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Yvonmukluk posted:Wait, whaaaaat!? I knew about the Shopkeeper stuff and Luke being gay, but the return of Ace and Seven?! Ace was deffo coming back, they set that up in Death of the Doctor. They weren't sure if bringing in McCoy would work out, but they were excited to try and make it all work. gently caress, 2011 was an awful year for Doctor Who all-round.
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Aug 30, 2014 21:39
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I'm looking forward to seeing the Impossible Planet double, because it seems to have a bad reputation and yet it's one of my favourite Doctor Who stories.
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Aug 30, 2014 21:54
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I remember hating it.
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Aug 30, 2014 21:56
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SirSamVimes posted:I'm looking forward to seeing the Impossible Planet double, because it seems to have a bad reputation and yet it's one of my favourite Doctor Who stories. The first half is as good as any base under siege episode that Doctor Who does (not really spoilers). The second half ends kind of weird/silly so I bet that's most of the controversy, subject matter aside.
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Aug 30, 2014 21:57
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SirSamVimes posted:I'm looking forward to seeing the Impossible Planet double, because it seems to have a bad reputation Really? Those were the first episodes to make me not hate myself even a little bit for watching this poo poo.
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Aug 30, 2014 21:58
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Those episodes are great, maybe the best in the season I M O. Something to look forward to!
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Aug 30, 2014 21:59
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The Impossible Planet and its second part are the epitome of what 90s Doctor Who fandom would call "trad". That basically determines how you feel about it, in my experience.
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Aug 30, 2014 22:00
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DoctorWhat posted:The Impossible Planet and its second part are the epitome of what 90s Doctor Who fandom would call "trad". That basically determines how you feel about it, in my experience. I don't like em
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Aug 30, 2014 22:02
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MrL_JaKiri posted:I don't like em Do you like Scherzo?
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Aug 30, 2014 22:04
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Part one, good. Part two, really bad.
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Aug 30, 2014 22:04
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Hello, this is me ending the conversation, conversation ended, ok byeeeeee
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Aug 30, 2014 22:06
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Maybe start a blog if you don't want other people participating in the discussion?
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Aug 30, 2014 22:15
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Irish Joe posted:Maybe start a blog if you don't want other people participating in the discussion? Starting a discussion about poo poo that hasn't happened yet isn't "participating"
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Aug 30, 2014 22:18
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Irish Joe posted:Maybe start a blog if you don't want other people participating in the discussion? You're incredibly bad at comprehending simple rules
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Aug 30, 2014 22:20
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Toxxupation posted:
You could have just left it at that, really.
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Aug 30, 2014 22:27
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DoctorWhat posted:The Impossible Planet and its second part are the epitome of what 90s Doctor Who fandom would call "trad". That basically determines how you feel about it, in my experience. I have no idea what this term stands for or what it means. Maybe after they do episode one you can explain it and poo poo?
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Aug 31, 2014 00:28
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30.5 Days posted:I have no idea what this term stands for or what it means. Maybe after they do episode one you can explain it and poo poo? "Traditional" and "Radical". "Rad" and "Trad". Father's Day is capital-R Rad, written by one of the great "Rad" writers of the wilderness years; whereas Tooth and Claw is closer to "Trad", and The Impossible Planet is the Traddest New-Who had been up to that point. EDIT: Of course, the "Rad/Trad" dichotomy is fundamentally flawed, seeing as "An Unearthly Child", the very first Doctor Who story, would be unmistakably "Rad" by the standards of the 90s. DoctorWhat fucked around with this message at 00:35 on Aug 31, 2014 |
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Aug 31, 2014 00:33
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I feel like a worse person for knowing that now
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Aug 31, 2014 00:34
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DoctorWhat posted:"Traditional" and "Radical". "Rad" and "Trad". Father's Day is capital-R Rad, written by one of the great "Rad" writers of the wilderness years; whereas Tooth and Claw is closer to "Trad", and The Impossible Planet is the Traddest New-Who had been up to that point. Posts like these are why I never watched Dr. Who before this thread
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Aug 31, 2014 00:45
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Soothing Vapors posted:Posts like these are why I never watched Dr. Who before this thread To clarify, the rad/trad poo poo was dumb 90s fandom anxiety because the show was off the air with no real meaning. Even the "traddest" New Who stories are "rad" compared to almost all of the pre-1989 stuff.
