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I think Spare Parts serves as a pretty excellent origin story for the Cybermen. I wouldn't be averse to see them do a more direct adaptation of that than Rise of the Cybermen/Age Of Steel ended up being.
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Apr 16, 2015 21:59
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Rat Flavoured Rats posted:I think Spare Parts serves as a pretty excellent origin story for the Cybermen. I wouldn't be averse to see them do a more direct adaptation of that than Rise of the Cybermen/Age Of Steel ended up being. Yeah. The show version was about the most boring you could come up with. Lumic was a cackling villain. :yawn: The Spare Parts version is about the slow degradation of a dying people trying desperately to survive. The Age of Steel version sucks because its just steel plated zombies. Someone grabs you and forces you to become a Cyberman. The Spare Parts version is a lot more insidious. You did it to yourself, piece by piece trying to keep breathing one more day, to the point that you didn't even notice when you lost the bits of you that made being alive worth living in the first place.
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Apr 16, 2015 22:15
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I think that part of the reason I like this episode is that I didn't watch it the way most folks did; there wasn't a long cliffhanger for me, followed by this. Not only did I watch it all in one run on Netflix, I had already been told by multiple people that this was the worst episode ever, that I'd hate it, etc. Going into it with relatively low expectations... actually, it's pretty good! I mean, this is an episode where Hitler is in a scene and barely even registers, and he spends most of it locked in a cupboard. It contains killer robots that say things like "please remain calm while your life is terminated". Rory rides a motorcycle. ("Can you ride a motorbike?" "I expect so. It's that sort of day.") Matt Smith as the gradually dying Doctor is pretty great, too, especially since he treats it like a minor annoyance (or pretends to). Overall, I definitely understand why other people hate it (and I don't even disagree with their reasoning), it just hit a good spot for me.
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Apr 16, 2015 22:35
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So, I liked this episode. I didn't LOVE it, but I liked it. And I think that, this is the last non-special in Eleven's run that I really enjoyed. I wasn't a fan until after it's airing, so while I know y'all hate it I never understood why. I assume it was because of "Mary Sues", "self indulgent wanking", and other buzzwords that don't make sense but shouldn't be questioned because IT'S BAD OKAY Seems most of you don't like it because the Ponds become parents without actually getting the chance to become parents. I really never thought of it that way, possibly because I have no parental instinct at all (surprise, gay manchild is not prepared to care for children), but I guess I never thought the pregnancy seemed much more than a plot device in the first place. They actually couldn't talk about the act of conception, so suddenly one day it's announced that Amy is carrying and then the baby is delivered in an alien maternity ward and there's a lot of imprisonment and delivering while a creepy lady stares at you through the magical peephole of space/time, and... Jesus gently caress, the whole thing was so preposterous that I didn't believe it, I was waiting for the retcon or whatever. I can only accept it all as being orchestrated by the bad guys from start to finish.
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Apr 16, 2015 22:48
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Craptacular! posted:So, I liked this episode. I didn't LOVE it, but I liked it. And I think that, this is the last non-special in Eleven's run that I really enjoyed. I wasn't a fan until after it's airing, so while I know y'all hate it I never understood why. I assume it was because of "Mary Sues", "self indulgent wanking", and other buzzwords that don't make sense but shouldn't be questioned because IT'S BAD OKAY I'll say this much. Two of my friends, who otherwise love the dumb bullshit of Doctor Who a lot and loved River as a character and loved just about all of this, were so offended and outraged by how they handled the baby plot, that they still to this day refuse to watch the show. When you've been in a parental situation, regardless if you ARE a parent or not, this kind of stuff bothers you much more.
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Apr 16, 2015 22:52
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See, it's a little shortsighted, but not NEVERMIND gently caress THIS SHOW bad. Concrete Lovin' was the only time this show hit that point to me until here.
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Apr 16, 2015 22:54
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The River stuff in it is really bad, and it is because of self-indulgent writing. She was cool enough being a kickass, time traveling archaeologist with a history with the Doctor. Then she was a prisoner for mysterious reasons, which I think still worked alright. But that she is also a human Time Lord and also the daughter of two companions and also a brainwashed assassin (of death) and also grew up being a teenager with the current companions is just a little bit too much to swallow, and as discussed above, it seems more thrown together than earned through careful planning. This is the point where the writing for River goes off the deep end for me. I do enjoy Rory bopping Hitler on the nose and stuffing him the cupboard, and the tiny people inside the robot are cool. I hope they make a return every now and then. (Mary Sue is just a useful shortcut term, it's really not at all confusing. It is maybe a little over-used, but it is a common problem with Doctor Who, in which a lot of the people writing for it now grew up watching it as mega-fans.)
