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Payndz posted:the Class 117 diesel multiple unit seen in the episode was retired from mainline service in 2000 and was in British Railways green livery to boot. yeah see they had to keep them in service due to budget cuts caused by the funding of the torchwood energy weapon
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Aug 12, 2015 14:23
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Payndz posted:and MikeJF posted:yeah see they had to keep them in service due to budget cuts caused by the funding of the torchwood energy weapon These are the two nerdiest posts in this entire thread. Go on. 
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Aug 12, 2015 14:27
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Payndz posted:Flatline was a great episode, made all the better for sounding really stupid as a premise ("Two-dimension aliens invade our universe, causing the TARDIS to shrink!") and then turning out to be genuinely creepy and unsettling. The only things wrong with it were that yep, "the Boneless" is a terrible name, and I just assumed it was a preserved railway. That for some reason had empty DMUS trundling around it... Or I could have asked my friends in Bristol if they really did have weird time warp trains running around the place. (But yeah, great episode and a fantastic pair of episodes from a new writer  )
Paul.Power fucked around with this message at 17:56 on Aug 12, 2015 |
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Aug 12, 2015 17:39
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Occ should check out Contradiction. Partly because it's a pretty neat little murder mystery game and mostly because the lead actor looks like he watched Tennant play the Doctor and went "yeah, that's how you act well."
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Aug 12, 2015 19:26
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i have also it has a blonde matt smith man that game is weird
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Aug 12, 2015 19:40
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Payndz posted:"the Boneless" is a terrible name Man I love that as a name for them, since it sums up the Doctor's contempt for them pretty nicely in addition to their actual physical nature. Part of that may be because the naming is wrapped up in that excellent, excellent, excellent, excellent, excellent banishment scene when the Doctor strides out of the TARDIS to put paid to them, because that scene was excellent. Excellent.
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Aug 12, 2015 23:00
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I'm far more high-functioning than that.
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Aug 13, 2015 02:04
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It was neat to see Capadi give a Big Speech that seemed to have been pulled out of the Tennant years; and on top of it all knock it out of the park.
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Aug 13, 2015 02:22
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Toxxupation posted:i have Simon from Contradiction is what would happen if a tumblr fangirl accidentally created the love child of Benedict Cumberbatch and Matt Smith by wishing really hard or something
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Aug 13, 2015 03:34
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This thread awakens me to new things. Somebody made an FMV game in TYOOL 2015?
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Aug 13, 2015 04:31
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FMV has been having a little bit of a resurgence lately, with Contradiction and Her Story this year and Roundabout last year, as well as a bunch of lovely XBLIG and Mobile games
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Aug 13, 2015 04:38
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Don't get her story, btw
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Aug 13, 2015 05:25
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Raenir K. Artemi posted:FMV has been having a little bit of a resurgence lately, with Contradiction and Her Story this year and Roundabout last year, as well as a bunch of lovely XBLIG and Mobile games Plus roundabout has at least two goons as voice actors
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Aug 13, 2015 11:33
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No mention of Telsa Effect: A Tex Murphy Adventure?
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Aug 13, 2015 12:01
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I liked Clara's subplot though. I've always liked the "fine you be the rear end in a top hat" gimmick plot. Much like fish out of water plots it tickles something exploratory in my psyche.
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Aug 13, 2015 19:55
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Paul.Power posted:Or I could have asked my friends in Bristol if they really did have weird time warp trains running around the place. We do not. Jamie Mathieson single-handedly rescued this series for me. Flatline is exactly what I want Doctor Who to be like all the time - Actual Sci-Fi Concepts, Written Well.
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Aug 13, 2015 21:31
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Little_wh0re posted:Plus roundabout has at least two goons as voice actors 2? Hah! Roundabout is LP Subforum: The Game.
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Aug 13, 2015 22:13
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Yeah there are 5 goon VA's, at least 4 live goon actors, the entire dev team is goons and the pedestrian audio is at least half goons
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Aug 13, 2015 22:53
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This episode's also an example of how good they've gotten at managing the Doctor-lite episodes. This was this season's. Basically all in the console room for him.
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Aug 14, 2015 01:14
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And of course Mummy was the Clara-lite one. Funny how one guy did both of them. And funny how they both turned out to be amazing.
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Aug 14, 2015 01:54
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Toxxupation posted:Don't get her story, btw I will never look at a hairbrush the same way again
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Aug 14, 2015 02:06
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I wonder if the episode Mathieson writes next series will also involve trains in some capacity. Maybe trains make Doctor Who episodes better. I suppose there must be a lot of overlap between train likers and Doctor Who fans. I don't really have a point to make, this episode is good, thanks for your time.
