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NieR Occomata
Jan 18, 2009

Glory to Mankind.

Jerusalem posted:

I love season 4, but of all the episodes that Oxx has watched up to this point this one really is just astonishingly bad. Donna is still pretty great in it, but the entire thing is just a gigantic, poorly plotted, badly cast load of nonsense. The inclusion of Martha adds NOTHING to the story and actually detracts from it since it would have made more sense for Donna to be the one split off while the Doctor is forced to work with Jenny to get back to her and pretty much nothing would have been lost.

The big dramatic flourish from Tennant at the end is awful and unearned, as is the awful little twist right at the end. It's a terrible, awful, very bad, not good story.

hey stop writing my review

get out of here jerusalem! go on, git!

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Linear Zoetrope
Nov 28, 2011

A hero must cook
This episode gets even more awkward when "The Doctor's Daughter" is now "David Tennant's Wife".

StashAugustine
Mar 24, 2013

Do not trust in hope- it will betray you! Only faith and hatred sustain.

Jsor posted:

This episode gets even more awkward when "The Doctor's Daughter" is now "David Tennant's Wife".

Lots of planets have a South.

Regy Rusty
Apr 26, 2010

I remember liking this episode, though admittedly the only part of it I really remember liking specifically was Jenny.

Gaz-L
Jan 28, 2009

Regy Rusty posted:

I remember liking this episode, though admittedly the only part of it I really remember liking specifically was Jenny.

Hey, David Tennant too!

Regy Rusty
Apr 26, 2010

Gaz-L posted:

Hey, David Tennant too!

Tennant schmennant

Go RV!
Jun 19, 2008

Uglier on the inside.

I remember liking this episode. I liked the scenario (even hamhanded as it was), I thought the reveal was pretty neat (see previous note), and it had Martha! I... don't remember much else about it, really.

I'm thinking I overshot on my guess :ohdear:

Random Stranger
Nov 27, 2009



I think this is one of the more divisive episodes for fans. I've heard plenty of people defend it, but most fans just seem to go:

Toxxupation posted:


HOLY gently caress THAT EPISODE WAS FUCKIN' BAD

Edit: Oh, hey, they all came out of the woodwork when I while I was posting.

MrL_JaKiri
Sep 23, 2003

A bracing glass of carrot juice!

Jsor posted:

This episode gets even more awkward when "The Doctor's Daughter" is now "David Tennant's Wife".

She's still the Doctor's Daughter, what with Peter Davison being her father.

Gaz-L
Jan 28, 2009

Regy Rusty posted:

Tennant schmennant

I mean that's the part he remembers liking too! :v:

Regy Rusty
Apr 26, 2010

Gaz-L posted:

I mean that's the part he remembers liking too! :v:

Oh, that was a decent joke in that case, I apologize

Jerusalem
May 20, 2004

Would you be my new best friends?

Go RV! posted:

I remember liking this episode. I liked the scenario (even hamhanded as it was), I thought the reveal was pretty neat (see previous note), and it had Martha! I... don't remember much else about it, really.

I'm thinking I overshot on my guess :ohdear:

I didn't particularly like the episode when it first aired but I remember being positive about the little twist reveal. Having rewatched it recently, almost all my positive thoughts on it were stripped away and the reveal is one of those things that is a neat concept that doesn't stand up to even the most cursory inspection and really needed further development in the writing over what we got. The negatives were even more apparent and the characterization was pretty appalling throughout as the characters were twisted around horribly to fit into the theme of the Doctor owing anything to Jenny, and the frankly insulting claims from Martha and Donna that he needed to embrace and accept her as family.

The sad thing is, this isn't even my least favorite episode of season 4!

Grouchio
Aug 31, 2014

God this episode sucked. (Or is going to)

NieR Occomata
Jan 18, 2009

Glory to Mankind.

Doctor Who
"The Doctor's Daughter"
Series 4, Episode 6

This might be the worst episode of Who that I've seen that I've still ended up enjoying. But boy oh boy was this episode bad bad BAD. It was SO BAD! Holy poo poo it was so bad.