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Apr 16, 2015 23:06
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Bicyclops posted:(Mary Sue is just a useful shortcut term, it's really not at all confusing. It is maybe a little over-used, but it is a common problem with Doctor Who, in which a lot of the people writing for it now grew up watching it as mega-fans.) I don't think she's a Mary Sue, but I see where people get it. Once you get to this point in her arc, she definitely comes off as a lame fanfiction OC. Those aren't always Mary Sues, but are stereotypically so, so it's kind of the closest term people think of when they see her. It's the "and and she loves the Doctor and has Time Lord powers because she was conceived on the TARDIS and..." that kind of reads like "she's the secret SEVENTH Power Ranger that Zordon sent on a secret mission and never mentioned until now..." and the like. Linear Zoetrope fucked around with this message at 23:14 on Apr 16, 2015 |
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Apr 16, 2015 23:09
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Burkion posted:Why don't they do this with more children then? Maybe they tried that offscreen and their janky fake TARDIS didn't cause the right mutations. Alternately, maybe they wanted it to be Amy's baby because they knew the Doctor would be reluctant to harm her. A random army of murderous time mutants is very different than your best friend's only child.
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Apr 16, 2015 23:14
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Jsor posted:I don't think she's a Mary Sue, but I see where people get it. Once you get to this point in her arc, she definitely comes off as a lame fanfiction OC. Those aren't always Mary Sues, but are stereotypically so, so it's kind of the closest term people think of when they see her. Well, terms end up evolving their meaning as they perpetuate. I don't think it's the best one for River, who spends a lot of time worrying if the Doctor can get them out of situations and doing a little bit of out loud hero worship, and whose writing flaws only occasionally include being too aggressively awesome and the best. The issue is that she has way too many huge, important character traits dumped on her in the course of an episode and a half, to the point where it's difficult to see her as anything anymore. Bicyclops fucked around with this message at 23:23 on Apr 16, 2015 |
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Apr 16, 2015 23:20
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Angela Christine posted:Maybe they tried that offscreen and their janky fake TARDIS didn't cause the right mutations. Maybe it's just really bad writing that wasn't thought out because the IDEA of River being a secret Time Lord complete with Regenerations, which wasn't granted by being a Time Lord and was instead given BY the Time Lords one of the only aspects that the show EVER kept consistent about the drat thing, was SO COOL and that was worth being utterly stupid. Only it wasn't because then they go and waste that plot point, a plot point that was ALREADY wasted because we know how River loving dies.
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Apr 16, 2015 23:22
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The biggest problem with LKH for me is that, over the course of 45 minutes, they cram three or four different stages of River's life into a single episode (her growing up as Mels*, her regenerating into Evil River Song, getting saved/changed by the Doctor, seeking out her doctorate, etc.). If they'd stopped at "oh, so this is when we see Evil River, and we have to deal with her for awhile" as a cliffhanger/setup for the rest of the series I'd have been a bit more okay with it. As it stands now, it feels incredibly rushed, like a lot of Who episodes feel from AGMGTWTF on. *Never mind the short-sightedness of never having mentioned Mels in any way beforehand, despite us having been heavily involved in Amy's life up to that point. (She wasn't even at the wedding!) Personally, if you're gonna go that route, Jeff would have made a better choice.
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Apr 16, 2015 23:24
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If you skip the first 15 minutes and the last 30 seconds it's a really good episode.
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Apr 16, 2015 23:33
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I quite like these two episodes, and I think it definitely helps when you watch them right after one another. Moffat may have designed them with the break in mind (and the 'THE DOCTOR RETURNS IN "LET'S KILL HITLER'" certainly suggests that) but when you do them right after one another the fact that Let's Kill Hitler is kind of a farce works a lot better. It's just a moment of levity to bring it up from last episode, not the thrilling conclusion to a cliffhanger five months ago. I think River's speech works, too. It's not so much condemning the Doctor for his actions as it is the way he goes about this particular job. He's using his name to get people to fight for him and get people to run away from him. He's not saying, "These guys have kidnapped my friend and I need to get her back," he's saying, "I'm the Doctor and I need your help." He's really throwing his weight around, and that's what inspired this crazy cult against him.
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Apr 16, 2015 23:37
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Hewlett posted:Personally, if you're gonna go that route, Jeff would have made a better choice. That would be amazing.
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Apr 17, 2015 02:05
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Damnit, now that you've said that I can't stop imagining how much cooler that would have been. The Mels montage reminded me of when Dawn was introduced in Buffy, how the next episode had a "previously..." that inserted her into a bunch of existing scenes. Since that was in my head and Mels had never been mentioned before I fully expected it to turn out that she hadn't been in their lives originally and it was some sort of trick.
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Apr 17, 2015 02:18
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I just assumed she was Melody. I mean, her name was literally "Mels". I expected there to be another form between that and River, though.
