not like the loving "Daleks in Manhattan" two-parter, and it gives Moffat an easy in to write as many "ha ha Americans like guns and the shooting of guns" jokes as he is legally able. Laugh all you want, you Scottish goblin. It's all we can do to choke back the tears. Series 5 was Moffat writing the story he always wanted; Series 6 begins with him writing the tone he always wanted, a natural extension of such episodes as "Blink" and the Library two-parter. Dark, dank, bleak, and excessively timey-wimey, he's as indulgent right now as Davies at his worst, and I happen to enjoy Moffat's indulgences, so bully for me. The real question now is how long he can hold this latest storyline together - or at least how long before Occ notices the seams. At least he wasn't around to see the reactions in real time. All the Greys in the world can't take those memories away from me. Oxxidation fucked around with this message at 03:22 on Mar 17, 2015 |
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Mar 17, 2015 01:12
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Toxxupation posted:[*] Nixon: "You were my second choice for this, Mr. Delaware." Delaware: "That's okay. You were my second choice for president, Mr. Nixon." Lycus fucked around with this message at 01:28 on Mar 17, 2015 |
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Mar 17, 2015 01:26
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 12:59 |
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Stuart Milligan is American
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Mar 17, 2015 01:29
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