The episode opens to The Doctor, Donna, and Martha all crash-landing in the far-flung future, the TARDIS having forcibly ejected them there. Quickly, they're apprehended by a group of rifle-waving humans, who observes that The Doctor has "clean hands", before forcing him to stick his hand into a replicator machine, which births...his biological daughter, Jenny (Georgia Moffett).

See, it's soon revealed that the human have been in a millenia-long struggle with the Hath, a race of fish-human hybrids who are seeking the "Sigh", which is some major religious artifact both groups covet. It's never explained what exactly the Sigh is (besides "What God breathed out after She made the universe"), or what the humans or the Hath, exactly, want to use it for. In any case, the humans all turn out to be the progeny of a single parent, who all stuck their hands in to the replicator machine like The Doctor did and "birthed" their own children. The war between both the Hath and the humans has been endless, you see, and to keep up the pace of endless war perfect adult soldiers are birthed out on both sides without the need for gestation or childrearing or even male-female coupling to get in the way. Such a system allows for eternal struggle, and on both sides the casualties have been bloody and numerous, but unending.

In any case, out Jenny pops, The Doctor's titular daughter, except also a genetically engineered soldier. The Hath soon attack, and in the ensuing struggle Martha's taken hostage. The rest of the episode is then spent on Donna, The Doctor, and Jenny trying desperately to prevent a genocide between the Hath and the humans, and Martha trying to find her way back to the group.

And it's here that we encounter the first problem, the first of many problems, with "The Doctor's Daughter". Simply put, Martha's plotline isn't really interesting at all. As a matter of fact, it's wholly unnecessary to the plot as a whole, which on balance is fine since many Doctor Who episodes contain subplots that end up narratively unimportant. In this case, however, Martha's plot is fully gratuitous in a way that's almost aggressive; her scenes are completely unnecessary to the story being told and how it progresses, true, but even beyond that it doesn't even really play into any larger thematic points the episode attempts to make.

It's yet another frustrating, aggravating example of Martha as a character being underserved and/or actively mistreated by the plot. It's so common that at this point seeing Martha be kidnapped and shoved into her own, vastly more lame sideplot is almost comical- since that's exactly what happened in the previous two episodes that she was on -but it's just befuddling in this case. I mean seriously: Martha's entire story this episode consists of her setting a Hath's shoulder back in place, then trudging about on the ruined planet to try and find The Doctor again (as the humans and Hath are fighting in corridors and bunkers buried deep beneath the surface). Why was Freema Agyeman even written in to this episode? Why did they have Martha stay an episode longer than her two-parter demanded if literally all they were gonna do to her character was shove her somewhere else? What was the point of any of this? Like...even ignoring the now sadly predictable mistreatment of her character, just viewing the script to "Doctor's Daughter" from a writing standpoint, why was Martha included in this episode's cast? None of it makes any sense.

Things are no better on The Doctor's side, unfortunately. The Doctor et al meet Admiral Cobb (Nigel Terry), who quickly exposits the backstory to the Hath-human conflict before The Doctor objects to Cobb's stated declaration of annihilating the Hath, which earns Donna, The Doctor, and Jenny (for "having the genes of a pacifist") a quick trip to jail for treason. The Doctor and his crew break out, and spend the rest of the episode running from the approaching human forces, trying to find the Sigh before the humans or the Hath do.

The A-plot actually kicks off rather decently- Georgia Moffett is actually incredibly well-cast as Jenny, and her and The Doctor's dynamic is one of the single best parts of the episode- her slow learning of who and what Time Lords are, and her status as one, is some emotionally resonant stuff. It comes off especially well since Jenny is once again a living reminder of the life that The Doctor left back on Gallifrey- he's repulsed when he sees her, if only because she's, as The Doctor says, an "echo" of what used to be.