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Apr 17, 2015 03:46
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idonotlikepeas posted:I just assumed she was Melody. I mean, her name was literally "Mels". I expected there to be another form between that and River, though. There was that one astronaut kid prior to Mels at least. Not one with any depth to it though. I keep trying to shoehorn Mels'-sudden-existence retcons into this being a fresh new timeline post Pandorica or some similar side-effect of her creation storyline, but Moffat didn't really put in the groundwork for her. Madame Kovarian has way more story room by this point in Smith's run, whereas Mels is basically introduced, given some paper-thin context, and then killed off in under 15 minutes. It just seems so weird that for someone supposedly so integral to everything that her character doesn't make any sense, is quite unpleasant, and then stops being a thing so quickly. That said I'm one of the folk who enjoys this episode, Mels notwithstanding. That whole Doctor/River assassination dance is reminiscent of Moffat's Curse of Fatal Death skit and I like it. Plus it led to this:
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Apr 17, 2015 06:04
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Bicyclops posted:Then she was a prisoner for mysterious reasons, which I think still worked alright. (...) a brainwashed assassin (of death) These are sort of related. People got mad about River killing a (weakened) Dalek of all things in the last season finale, when as far back as the Angel episode the leader of the soldiers didn't trust her because she had a reputation of being a killer, and having to be locked up for it. This is as close as I get to spoiler territory: In the Library two-parter, River cared deeply for the Doctor and he had no idea who she is. Now, he cares more for her than he used to while she is becoming more and more of a violent person. In one timeline, the Doctor never had any connection to River and she was a killer, for which she was imprisoned. She jumps out of jail and plays recurring companion with him so that when they eventually do reach the point in this point in her life, he will struggle for her sake as she did for his in the Library. If it works, River won't be a prisoner assassin at all. Craptacular! fucked around with this message at 06:24 on Apr 17, 2015 |
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Apr 17, 2015 06:13
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Oh hey, also with this episode I can finally refer back to Day Of The Moon, and that bit where River spins around effortlessly gunning down all the Silence which everybody probably thought was amazingly cool. I felt really silly when I watched LKH and River turned out to be a genetically engineered super soldier, because they spelled it out in big neon letters when they had her effortlessly kill a bunch of baddies just like the other River did in that movie.
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Apr 17, 2015 06:31
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Spinning around in general seems a bad tactic against an enemy you forget if you can't see itCraptacular! posted:These are sort of related. People got mad about River killing a (weakened) Dalek of all things in the last season finale, when as far back as the Angel episode the leader of the soldiers didn't trust her because she had a reputation of being a killer, and having to be locked up for it. People didn't get mad because River killed a dalek, it's because the way it was done was pure fan fiction. "And then Jack Eerie makes the dalek beg for mercy because he's SUCH A BADASS"
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Apr 17, 2015 10:05
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Ultimately, if Moffat wanted River to be the Pond's child, he should've used her birth as the event that forced the end of their run, as they leave to have her. It's substantially better a narrative than just forcing it in the middle of their run, having the baby abducted, and glossing over the trauma.
MikeJF fucked around with this message at 10:17 on Apr 17, 2015 |
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Apr 17, 2015 10:09
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Jsor posted:I don't think she's a Mary Sue, but I see where people get it. Once you get to this point in her arc, she definitely comes off as a lame fanfiction OC. Those aren't always Mary Sues, but are stereotypically so, so it's kind of the closest term people think of when they see her. Bearing his other work in mind, I think it's relatively obvious who Moffat's self-insert idealized persona is. The TARDIS even thinks he's the pretty one.
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Apr 17, 2015 11:17
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MikeJF posted:Ultimately, if Moffat wanted River to be the Pond's child, he should've used her birth as the event that forced the end of their run, as they leave to have her. It's substantially better a narrative than just forcing it in the middle of their run, having the baby abducted, and glossing over the trauma. They could have had the reveal and later on whenever Amy/Rory leave that say is due to her pregnancy and neither want to continue with being companions. Have the Doctor say "You are having a baby yeah  " and then he's  when he realizes that they're going to retire.Dave Brookshaw posted:Bearing his other work in mind, I think it's relatively obvious who Moffat's self-insert idealized persona is. 
monster on a stick fucked around with this message at 11:24 on Apr 17, 2015 |
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Apr 17, 2015 11:20
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Dave Brookshaw posted:Bearing his other work in mind, I think it's relatively obvious who Moffat's self-insert idealized persona is. I'm not sure whom you're referring to. Sherlock?