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Aug 14, 2015 02:21
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LeafyOrb posted:I suppose there must be a lot of overlap between train likers and Doctor Who fans. Perhaps Matheson's two-parter next season will be a period piece from the 60s or earlier that uses a preserved steam railway as a location .quote:Yeah there are 5 goon VA's, at least 4 live goon actors Makes sense that there'd be more and I wouldn't be as familiar with their voices, though.
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Aug 14, 2015 06:55
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Barry Foster posted:We do not.  Mathieson for new showrunner!
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Aug 16, 2015 21:18
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Look what happened the last time someone wrote two good scripts and became showrunner.
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Aug 17, 2015 04:58
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Big Mean Jerk posted:Look what happened the last time someone wrote two good scripts and became showrunner. A marked overall improvement in quality and popularity?
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Aug 17, 2015 06:26
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I'm just saying, taking a good writer and burdening him with production and budget management would only be detrimental.
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Aug 17, 2015 07:36
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Big Mean Jerk posted:I'm just saying, taking a good writer and burdening him with production and budget management would only be detrimental. To that particular writer but but a net benefit to the show? It's been worth it so far.
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Aug 17, 2015 09:43
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How about we keep getting him to write, but get someone with showrunning / management experience to handle the production side of things?
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Aug 17, 2015 09:52
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Doctor Spaceman posted:How about we keep getting him to write, but get someone with showrunning / management experience to handle the production side of things? You mean have an exec producer and a script editor? It'll never work.
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Aug 17, 2015 12:06
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Doctor Spaceman posted:How about we keep getting him to write, but get someone with showrunning / management experience to handle the production side of things? Maybe let RTD come back for that kind of thing, he's drat good at it. Maybe he can write an episode now and then if he behaves himself.
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Aug 17, 2015 14:02
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Yvonmukluk posted:Maybe let RTD come back for that kind of thing, he's drat good at it. Maybe he can write an episode now and then if he behaves himself. "So it's this story set on a tiny island in the middle of nowhere with a small research team, and then they find a casket and spooky things happen, and it turns out there's actually NINETY BILLION DALEKS INSIDE AND THE WHOLE WORLD-" "Russell! No, bad!" <hits with rolled up newspaper>
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Aug 17, 2015 14:25
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The_Doctor posted:"So it's this story set on a tiny island in the middle of nowhere with a small research team, and then they find a casket and spooky things happen, and it turns out there's actually NINETY BILLION DALEKS INSIDE AND THE WHOLE WORLD-" YOU GET FOUR DALEKS TO PLAY WITH
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Aug 17, 2015 14:27
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MikeJF posted:YOU GET FOUR DALEKS TO PLAY WITH Having three or four gave us the Cybermen/Dalek shouting match, before the other elventy billion were released, so that seems fine.
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Aug 17, 2015 14:32
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The_Doctor posted:"So it's this story set on a tiny island in the middle of nowhere with a small research team, and then they find a casket and spooky things happen, and it turns out there's actually NINETY BILLION DALEKS INSIDE AND THE WHOLE WORLD-" Look, we both know that would would actually happen is: "Can we get children to sing a creepy nursery rhyme about ninety billion Daleks for the previous
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Aug 17, 2015 14:36
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Doctor Who "Flatline" Series 8, Episode 9 "Perspective" is the word of the day in "Flatline". The literal: the antagonists are creatures from a universe with only two dimensions, the episode is full of forced-perspective tricks and images. The figurative: Clara pretends to be The Doctor, and the differences in how she's perceived both by others and by herself forms the emotional backbone of "Flatline". It all forms a neat whole that manages to, on every level, impart the thematic narrative of the piece. Everything ties together. Perspective is an inherently dishonest thing. Every viewpoint is subjective. Witness testimony, in criminal cases, is notoriously unreliable. People see only what they're able to see, and often times not even then. An entire medium of art - cinema - only exists because the human eye can be fooled into thinking that separate still frames, when viewed at a rate of twenty-four or more a second, have motion between them. The eye literally fills in the gaps. That's how movies work. That's how tv