It's all the more fascinating that she's a soldier, as well- this episode arrives perfectly within the overall metanarrative of Series 4, where at this point it's been well-established that The Doctor despises military intervention and weapons of any and all types. So his natural fear and rejection of the concept of a created, a "manufactured" Time Lord in Jenny is turned into disgust as to what she was created for- to be a weapon to take part in a genocide. All these conflicting emotions and overhanging plots coalesce into a complicated, very human father-daughter relationship between Ten and Jenny, with the attendant push-pull of child and parent and that very emotionally raw sort of hurt as Jenny tries desperately to please her dad, who simply rejects all of her advances. (By the way, Doctor, you better treat your daughter better or she'll end up working the space-pole at an interstellar Hooter's or something.)

There's even a level of internal hypocrisy to his actions- he abhors violence, but as Jenny notes, the Sonic Screwdriver is basically a super-gun with a more family-friendly name. And as we've seen before, his insistence on pacifism and absolute rejection of taking other lives, not to mention genocide, is wildly, wildly dishonest bordering on outright disingenuous. He's just as big of a monster as the people he's smugly patronizing to, especially his daughter- which I think is rather the point, that all parents become liars and hypocrites and scoundrels by urging their children to be better than them.

Unfortunately this line of thinking progresses to the scene where, as Jenny and Donna and The Doctor are about to be closed in on, Jenny goes out to defend, and buy time for, The Doctor and Donna. The Doctor urges Jenny not to kill anyone, and although it's tonally consistent with the episode's aims (and if you squint you can kinda read The Doctor's condescending "just another soldier" comment, made as Jenny opens fire, as evidence of that consistency - yet another example of The Doctor being internally dishonest in the vague hope and fear that his progeny doesn't turn out like him, and a subsequent emotional walling off of that hope), the entire scene reads as The Doctor being suicidally naive. There's a difference between "not killing anyone" and "acting in self-defense in the face of certain death", which The Doctor knows, and the scene cheapens The Doctor's character and makes him come across as far less intelligent than he normally is.

And then, of course, we get to the wretched, the wretched final ten or so minutes of the episode. Let's break down all the terrible, the absolutely terrible ways that the end of "Doctor's Daughter" is bad:

1. Jenny and the random Hath's death scenes.
Jenny was introduced as such a major figure, with such a close relation to The Doctor, that either she would end up as his permanent Companion or killed off within the episode she was introduced. And really, I just had a feeling- a sense -that she would be killed off, and was so coldly expecting it for so much of the episode that it made all of her scenes with The Doctor meaningless as they were happening, because I was watching them knowing that she wasn't gonna be around with The Doctor by episode's end. It made her entire plotline a waiting game as I was just internally betting on which scene it would be where she bites it. (In the same way, and much more obviously, was it clear that Martha's Hath buddy in her storyline was going to die- that Hath guy was a red shirt from the very moment he was introduced -so his (its?) sinking into the mud just left me cold, emotionally speaking.)

But even knowing Jenny was going to die, the way she was killed- with Cobb deciding to shoot at The Doctor for no really adequately explained reason, and Jenny heroically jumping in front of the bullet or whatever -was just..just bad. You couldn't write her out triggering an explosion or nobly sacrificing her life, she had to be taken out like a punk by getting shot with a measly bullet? And then, worst of all, she hangs around! Jenny has this big, super melodramatic (oh boy was the whole scene cheesier than a pound of sharp cheddar) scene with The Doctor as she dies, getting to say her final words and all- but she's explicitly a Time Lord! She has two loving hearts! SHE CAN loving REGENERATE! At no point does The Doctor even let her know she can literally just shrug off the loving wounds with her super special alien powers! Are you loving serious, dude?!

It's like The Doctor just fuckin' forgets what the central gimmick of his entire loving race is (or more accurately, the writers did), so he's weeping over his dying kid as Martha just pipes in going, essentially, "Oh yeah, Jenny can't regenerate because she's manufactured", which just raises more questions than answers. What, Martha knows the physiology of an alien race she's not, and how manufactured progeny's physiologies differ from that alien race she's not, better than the last remaining member of that alien race knows his physiology whose literal loving name is LITERALLY loving "THE DOCTOR"?! JESUS loving CHRIST DOCTOR WHO.