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Aug 31, 2014 00:47
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Doctor Who fandom went to some weird places in the 90's.
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Aug 31, 2014 00:49
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Captain Fargle posted:Doctor Who fandom went to some weird places in the 90's. Let me tell you about Faction Paradox...
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Aug 31, 2014 00:50
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MrAristocrates posted:I feel like a worse person for knowing that now I've been a massive Doctor Who fan for years, even before the revival and I've never heard that poo poo before. 
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Aug 31, 2014 00:54
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The only good Doctor Who novel is Coming of the Terraphiles.
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Aug 31, 2014 00:54
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PriorMarcus posted:I've been a massive Doctor Who fan for years, even before the revival and I've never heard that poo poo before. Me too, I never heard those terms before and I feel like my life is a little worse off for knowing them now.
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Aug 31, 2014 01:03
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Soothing Vapors posted:Posts like these are why I never watched Dr. Who before this thread Wait this thread convinced you to watch doctor who? No! No! gently caress! No! gently caress YOU OXXIDATION
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Aug 31, 2014 01:06
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So some Who episodes are Rad, some are Trad, Irish Joe is Bad, and Occupation is Mad. Noted.
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Aug 31, 2014 01:10
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AFAIK the trad/rad poo poo originates from slapfights on Usenet, which probably explains a lot.
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Aug 31, 2014 01:49
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Oxxidation posted:So some Who episodes are Rad, some are Trad, Irish Joe is Bad, and Occupation is Mad. Noted. 
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Aug 31, 2014 01:49
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Toxxupation posted:Wait this thread convinced you to watch doctor who? I decided to watch it just enough to keep up with this thread and now I'm two seasons ahead of you. Look upon your dark works and despair.
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Aug 31, 2014 03:24
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Soothing Vapors posted:I decided to watch it just enough to keep up with this thread and now I'm two seasons ahead of you. Look upon your dark works and despair. This is the best possible result of this thread. 
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Aug 31, 2014 03:34
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Doctor Who "The Impossible Planet" Series 2, Episode 8 It seems like, after 21 episodes of pure inconsistency Doctor Who has finally found its gear and is just pumping out genuine quality episodes. It's all the more interesting, because while "The Idiot's Lantern" was good mostly because it was a fun if shallow episode of television carried by its writing and performances of its leads, "The Impossible Planet" is great as a plotting and tonal work, with the performances almost secondary to the whole thing. The episode opens with The Doctor and Rose landing on a space station perched on top of a planetoid that is somehow capable of orbiting a black hole without being sucked in. Now, clearly, as The Doctor notes, such an event should be literally impossible; thus the need for the space station, which is conducting a drilling expedition to the core of the planet to figure out what, exactly, is causing this anomaly. It doesn't sound like much, but the conceit of the episode being an isolated scientific expedition in a remote, lethal environment allows the episode to crib from such classic sci-fi horror flicks as Alien, The Thing, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Which is, essentially, exactly what the episode does: Every single scene and plot point felt like an homage (some, less charitable, but still correct viewers would call it "rip-off") to one of those films. Normally speaking, such blatant aping would feel soulless, and perhaps it still does, but it's able to replicate the feel of watching those 80's sci fi horror flicks so well you're able to forgive them. Doctor Who, outside of Moffat's work, just has a general tonal problem: It'll try to set a specific sort of feel for the average episode and usually completely undercut it via tonally incongrous material, whether positive (a rare, effective moment of emotional honesty in an otherwise-campy bit of nonsense) or negative (some sort of slapstick or bad comedy bit ruining an otherwise, quote-on-quote, "serious" episode of television). It's so common, in so much of Doctor Who in general, that an episode that's able to pick a tone and just stick with it throughout the episode without selling it out in either direction automatically gets a decent grade from me. I think this is my biggest issue with Doctor Who as a whole, and why I hated Eccleston's run so much: it's a show that almost never is confident in what it wants to be, and therefore will cowardly cut its own attempts at consistency by including something to appeal to everyone in every episode. A "serious" episode will randomly have a comedic bit to please the just-for-laughs crowd; an episode with extremely high relativistic stakes will take the time to have The Doctor and Rose make goo-goo eyes at each other to please the shippers; an episode that's really