works. That's how video games work. It's illusory, a con, a trick. Magic, another art form that plays on the faultiness of a single viewer's perspective. The brain fills in the gaps, too. People see not only what they're able to see but what they want to see. They focus on the pretty girl in the low-cut tank top. They tune out the blaring headphones on the bus. They validate themselves. They idolize others, stripping away the flaws. They justify and make excuses. They lie. Which gives us Clara, the ur-example. The most dishonest and delusional of the Companions that we've seen, Clara is defined by her capacity for deception, self- and otherwise. Clara is an interesting Companion in a lot of ways; for my money, though, what makes her the most enticing is how she's not really good. Companions are virginal, grounding forces; they exist to impart a moralistic perspective to The Doctor and that's...kind of...it. They're the "human" element, meant to reign in The Doctor from his own worst excesses. They're the annoying voice in his ear, the Na'Vi to The Doctor's Link, yelling "Hey! Listen! Committing genocide is Bad!" until he finally decides to go along with the program. Which, to be clear, Clara does, but more out of obligation than anything else. Clara lies. Clara lies a lot, to everyone else - especially Danny, but also The Doctor - and to herself. She lies for increasingly less justifiable reasons. Danny doesn't like The Doctor at all, but he clearly respects him and loves Clara, and understands her fixation on him. Danny's a permissive and reasonable person, which makes the fact that Clara's lying to him about travelling with The Doctor all the more confusing. The only coherent explanation is is that Clara is so fixated, so obsessed with The Doctor that she's willing to sacrifice everyone and everything around her, even unnecessarily, to be close to him. And this is why she's so unique, because it's such a self-destructive move on her part. A Companion being obsessed with The Doctor to the point of toxic desire is not a unique character trait, but with Clara it's self-evidently negative and a clear decision she's making. The sense I've gathered from Season 8 Clara is that, unlike all of her predecessors, she doesn't want to help The Doctor, or date The Doctor. She wants to be The Doctor. Which sort of explains her own worst excesses. Clara doesn't really seem to much like Twelve; she stays with him mostly for the same reason that an adult would stay with a particularly unruly child- because he'll hurt either himself or someone else if left to his own devices. She elects to jump aboard with The Doctor at the end of "Mummy on the Orient Express" as a sort of weird form of transference, hoping that The Doctor's Time Lordiness would somehow rub off on her in the process. Rule one. The Doctor lies. Which explains Clara's lovely behavior to the people close to her; she's subconsciously modelling herself after her hero. The person she places on a pedestal in her own mind. So she lies and manipulates and tolerates Twelve because he's the closest thing she's got to that internalized ideal, and in the process forcing everyone else out with her own lovely behavior. She's slowly turning into The Doctor, or at least the version of The Doctor she thinks is real. And that's before she literally (figuratively) becomes The Doctor, here in "Flatline". Jamie Mathieson, the writer for "Mummy on the Orient Express", ended up the writer for this episode as well. There's a clear two-episode arc starring Clara, dealing with how she's embracing her darker, or more destructive impulses. It's something that's been teased since the first episode of this season, since her initial hesitant decision to stay with Twelve (spurred on, in no small part, by Eleven, The Lying Doctor), continuing through her developing romantic relationship with (and attendant lying to) Danny Pink, to the denouement of "Mummy", where she cheerfully deceives the two most important men in her life as she decides to continue aboard. It's all in service of the person she thinks she wants to be, the Time Lord that only exists in her head. For her efforts, she gets her reward. Handed the sonic screwdriver and psychic paper and instructed to solve the episode's guiding mystery, being that Twelve is stuck in a toy-sized version of the TARDIS. You mine as well give Clara a fez and bow tie too. Yes, Doctor Clara is the main character of "Flatline", being that The Doctor's stuck in the aforementioned dollhouse TARDIS. It's a decision that feels simultaneously appropriate, unique, and earned, a neat hat trick this episode pulls. The narrative investments that DW Series Eight has built pay narrative dividends in this episode. The conceit - creatures from a universe with only two dimensions are invading Earth (absorbing energy in the process, explaining the Shrinky Dink TARDIS), killing civilians along the way, works on both the thematic and the surface level. "Flatline" is one of those episodes that feels truly genre. Much like "Blink" and "Listen", "Flatline" takes an alien concept and examines it fully. The two-dimensional creatures - named "The Boneless" by The Doctor during the episode's climax - come across as honestly bizarre. Who very rarely embraces its more fantastical conceits, opting instead to ground them via symbolism or simple reflection. Star Trek aliens is the modus operandi of DW. Most non-Earth creatures are very obviously humans with weird skin tone or facial markings. Most societies are roughly analogous to something on Earth. Most conflicts are relatable to a portion of the human experience. Most morals learned are presented as directly resonant to a problem humanity is currently facing. The list goes on. The perspective. The perspective of DW is