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Apr 17, 2015 11:42
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MikeJF posted:Ultimately, if Moffat wanted River to be the Pond's child, he should've used her birth as the event that forced the end of their run, as they leave to have her. It's substantially better a narrative than just forcing it in the middle of their run, having the baby abducted, and glossing over the trauma. Wouldn't that just shove the whole space cult abduction thing completely off-screen and make their departure super awkward though
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Apr 17, 2015 23:07
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A Good Man Goes to War A good grade for a not so good episode. Except overall a lot of people thought this would actually get a good review. Like a shocking number of people guessed A. You guys are all mad! Anyway, heres what was guessed A BSam MrlJakiri ewe2 Regy Rusty Xenoborg Gandalf21 Colonel Cool John Charity Spring mycelia idonotlikepeas Random Stranger Organza Quiz Angela Christine adhuin jng2058 Rochallor AndwhatIseeisme ??? cool kids inc. Stobbit ThNextGreenLantern Mo0 BlueGhostie death .cab for qt Dave Brookshaw Notatwat fatherboxx LabyMynora Bobulus Moatmonster Beefytaco 2house2fly DetoxP Big Mean Jerk howe_sam Kaza42 ThePariah Grouchio Prison Warden B Diabolik900 cargohills Senario Lipset and Rock On Blasmeister Hannibal Smith Go RV! PurpleJesus egon_beeblebrox Kevin07 Jsor Capfalcon thexerox123 C Attitude Indicator Well Manicured Man WeirdSandwich Lager Roach Warehouse M_Gargantua Paul.Power Pinwiz11 Ohtsam NeuroticLich Proposition Joe Jurgan D And More Bunnita Keisse J MikeJF CardinalBiggles legoman727 F Bown ThePlague-Demon Sighence This gives us running scores of Random Stranger 3 Paul Power 3 Notatwat 3 Senario 4 Blasmeister 4 Hannibal Smith 4 death .cab for qt 4 Dave Brookshaw 4 cargohills 5 Xenoborg 5 John Charity Spring 5 Lipset and Rock On 5 Go RV! 5 PurpleJesus 5 egon_beeblebrox 5 MikeJF 5 LabyMynora 5 2house2fly 5 Proposition Joe 5 ThePariah 5 MrlJakiri 6 Diabolik900 6 Regy Rusty 6 Attitude Indicator 6 idonotlikepeas 6 Organza Quiz 6 Angelia Christine 6 Well Manicured Man 6 WeirdSandwich 6 cool kids inc. 6 Roach Warehouse 6 BlueGhostie 6 M_Gargantua 6 Pinwiz11 6 DetoxP 6 Jsor 6 Capfalcon 6 Big Mean Jerk 6 CardinalBiggles 6 thexerox123 6 BSam 7 ewe2 7 Colonel Cool 7 adhuin 7 Bunnita 7 Andwhatiseeisme 7 Stobbit 7 ThNextGreenLantern 7 Mo0 7 Kevin07 7 Ohtsam 7 legoman727 7 mycelia 8 ??? 8 Bobulus 8 Moatmonster 8 howe_sam 8 PrisonWarden 8 Jurgen 8 Lager 9 ??? 9 Beefytaco 9 Gandalf21 10 And More 10 Bown 10 Keisse J 10 NeuroticLich 10 ThePlague-Demon 10 Grouchio 10 Kaza42 11 fatherbox 12 jng2058 14 Sighence 24 At the time we had a huge split season break here, but lucky old Toxx doesn't have to wait this long before LETS KILL HITLER
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Apr 17, 2015 23:17
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Jurgan posted:I'm not sure whom you're referring to. Sherlock? From the "pretty one" bit I'd guess Rory. Not sure that works though, he's both far nicer than Moffat and constantly dying. To me, Rory feels like a big homage to Arthur Dent. e: gosh, still in joint first. That may be changing soon, though... Paul.Power fucked around with this message at 19:03 on Apr 18, 2015 |
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Apr 18, 2015 19:01
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Rory is the most idealized "nice guy" martyr in media history, and I say that as someone who adores him.
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Apr 18, 2015 19:21
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Burkion posted:And here we go. I see. This show for children isn't actually a show intended to be viewed by children, it's a show intended to be viewed by children and viewed by adults. I know, I used the word "primarily" instead of "largely" one time at the end of my paragraph. Now please try a response with less glee at catching somebody in a weird, pedantic trap, and more responding to the stance I was actually taking. marktheando posted:I need to see them be upset about losing their baby because most humans, hell most mammals, will be upset at losing a baby. I do not believe that these characters would act this way in this situation, so it rings false. It goes back to what was being discussed about plot vs characters. Amy, Rory and the Doctor need to go on having fun adventures and River's timeline needs to be maintained (she wouldn't be the River we know if she was raised by Rory and Amy) so they very quickly get over it for the sake of the plot. I honestly don't get how people think they're not upset. They're super distraught, but they literally just finished a war (or at least a series of assaults), their lives have had huge numbers of tragedies all building to this one that they keep thinking are done but then it turns out are not, and finally when they think this time it's gotta be over for good, they find out it's not. Shock, exhaustion, and anger seem like they are pretty good symptoms of being upset. It's also pretty clear that we come into that hanger when the doctor does, and since he wasn't there in time and people have shifted position since the baby popped, time has passed that we were not privy to. As I said in my previous post, I don't think it's necessary for us to explicitly see amy howling and crying and grieving in this show which is intended to be viewed by children, because it's done off-screen in a manner that (at least I thought) was pretty unambiguous. One thing that I often run into disagreements about with who is that a lot of people seem to always assume that one episode picks up after the other, or even that one scene always picks up immediately after the previous one. This has been shown to not be the case multiple times in the show, so it's weird to me that it's still a thing.