Like the whole "emotional" climax could've been avoided if for two seconds, instead of weeping, The Doctor just talked to Jenny and told her what she needed to know. The fact that the end of the episode is predicated on the main character not telling information to another character for literally no reason is some grossly poor storytelling, even for Who.

2. The Doctor's "NEVER WOULD" scene.
Oxx is gonna rage about this more than I will, so I'm just gonna mention this in passing: I think this scene doesn't make everything that came before it invalid; I think it's the writer of this episode not understanding the tonal "point" of the story so ended it with attempting to say "The Doctor is actually a pacifist who isn't a hypocrite at all like the story intimated beforehand", and so completely utterly flubbed the writing of it that it doesn't come off as disingenuous and backtracking over completely tonally inconsistent. The irony is, of course, that it's so poorly executed and so dissonant to what came before, when it was clearly building up The Doctor as a hypocrite trying desperately to buy his own bullshit, that the "NEVER WOULD" scene to me doesn't come off as offensively poor so much as a really bad and bizarre ending to what could've been an interesting emotional journey for The Doctor. Essentially, if it was done better it would've made the episode worse, but as it stands the "NEVER WOULD" scene comes across as an overly smug, unearned curiosity.

3. That goddamn final scene.
Oh, so Jenny just magically comes back to life and blasts off, never to be seen again in the run of the show (Oxx told me this)? Okay, you can go gently caress yourself forever Doctor Who. What a rancid, half-assed ending to an episode of television, trying to go for the big emotional punch and then pussying out from that, having your cake and eating it too like a big fuckin' rear end in a top hat. Just...just fuckin' Christ. And the knowledge that Oxx told me, that Jenny never comes back, makes this decision worse: At least if she ever appeared again, the narrative decision could be retroactively justified but literally making Jenny magically come back to life for no reason, so she's never ever mentioned again, is just...why did Doctor Who do all of this, exactly?

It sucks, because outside of all the terrible (and there is a lot of terrible), there's some really great stuff in there: Donna is as usual utterly fantastic (like seriously: all of her lines are loving AMAZING this episode), Jenny is also incredible and I think the dual reveals of the Hath-human conflict only lasting a week and that the "Sigh" was, in fact, a terraforming device were really interesting commentaries on, respectively, how the focus of war can be lost almost immediately in the midst of bloodshed and the way religions spread- with changing and expanding and exaggerating the truth until it becomes mythical- but neither concept was expounded on well enough to make "Doctor's Daughter" worth it. Plus, even those base ideas were cancelled out by the horrifically terrible action sequences or that laser backflipping scene, jesus christ that scene was BAD. The Doctor/Jenny throughline, too, suffered in the finale too much to be counted as a net "positive" for the episode as a whole.

Really, this episode is ultimately a bunch of really good scenes- Jenny, The Doctor, and Donna interacting -connected together with some of the worst poo poo imaginable, on and on, over and over, until its vomit-inducingly poor climax and ending. It's an easy F- one of the worst episodes, on average, that I've seen thus far -that I still ended up really enjoying because the parts that are good are INCREDIBLE. It's just an incoherent mess 100% of the time it's not INCREDIBLE. Kind of a shame, really.

Grade: F

Random Thoughts:
  • Donna Status: STILL OWNS AND OWNS SO MUCH SHE NEARLY SAVES THE EPISODE
  • Who approved that "Chinese whispers" line, because jesus christ that's a racist as gently caress line of dialog, dudes.
  • Yeah all the Jenny/Ten scenes are really uncomfortable in retrospect when we learn that Moffett ends up becoming Tennant's wife. Also gotta say- Tennant is a very, very handsome man but HOLY poo poo did he marry up. Good job dudes.
  • I really don't like any scene that involves an Important Female Character showing how like, independent and smart and clever she is by seducing a guard/male character with power over the group for her/the group's ends, and I really didn't like it here. All those scenes come across as both cliched and really, pretty sexist- "Oh, let's have the girl character show how smart she is by becoming the alluring, female praying mantis to the dumb man guard guy, motivated solely by his penis". It's just kinda, like, gross at this point. It's also...not really indicative of any greater individuality or intelligence on the female's part, because it's so common? Although it set up the Donna bit in the next scene which was loving incredible, so. But yeah, really didn't like that "Jenny seduces the guard" scene.
  • Why does The Doctor have a windup mouse in his jacket pocket at all times?