whacky will have a random Big Emotional Moment in hopes to please viewers like me; a wildly emotional episode will have a scene of understated (attempted) nuance to please viewers like Oxxidation. It's this sort of "everything, including the kitchen sink" methodology to episode writing that infuriates me the most because it reads as such a spineless way to write; if you want this episode to be whatever it is, just be that. Even when these off-tone sequences work, and I can say personally that they actually have, it's still a bad approach to screenwriting. It's all the more confounding because there's ways to keep tone while still including those moments; Breaking Bad, the in my opinion absolute best show ever made, was frequently a very very funny show; it's just that all the humor was incredibly dark, so it still kept that serious, depressing tone even when you got stuff like Walt throwing pizza on the roof of his house. In contrast, Doctor Who will just include base fart jokes or some poo poo to keep the "whacky slapstick" portion of the audience happy. Which is what makes "The Impossible Planet" so good. Tonally speaking, it's a dark, perplexing, disturbing episode of television; although it's clear that whatever the crew is drilling to is evil as gently caress, the slow reveals- with the cast members hallucinating lines of dialog or having visions -still works in setting the tone. The constrained sets, for once, help in keeping the atmosphere of the episode, since there's an encroaching claustrophobia, a sense of hopelessness that permeates all of the episode's events. This is especially helped along by The Doctor and Rose's little arc throughout the episode- within the first ten minutes, the TARDIS is dropped into a crater and presumed destroyed, suddenly cutting off the one lifeline the two main characters have had this entire series. As even The Doctor notes, it's the "only thing he's ever owned". Making it inaccessible throws into sharp relief just how hosed the situation is, and makes the little moment that The Doctor and Rose share as they ponder what they'll do if they make it out of this mess alive. Instead of the usual vomit-inducing forced sexual tension, this whole scene (in addition to being genuinely understated, for once) reads more as two desperate individuals hoping for a pat resolution for this ordeal, not as two people falling in love or whatever. And because of that, the whole scene works and adds to the narrative stakes of the episode over detracting from it. It just really sucks that, in the clutch, when everything else was on point, the episode fails on something so artificial: special effects. Set on a space station and clearly copying such sci fi classics as Even Horizon et al (I mean, heck, it turns out that The Devil himself is what's powering the anti-black hole field), the special effects completely and utterly ruin the tone the episode sets otherwise. The crew of the space station is forgettable but competent when it's focused on their acting, which inexplicably seems to fit even better to the whole horror tone the episode is setting; if they were too good it'd be almost weird. All of the cast is able to accurately sell the psychological horror that "Impossible Planet" trades in; there's just a sense of unease that permeates the episode, especially when you get little scenes like the monotone-but-generally-cheery soothing feminine computer voice intones "He is awake. He is awake. He bathes in the black sun." But all that is undercut by whenever something, well, bad happens to the cast. The special effects are laughably bad; the space station suffers an earthquake (that "destroys" the TARDIS) early on, and they illustrate the damage it causes by wildly shaking the camera and having what are clearly placed firejets erupt on the set. I mean, this is sub Star Trek SFX. The original one. Seeing one of the crew member's dead body floating in the vacuum of space is supposed to be coldly affecting, but it's so clearly a (really lovely) greenscreen effect that it makes the whole scene laughable. And this just persists, on and on and on throughout the episode- Toby, the mind-controlled puppet crew member, gets scrawls all over his face that are clearly Magic Marker. The Ood, a slave race that all get mind controlled at the end of the episode, has one of their members shoot out a fuckin'...like...taserball or some poo poo that insta-kills one of the guards. It's poo poo like that that just ruins the tone of the episode by making "The Impossible Planet" read as one big joke. But there's so much good there (even if it's derivative) that I can't really feel too harsh on this episode. It seems like Doctor Who is finally willing to be exactly what it wants for an entire episode. This tonal dissonance is more of a financial issue than a creative one, and because of that I'm more willing to forgive its faults. Plus it has a decent cliffhanger that feels earned, for once. Grade: B Random Thoughts:
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Aug 31, 2014 03:45
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Is it really that hard not to post spoilers in this thread? There are two other Doctor Who threads. Like, you can bring up Classic Who or Big Finish, just... don't discuss the episodes they haven't watched yet. Toxx, if you feel like commenting on anything else about this episode either before or after you watch the next one, I'd like to know what you think about the Ood. There was a really interesting article written about them as an oppressed group (being a literal slave race) as compare to some other oppressed groups in Doctor Who (which unfortunately you will have to wait to read, as it references future episodes). I have some issues with The Impossible Planet, although I do agree that it latches on to a genre and decides what tropes it wants to adopt fairly early on.