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Apr 18, 2015 22:41
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surc posted:I see. This show for children isn't actually a show intended to be viewed by children, it's a show intended to be viewed by children and viewed by adults. So you're just purposely being wrong so you can be dismissive about Doctor Who's quality when it's not good? I'm not being pedantic about any thing. It is literally a Family Program and has different writing and expectations due to that. Sarah Jane Smith was a childrens program and was treated as such. Torchwood was an Adult program and did jack poo poo with it. It's like trying to argue that the ratings of movies don't exist or have meaning. There's a difference between PG and PG-13, trying to say otherwise is just being wrong.
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Apr 18, 2015 22:50
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Burkion posted:So you're just purposely being wrong so you can be dismissive about Doctor Who's quality when it's not good? No it's like I took the stance of a PG-13 movie which knows a lot of children are watching it deciding not to use the word 'gently caress' even though they can do so once and still be PG-13. I get that you have strong feelings on television ratings, but that is actually in no way what I am discussing.
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Apr 19, 2015 00:55
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Doctor Who was devised as an (educational!) kid's program, so yes initially it was very much designed with kids in mind, it just did it in a way that didn't talk down to them. The immense popularity of the show quickly saw it shift away from its initial brief and became more age-ranging, and very much became a family show - something the entire family could watch together and enjoy on different levels. During it's "teen" years it moved more into darker territory and appealed more to older kids, and towards the end of its run no one really knew who the show was meant to appeal to beyond "people who are already fans of Doctor Who". The revival was very much designed as a family show, and you can see the clash in the first few episodes where there are far too many elements of a lovely kid's show thrown in (burping dust-bins, fart jokes) mixed uncomfortably with more adult fare like utilizing corpses as vehicles, open questioning by other characters over whether the Doctor was taking sexual advantage of Rose etc - by a few episodes in they'd settled on a more comfortable mix and the show has mostly maintained that "family" show feel ever since. To call it a kid's show is just silly, especially in this day and age where "kid's show" usually means infantilizing or talking down to children like they're idiots. This isn't The Wizards of Waverly Place.
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Apr 19, 2015 03:48
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This episode has multiple characters being murdered, beheadings, child abduction, the best cunnilingus joke since Buffy and one of our good guys pointing a gun at another of our good guys. This is definitely an exception to the rule, but soft PG-13 is generally what the show aims for.
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Apr 19, 2015 04:51
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Jerusalem posted:Doctor Who was devised as an (educational!) kid's program, so yes initially it was very much designed with kids in mind, it just did it in a way that didn't talk down to them. The immense popularity of the show quickly saw it shift away from its initial brief and became more age-ranging, and very much became a family show - something the entire family could watch together and enjoy on different levels. During it's "teen" years it moved more into darker territory and appealed more to older kids, and towards the end of its run no one really knew who the show was meant to appeal to beyond "people who are already fans of Doctor Who". The revival was very much designed as a family show, and you can see the clash in the first few episodes where there are far too many elements of a lovely kid's show thrown in (burping dust-bins, fart jokes) mixed uncomfortably with more adult fare like utilizing corpses as vehicles, open questioning by other characters over whether the Doctor was taking sexual advantage of Rose etc - by a few episodes in they'd settled on a more comfortable mix and the show has mostly maintained that "family" show feel ever since.  Jesus Christ, I'm sorry I called the kids show we all love a kids show, and I promise I also will avoid anything that may be taken in any way to imply that your obviously super secure selves might enjoy things which are at all childish in any way. That said,  MY ACTUAL POINT IN MY POSTS instead of just hammering on you guys' hangups, was that regardless of any ratings, or whatever target age-group it was intended for, a large portion of the audience is made up of children. The people writing and running the show are aware of this. I think that this factors in to what they deem appropriate or not appropriate. I think that they make decisions based on that, and that it is an essential thing to do. Sometimes they do not hit the nail on the head. I believe in this episode it was well done.