NieR Occomata fucked around with this message at 22:40 on Oct 27, 2014

NieR Occomata
Jan 18, 2009

Glory to Mankind.

Also we'll be doing 407 tomorrow or probably Sunday, as a special bonus to bring us back on track

Oxxidation
Jul 22, 2007
Steven Moffat came up with the idea to have Jenny revive herself in the end of the episode and this knowledge was a dagger in my heart, a dagger in my heart, a dagger in my heart.

Regy Rusty
Apr 26, 2010

Yeah you know what, I stand by my grade. I like this episode.

And Jenny could still come back. :colbert:

Mooseontheloose
May 13, 2003

I feel like the episode might of been better as a two parter to let the plots breathe a bit. I remember liking the episode the first go around.

AndwhatIseeisme
Mar 30, 2010

Being alive is pretty much a constant stream of embarrassment.
Fun Shoe

Oxxidation posted:

Steven Moffat came up with the idea to have Jenny revive herself in the end of the episode and this knowledge was a dagger in my heart, a dagger in my heart, a dagger in my heart.

I thought that Moffat just asked that she not be killed off, not that she magically be revived by magic space revival.

Jerusalem
May 20, 2004

Would you be my new best friends?

I was honestly insulted by Martha and Donna (I think it was Martha too before she gets separated) getting all smug and telling the Doctor he should automatically accept and embrace this genetically manufactured person who was born fully-grown with an entirely different culture's knowledge and values pre-programmed in her head as his daughter. There's a brief moment where Donna is joking that he's being a typical commitment-phobic bloke and the Doctor very quietly comments that he has been an ACTUAL father (as in, he had kids of his own who he had an actual connection with, not just bodies poo poo out of a genetics machine). That was excellent, especially Donna's contrition at learning this.... but then that's all swept aside.

I think I could accept the notion if it came at the end of the episode with the Doctor having come to know and respect Jenny, but it's just hammered home again and again and again that biology trumps all, that she's just automatically "Family" because she shares a genetic code with him. That's bullshit and it's unearned, and maybe that's just my personal bias, but I've always hated the notion that pops up in various media that biology is the be-all and end-all when it comes to dictating who is capital F family - the people closest and most important to you even if you've never met them before, even if you have nothing in common, even if the other person shares an entirely different set of cultural values to you that are utterly abhorrent to you. Family is the people you love as far as I'm concerned, and Jenny and the Doctor aren't family, and she isn't even remotely his "daughter" in any way.

Boo. Boo to this episode. Boo.

StarkRavingMad
Sep 27, 2001


Yams Fan
I remember when I watched this I thought it had to be the setup for a new spin-off. Like when CSI would branch into CSI Miami and David Caruso is on the show for an episode and nothing really works or fits tonally but you understand that they just wanted to introduce this new character to the main audience and slapdashed everything together and said "close enough." This felt like that and in that context I didn't think it was that bad. Then I learned it wasn't a spinoff setup at all and I realized the episode was just a burning trash heap for no good reason.

mind the walrus
Sep 22, 2006

Toxxupation posted:

Also gotta say- Tennant is a very, very handsome man but HOLY poo poo did he marry up. Good job dudes.

I know right. It's pretty amazing that the pretty boy hired to make tumblrinas wet ended up scoring not only one of the most beautiful women ever to grace the show but the daughter of the very man he claims to have taken professional inspiration from both as an actor and for this role in particular.

mind the walrus
Sep 22, 2006

Jerusalem posted:

I've always hated the notion that pops up in various media that biology is the be-all and end-all when it comes to dictating who is capital F family - the people closest and most important to you even if you've never met them before, even if you have nothing in common, even if the other person shares an entirely different set of cultural values to you that are utterly abhorrent to you. Family is the people you love as far as I'm concerned, and Jenny and the Doctor aren't family, and she isn't even remotely his "daughter" in any way.