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Aug 31, 2014 04:01
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I keep it a policy not to respond to criticism/notes about my reviews but i'll specifically address that point in my next review bicyclops although i'd be interested in reading the thread's opinions on this
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Aug 31, 2014 04:04
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I love the Ood. They're my favorite Who aliens.
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Aug 31, 2014 04:15
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Toxxupation posted:I keep it a policy not to respond to criticism/notes about my reviews but i'll specifically address that point in my next review bicyclops That's totally fair. In fact, it's probably best not to color your views on future episodes by asking you to focus on anything. I kind of like that you focus on making a decision and sticking with it as the strong suit of the episode, because I do think RTD era (and a lot of later) Moffat has much more of a "signature" for his teleplays than many of the others. They revolve around a character who wants one thing and the episodes make explicit use of the genre their referencing. I think a lot of the complaints with Moffat lately is that he's stopped killing his darlings and as a result that focus has vanished, making a lot of his modern episodes a bit more like regular Who while emphasizing some of his flaws. I'm going to refrain from commenting on the Ood until I have the context of some future stuff to compare it to. If you think of it and I forget, remind me to link the article at the end of Tennant's run, because it's the kind of thing you can get the gist of from scanning and glancing at the big quotes to see if you'd be at all interested.
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Aug 31, 2014 04:17
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Doctor Who "The Impossible Planet" Series 2, Episode 8 At this point I feel it necessary to admit that my normally flawless memory has failed me; Season 2 isn't quite as poo poo as I remembered. I think my first run was mostly brought down by my weariness at the two-parters, Rose's nonsense, and an eangerness to get on with it so I could see a much-vaunted episode in the next season; now that I know where most of the pitfalls and dull bits are, I can enjoy the quality stuff and make up fun little excuses in my head for the rest. I remembered almost nothing of "The Impossible Planet" going in because my mind tried to scrub out everything involving the "Heart of Steel" two-parter and overshot the mark a bit, but now that I'm re-watching I think I can see the angle the writers were playing with it, and it's quite clever - and if it was unintentional, well screw you, it's still clever. "The Impossible Planet" is, in nearly all ways, a D-grade horror flick. You've got the unlikely meshing of two cliche concepts (spaceships and Satanism, which as Occ said was already something Event Horizon did before and better), you've got atrocious special effects, you've got a cast of characters who exchange limp banter as they patiently wait to be picked off by whatever hostile force roams these pre-fab steel corridors. If events were allowed to continue as they were, we would get a 90-minute straight-to-TV movie where Captain Dreadlocks and the most attractive female crew member eventually destroyed space-Satan, probably with high explosives, and then barely escaped the planet only to fall into the clutches of a last-second twist ending before a smash cut to credits. The actors would be underpaid for their services and shuffle drearily on to whatever other two-bit roles awaited them. The film is shown to an audience that is primarily asleep, on the couch, in their underpants. But not so with "The Impossible Planet," because The Doctor happens, and he keeps happening. Tennant is manic as a matter of course, but he loses his loving mind all over the set in this episode; his face contorts and mugs so much that for a second I was seriously worried all the skin on his head was going to just roll up his skull like a windowshade. He gives Captain Dreadlocks a great big hug for surveying the death-planet, he mourns his spaceship, he shares a quiet introspective moment with Rose that has nothing at all to do with and gives us a break from the generic Spooky Stuff going on elsewhere in the station. The Doctor has basically intruded onto the plot of a completely different series and Who'd it all up, which I can appreciate even as the negative qualities of that fifth-rate sci-fi horror-thriller bleed through. The other characters are largely unremarkable and the CGI