ethnocentric. The inversion of it produces the episode's most exciting hours, because they're so rare. The perspective has changed, and in the process so has the story. The viewpoint has shifted. Clara achieves what she always wanted to achieve; for one hour, she becomes The Doctor. But in so doing she shifts her viewpoint. Shifts her perspective. Jenna Coleman's performance throughout "Flatline" changes; Clara's voice becomes more clipped. Her cadence, more measured. Her personality becomes more dour, more cynical. She's ruthless, manipulating others to get what she wants. She doesn't mince words, doesn't couch her demands in niceties. When questioned by The Doctor, when asked what she's going to do to help the group of community service miscreants caught up in The Boneless' path who form the human element of "Flatline", her first response is quintessentially Doctor: Lie. The Doctor lies. Clara is The Doctor. The transitive property; Clara lies. Mathieson wastes no time expounding on the analogy. Not only is Clara changing from having become The Doctor, but the antagonists mutate as well. They grow, gaining a third dimension in the process; The Boneless expand their knowledge base over the episode, starting as two-dimensional wall snakes who swallow sofas and ending as uncanny valley mannequin corpses hunting humans in the climax. Mathieson wants to make one point, and he emphasizes it extremely well throughout "Flatline"'s run: what you see is not what is. This filters down to the episode-specific characters. As stated before, they're a group of petty criminals who are forced into community service, overseen by Fenton (Christopher Fairbank), but they all turn out to be collectively the most moralistic of the key players (even moreso than Clara). Fenton, on the other hand, is implied to be the stock "old rear end in a top hat with a heart of gold", when it's instead reveals that he's instead just a mean idiot. The Doctor, too, spends much of the episode's runtime viewing The Boneless as misunderstood beings, misplaced in the universe and unable to communicate. His increasingly panicked justification for their behavior belies The Doctor's central misconception that drives the show - his misplaced belief that all beings are inherently good, or at least contain the capacity for reason - is what makes The Boneless'reveal that they are evil hit all the harder. Mathieson has a point he wants to make, and he makes it well. He wants to illustrate to the audience how Clara's choices are changing her, and often for the worse, so makes the entire episode in service of Clara's thematic arc. The tricks the epsiode plays- the forced perspective, the villains, etc. - all exist as symbolism for the framework Mathieson builds around her story, to give her journey a relational underpinning to the episode. Mathieson is laser focused on telling the story of Clara through the stories of The Doctor, The Boneless, Rigsy (Jovian Wade), Fenton, and all the rest. What's even more clever is how a story about Clara also ends up also being a story about The Doctor. Clara achieves her life's ambition, she becomes The Doctor for one episode. Mathieson frameworks this journey of self-discovery and how being The Doctor changes who Clara, fundamentally, is by also making a larger statement on who The Doctor is. As Clara excitedly points out in "Flatline"'s denouement, "I was The Doctor and I was good." It's The Doctor's response that gives clarity: "You were an exceptional Doctor, Clara...goodness had nothing to do with it." Clara sees The Doctor as a shining beacon of morality, all of humanity's best qualities made manifest. She assumes that carrying his mantle allows her to be the same. The irony, of course, is that being The Doctor and being good are two different things. More than that, they're often at odds with each other; the cynical necessity of The Doctor's roles obligates him do amoral and at times outright horrendous things, things nobody has the capability or the willingness to do. Mathieson understands that completely, so crafts the denouement to be a subtle wakeup call to Clara, a reminder that being The Doctor doesn't make her into a decent human being, and the sacrifices that she's made in the process of achieving her goal weren't necessarily worth it. Clara's perspective has shifted. She's a three-dimensional creature who temporarily became a four-dimensional being, much like The Boneless went from two to three. Her new insight gives her new understanding, and new worries. Is The Doctor good? The jury's still out, but "Flatline" asks a new question: Is Clara good? Judging from the way Missy expresses glee over her "choice" in Clara, probably not. Grade: A Random Thoughts:
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Aug 17, 2015 22:23
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Also I'd like specific feedback on this review if that's ok but want to be as vague as possible because i don't want to color people's opinions also also  
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Aug 17, 2015 22:27
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Yes, it's a great episode, but then again, aren't they all?
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Aug 17, 2015 22:32
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BSam posted:Yes, it's a great episode, but then again, aren't they all? I wish
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Aug 17, 2015 22:35
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"I am the Doctor! I help people. I help people on fan sites know what to call monsters. So I'm here to tell them to call you... The Boneless!!"
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Aug 17, 2015 22:39
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