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Apr 19, 2015 05:03
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Doctor Who "Let's Kill Hitler" Series 6, Episode 8 I love "Let's Kill Hitler". Just gonna put that out there, right now. I love this episode. I think this episode is absolutely fantastic and I would be one-hundred-percent willing to watch it again, because I greatly enjoyed the second half of this episode so much. "Let's Kill Hitler" gets the Occupation Seal of Approval. That being said, "Let's Kill Hitler" has...problems. It's just chock-full of them, problems everywhere. It's a generally problematic work, but to me at least the strengths so vastly outweigh its faults that it's hard to see "Let's" as anything other than a triumph, a strong return to form after a weak mid-season finale. I didn't love "Let's Kill Hitler" immediately, in fact I utterly despised the episode for about the first half of its runtime or so. This is largely due to the episode's setup and casting; the first half of "Let's" is a loving slog to muddle through, and it really only starts gelling after the thirty-minute mark. It's hard to view that specific choice as anything but intentional, however; as Oxxidation informed me when we were watching the episode together, "Let's Kill Hitler" was the first episode Moffat produced after taking a six-month hiatus due to unforced production errors. Therefore, episodes 601-607 could reasonably be considered a "season" of television in and of themselves, with 608-613 being their own separate but related narrative. With that in mind, the things Moffat had to do for 608 were quite numerous in comparison to the production of a regular midseason episode of Who- the cliffhanger end of "A Good Man Goes to War" essentially accidentally became a season finale, and therefore "Let's" has to do the uneasy job of being a second pilot for the season, reintroducing the audience to characters, plot points, and narratives they might've forgotten about on top of promising to pay off what exactly happened with Melody. With that in mind it's easy to see how Moffat screwed up the opening thirty minutes of "Let's Kill Hitler" so effortlessly. Having "Let's" pick up functionally right after the events of "Good Man" would be a probable misstep so instead Moffat instituted a timeskip and has Rory and Amy summon The Doctor to them, after waiting so long. This was overall probably the right move, but unfortunately gives us exposure to perhaps the worst side character in Doctor Who history in Mels (Nina Toussaint-White). Mels is...a really, REALLY bad character. Firstly, I don't think a show has ever, EVER successfully pulled off the "This previously never-mentioned-or-only-mentioned-in-passing character was actually there the whole time and is suddenly important to the narrative!" shtick, and it always comes across as completely forced and lame as poo poo (hello, Nikki and Paolo from LOST), a way for the showrunner to introduce a new recurring or permanent cast member and give them unearned cultural or narrative cachet previously reserved for the main characters. I guess I should explain why I so immediately hated Mels. Oxxidation mentioned that one of Moffat's failures as a showrunner lied in the fact that he spent so long building his narratives and lost so much control over the actual logistics of running a television program that cast members, including primary ones (including Matt Smith) ended up leaving before he could finish the stories he wanted to tell. So, when Mels arrived on the picture in the first fifteen minutes I saw with rather cold cynicism what, I thought, Moffat was setting up: behind the scenes, I figured, Karen Gillan needed to leave or wanted out for whatever reason (Guardians of the Galaxy doesn't film itself, I mean), so Moffat compromised by introducing a never-before-seen "childhood friend" of Amy's that would logically have some sort of emotional connection to Amy's overriding plot arcs (is a friend of Amy so cares about Rory, would have some sort of interest in knowing what happened to Melody, etc etc etc), to set up and make easier Amy's exit from the narrative. I assumed that, essentially, Moffat was Yankee Swap-ing his two female leads due to behind-the-scenes unavoidable cast changes, which is why I was so predisposed to hating Mels from the jump- to me she was clearly set up to be the replacement Amy, and I figured that Moffat setting up replacement Amy by automatically inserting her into Amy's life and making her in a bunch of ways a mirror image of Amy was Moffat soullessly preying on the audience's general feelings for Amy and just hoping for transference to strike. It came across as such a calculated and tone-deaf move, such an amateur mistake- the audience isn't an idiot, Moffat, they're not gonna pretend that "Amy, but black" is just as good as the original thing -that it was hard for me to believe that the same guy who wrote "Blink" and "The Pandorica Opens" could come up with and execute even the conceit for a character like Mels. But then we come up with the functional problems with Mels. I still don't think introducing a new character to a narrative, especially a television program, by implying that they've always been there but in the background is ever a good way to start a character off- because you're either telling the audience that they're a bunch of morons (for not noticing) or breaking the fourth wall to ask the audience to come on-board with a shared lie for the sake of narrative convenience. It just nakedly reveals the strings of television and breaks that oh-so-vaunted immersion for a narrative conceit that never pays dividends, because the audience can smell that obvious bullshit and are then predisposed to hate the character at the very least subconsciously. But- but I think that specific narrative setup for a character can work as a way to cut through the setup and slot a newly-minted character into the established dynamic without having to spend time acclimating the character with the world of the show. This is especially important with a show like Doctor Who since there's so much informed backstory of The Doctor- the TARDIS, time travel, Time Lords, "bigger on the inside", regeneration, sonic screwdriver- and so on and so on and so on and so on that it's become a parody, a literal in-joke of the show about how it has to ceaselessly do that setup with every new person aboard with The Doctor. So, even though the entire setup for a character like Mels just doesn't fundamentally work because that setup never works, even so it still has functional value that can at least forgive if not paper over its faults. But that relies on Mels being a decent character in her own right, because as I've mentioned before numerous times the most important part of fiction is characters over