among the most laughable seen so far. Not laughable, however, are the Ood, the Cthuloid slave-race that populates the station. The Ood are just one more bit of proof in a very large stack that practical effects beat out CGI every time; show us some flash-cuts of literal horned Satan writhing around on computer screens like a 1999-era FPS endboss and it's equal parts dull and ridiculous, but the Ood, which are basically just a rather well-done mask on a bunch of stage extras, are strangely charming and terribly creepy all at once. Their neat blue uniforms, gloved hands, and news-anchor voices contrasting with the wriggly tentacular heads and slowly blinking diagonal eyes is a crude but effective juxtaposition of the mundane and the grotesque, even before they start to coolly announce over dinner that "the Beast and his armies shall rise from the pit to make war against God" (one of the episode's, and maybe even the series', more unnerving moments, if only because it comes out of nowhere and the accompanying musical sting doesn't go through your head like an icepick). The Ood's disquieting nature takes a bit of a hit when they reveal to the hapless crew that their favorite ancestral sport is Taserball, but still, it's a good ride while it lasts. As for the Space-Devil himself, it's hard these days to make Satan seem like an intimidating presence, what with it being common knowledge now that the sort of people who tell us to fear Satan are themselves often a good deal worse, but when they don't shackle him to the special effects the writers do an adequate job of making Star-Lucifer creepy enough. The nasty little game of red-light-green-light he plays with Toby, telling him not to turn around on pain of death while approaching him with the very real threat of death growing larger, was a neat bit of psychological torture, not in the least because we're never given any indication that it would've mattered whether Toby had turned around or not, meaning the whole thing was just for chuckles on the part of Black Hole Beelzebub. Interstellar Shaitan's presence is otherwise felt as a sort of hostile radiation babbling through the speakers on the ship in what might have been a deliberate (if less creepy) callback to the Child, which at once makes him insubstantial and dangerously pervasive. It's only when physically manifests that things go south, because he appears as either the Cyberdemon or as a skinny white nerd doing his best Aphex Twin impression in the mirror. So that's "The Impossible Planet" - a rocky but overall positive start to a Syfy original hijacked by a babbling Estuary impersonator and his perky blonde sidekick. Will they pull an "everybody lives" ending out of what would otherwise be a film that ended with every single character dead? Well, no, we've already got a body count. But with luck, they can at least avert the otherwise-inevitable cliffhanger. The war against Galactic Angra Mainyu is a story that does not need a sequel.
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Aug 31, 2014 04:45
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Toxxupation posted:I keep it a policy not to respond to criticism/notes about my reviews but i'll specifically address that point in my next review bicyclops Speaking as one of the asshats who have watched the show since it reaired, giving my opinion at the least on the Ood is hard and it's also hard for me to recommend you think too much on them, due to stuff later that DOES color my opinion on them.
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Aug 31, 2014 04:46
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The Ood as presented in this episode are interesting because they're so passive - even when they're on the attack it is under somebody else's direction. The all too brief chatter about their status as a slave race (and the humans from the future - who SHOULD be more enlightened - laughing off the notion of treating them as equals) is tantalizing. The trouble is that it's a really neat concept introduced as a sideline to a completely different (and very interesting) main plot that takes away all the attention. I'm of two minds whether I appreciate the "universe-building" present in the story by having these guys mostly in the background, or if I'm grumpy that they're thrown out there with the majority opinion/reaction to them from on-screen characters being such callous indifference to their status as a race who "want to serve" - there was a lot that could have been explored with that concept.
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Aug 31, 2014 05:15
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I see we're getting on in season 2 
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