plot. Good characters can make bad plots work; good plots can only bring bad characters so far. And Mels is a bad, [bad character. She's not played especially well by Toussaint-White, or any of the younger actors playing her as a child, although that's hard to level at Nina the actress since the lines the script makes her say are so utterly loving wretched. It's amazing that Moffat, in general, has written the best characters on Who and specifically has written the overall best female characters and then produces the Mary Sue-iest Mary Sue in Mels. It's kind of incredible how badly he botched her character where she's an amazing badass with the cool one-liner who always knows what's going on and is super awesome and amazing and clever and rad, constantly waving a gun around as she smugly rolls her eyes because Rory and Amy just don't get it. It's such an incredibly bad character that it almost makes one think that Moffat wrote her intentionally poorly because she's so flat and obvious and bad, so utterly smug and without flaws. The problem with Mels is that her introduction also completely removes a lot of interesting nuance to Amy's backstory. One of the overriding themes of Amy's time on Who is in how she's so obsessed with The Doctor due entirely to her abandonment issues; she was alone all of her childhood, and thus developed a desperate, somewhat jealous need to rein in Rory who she made into a replacement Doctor in many aspects. The idea behind Amy is that of the outcast- the only Scottish girl in her sleepy little British village, an orphan who everyone thought was crazy- literally crazy -from her fanciful stories about "The Raggedy Doctor". The girl who went through therapists like other people go through tissues, the girl who nobody believed and everyone pitied. That sense of inadequacy even informs her choice of job- it's a tired, hoary trope but the idea of a woman becoming a stripper to cover deep-seated inadequacy and self-image issues makes sense in Amy's specific case and gives the audience some idea of how desperate Amy needed to be valued and accepted by her community at large. Mels undercuts all of those stakes to Amy- having someone who was even crazier and more obsessed with The Doctor and more ostracized by the people of Leadworth makes Amy lose all of her texture, especially when it comes in the form of the "cool badass who always knows what's going on". It's a character bait-and-switch the likes of which Who has never seen and makes Mels come off all the worse, this interloper onto the story of Who who ends up stealing all of Amy's motivations and definition to be a ten-cent knockoff of the original model, the off-brand cereal version of Amelia Pond. Mels is bad, and the focus of the narrative in the first quarter of the episode's running time turns "Let's" into an intolerable slog, the audience watching someone they immediately hate get the better of The Doctor and force him to, completely inexplicably, go back in time to titularly "kill Hitler". Unfortunately the timeskip doesn't really improve the show at all- "Let's" immediately dovetails into introducing about a thousand disparate plots, with the sudden addition of the strange Robo-Human being controlled by hundreds of tiny humans and the fact that Hitler gets his life accidentally saved by The Doctor et al. It's at this point that "Let's Kill Hitler" changes from being an awful slog to a confusing one, where suddenly a ton of plots start happening all at once and the episode just demands that the audience play along. The pacing of the episode just goes right out the window as the episode skips merrily along from plot point to plot point, not allowing any scene or sequence any real time to breathe as it immediately thrusts another sequence of confusing nonsense into the audience's face. It gives the episode as a whole a queasy, somewhat unnatural feeling, one in which Moffat was so desperate to have "Let's Kill Hitler" visit all these different events for his narrative to form he didn't stop to think how the audience would react to any of it, and as a result "Let's Kill Hitler" comes across as information overload, all the senses being overtaxed. It also doesn't help that so much of it seemed so unnecessary, in the moment- Mels regenerates into River, but then there's an overlong sequence of River trying (and finally succeeding after many failed attempts) to kill The Doctor leading into a chase sequence leading into River shooting up a Nazi...party? I guess? Meanwhile there's the whole sub-arc with the Teselecta and what they're doing, the Antibodies, and so on and so on. The setting, too, seems completely superfluous- why Germany in the height of Nazism? What does that specifically add besides Rory looking sweet on a motorcycle? It's just a confusing narrative decision to set the episode in such a charged point of the past and then make the episode have almost nothing to do with it, and is yet one more misstep among many "Let's Kill Hitler" makes. What's funny, though, is that at roughly the thirty minute mark the episode finally starts to improve, and in a big way: after finally working through all the setup the episode improves, and drastically. The newly-reincarnated River is an absolute blast to watch onscreen, The Doctor in a tux is loving inspired, and the entire confrontation between River, The Doctor, and Robo-Amy is just fantastic. Smith's physical acting as the dying, poisoned Doctor is some of the absolute best that he's ever done, able to convey via subtle movements and slight quirks how deeply in pain he is, and it's a joy to watch him onscreen. In fact, all of Matt Smith's acting leading into and in the climax is just flat-out loving incredible- a particular standout is when Eleven, poisoned and barely able to move, is in the middle of trying desperately to climb the stairs to the TARDIS to save Amy and Rory. His cries of "Help me" as tears well in his eyes is some seriously affecting poo poo and makes a lot of the earlier troubles "Let's" has singularly worthwhile. In fact, that's my major take-away from the second half in general, and the climax in specific, of "Let's Kill Hitler"- it's very much an episode that Moffat built to intentionally make its second half land emotionally, and when viewed from that perspective most of its faults are deliberate or necessary to achieve its aims. One example is the disparate, myriad plotlines within "Let's Kill Hitler" that gives it its aforementioned queasy, unfocused feeling in its first half. Those problems are still extant, but to me they're at least justified by the way the climax of the episode plays out; the sheer totality of plots turn out necessary to functionally give the climax its emotional punch- the episode needed Mels to regenerate so she'd have no idea who River is, needed some sort of framing device that could reveal to River who she is during the climax (hence the Teselecta), needed The Doctor to die to pay off River sacrificing her future regenerations (also servicing the importance of her death and sacrifice in the Library two-parter), and so on. Yes, it's a messy ugly path to the climax but to me the emotional payoff was so thorough and so earned and so clearly built off of the ugliness of the first half of the episode that it was all worth the struggle. It's also a situation where Moffat clearly wrote the episode knowing what he was doing, even if he still messed up part of the execution. Like, the character of Mels, for instance; there's absolutely no loving way Moffat didn't write Mels intentionally poorly. Just going off of how he's written characters, especially female characters, up to this point I refuse to believe, there's just no loving way, that Moffat saw Mels on the script and went "Yep, she's a cool badass!" Moffat is quite frankly too good of a writer to make that obvious of a mistake, and if anything the shittiness of Mels' character works thematically with the aims of the episode as a whole: Moffat wrote Mels as this intentionally flat Mary Sue-esque persona so that when she regenerates into River the audience has an automatic reaction of relief, much like I did when I realized that she's not being set up as the new Companion. Mels is so clearly flat and boring and smug and lifeless because it helps explain River's character: she receives an emotional arc throughout the course of the episode starting as a newly-regenerated "fresh" character who still has some remnant of parts of Mels' personality- she's a smug psychopath who tries to be too cool for her own good -and via the influence of The Doctor into her life ends up on the path to being the River Song that the audience is comfortable with. You can't have an arc if a character starts out perfectly, so to me it's crystal clear that Moffat set up the Mels character to intentionally be as abrasive and worthless as possible- the themes and progression of "Let's Kill Hitler" serve only to reinforce that notion. In general that's why I'm so positive on this episode- it's ultimately an episode that seeks to explain River Song, and to me there was always a hanging question of why, why River cares so deeply for The Doctor and vice versa. To me, this episode slotted in the final missing piece of River's backstory in a way that felt completely narratively earned- her first interaction with The Doctor mirrors her last, and she ends up saving his life in both cases (at great personal cost). There's also parallel themes of guilt in both characters- The Doctor for allowing her to die in the Library two-parter and River for killing him here. It's a clever, emotionally resonant loop of storytelling that to me completely validates any sort of looseness, any sort of jank leading up to it. "Let's Kill Hitler" is entirely an episode that tries to explain who and what River is and why she does the things she does, and in that respect it completely excels. That's still part of the problem, however; the episode is so clearly focused on River that its singular focus ends up undercutting or selling out some tenets of its premise. For an episode titled "Let's Kill Hitler", Hitler is barely in it and the setting of pre-WWII Germany ends up feeling like a complete afterthought. Although I can appreciate why the premise exists- without it we don't have the Teselecta and without the Teselecta we don't have that great scene of River realizing who The Doctor was talking about all this time -it ends up being a situation of putting plot over character, which even if putting plot over character is in ultimate service of having a character moment it's still a misstep that ends up having the setting as a whole feel functionally pointless. More obviously, though, is the fact that the episode completely fucks up servicing Amy and Rory as characters, more specifically their loss of Melody. It's honestly a really ugly and kind of offensive move the episode makes, where it doesn't for a single second validate or focus on Amy and Rory's loss of their child, after so much of the previous episode focused on Melody and how her disappearance would affect her parents. Objectively speaking it's a huge loving mistake and I can see where it would upset people- but to me I don't particularly care, because "Let's Kill Hitler" is very clearly meant to be an episode explaining River, and not Melody. To me the slipshod way Moffat completely glosses over the disappearance of Melody and how it would affect Rory and Amy is more of a symptom of his singular focus on servicing River's character, not from any sort of ill-will towards them- there's really no part of "Let's Kill Hitler", any of its mistakes that come off as intentional as more of Moffat not really paying attention to the implications of his own narrative. And to me, it was completely worth it because the emotional setpieces for River, and her specific relationship with The Doctor, were so good- I honestly didn't even notice the ugly sort of implications the episode makes about Rory and Amy's (non-)reaction to the disappearance of Melody until Oxx pointed it out to me. Just because I didn't notice it doesn't mean it didn't exist, however, and it's for the specific bobbling of the Melody/Amy/Rory dynamic, despite clearly not in any way being a focus of the episode, that I'm giving this episode a B over an A. Grade: B Random Thoughts:
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Apr 19, 2015 21:08
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Toxxupation posted:Doctor Who What?
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Apr 19, 2015 21:33
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For me at least, and others I know- either having, or just helping to raise a child makes this episode near inexcusable. Couple with the fact that the first half is just awful... Not the worst of Who though.
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Apr 19, 2015 21:42
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Curveball at least we all hate Mels
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Apr 19, 2015 21:43
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I'm shocked. I hated this episode so, so much. Mels sucked. River being able to regenerate sucks. I have more to say, but it will have to wait until the season is over.Toxxupation posted:there's absolutely no loving way Moffat didn't write Mels intentionally poorly. What? Moffat's not perfect. I mean, anyone can poo poo the bed on a bad day, but just because Moffat's the best writer of revival-era Doctor Who, that doesn't make him Vince Gilligan.
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Apr 19, 2015 21:46
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