I'm adopted and I'm with you 100% on this. Hate on Joss Whedon all you want for all his flaws and bullshit, but one thing he gets exactly right is the notion of a surrogate family and how wonderfully romantic and hopeful it makes life even in the very darkest of times, and while his attempts to address how your biological family aren't necessarily your "real" family often come across as ham-fisted and all-too-obvious it's still a very worthwhile point for anyone growing up to hear.

LEGO Genetics
Oct 8, 2013

She growls as she storms the stadium
A villain mean and rough
And the cops all shake and quiver and quake
as she stabs them with her cuffs
so what's our next episodes after this?

...

oh dammit

Sleep of Bronze
Feb 9, 2013

If I could only somewhere find Aias, master of the warcry, then we could go forth and again ignite our battle-lust, even in the face of the gods themselves.

Toxxupation posted:

Who approved that "Chinese whispers" line, because jesus christ that's a racist as gently caress line of dialog, dudes.
Is it that bad? "Chinese whispers" has never been the most fortunate term, but what do you find especially egregious about it here?

Regy Rusty
Apr 26, 2010

Sleep of Bronze posted:

Is it that bad? "Chinese whispers" has never been the most fortunate term, but what do you find especially egregious about it here?

In the US we call it "telephone" which is really a practice that should probably be adopted by the rest of the English speaking world.

mind the walrus
Sep 22, 2006

Toxxupation posted:

Random Thoughts:[list]
[*] Who approved that "Chinese whispers" line, because jesus christ that's a racist as gently caress line of dialog, dudes.

Yeah.........

zzMisc
Jun 26, 2002

Forgive me if some of this was actually explained and I missed it; but ugh, this episode.

It starts with dumbo soldier boy insisting over and over again that "everybody gets scanned", then just scans the doctor. Sure, Martha gets kidnapped suddenly, but they never even try to scan Donna. Is this ever explained?

Is it ever explained why exactly they have this progenation machine to begin with?

Are the Hath ever explained? Like.. why giant fish people? Why?

Does it ever explain why they're all apparently so terrified of the surface? I mean, giant mud pits would be pretty avoidable in groups and aren't really a great reason.

Is it ever explained why there are hidden tunnels not shown on the map? Including the one that leads to the apparent initial landing point they were building from? How about why those tunnels are so well hidden, even when they know where to look?

It apparently only takes Martha a couple hours to understand and be able to fully communicate with the Hath's gurgles? Tardis translation can't explain it, she certainly couldn't understand them at first.

How about that tunnel with the laser beam security system. Is the reason for that system ever explained? Why is just that one specific tunnel protected like that and nothing else?

Jenny is all of two hours old, and neither the soldiers nor time lords she came from have these ridiculous acrobatic capabilities. Where the hell did that come from?

And that Cobb's guys apparent immense, unyielding hatred driving one last shot in the end. Is that ever explained, in any way, at all?

It seems like the only thing they bother to offer an explanation for in this thing are the numbers on the walls that literally nobody but Donna gives a poo poo about, including the audience, which just leads to a 'big twist' reveal that has no impact on anything that happens.

Georgia Moffett is really fantastic though. Why they didn't make her a companion or at least a recurring character, that needs an explanation more than anything else.

zzMisc fucked around with this message at 03:02 on Oct 25, 2014

mind the walrus
Sep 22, 2006

My guess is that Georgia Moffett probably didn't want to be a regular. The whole episode was most likely just a lark for her to play around with her husband at her dad's old job.

Gaz-L
Jan 28, 2009

Toxxupation posted:

[*] Why does The Doctor have a windup mouse in his jacket pocket at all times?[/list]

His pockets work like the TARDIS. At that point, why wouldn't you carry all sorts of poo poo to MacGyver into saving the day?

Jerusalem
May 20, 2004

Would you be my new best friends?

Smello posted:

It starts with dumbo soldier boy insisting over and over again that "everybody gets scanned", then just scans the doctor. Sure, Martha gets kidnapped suddenly, but they never even try to scan Donna. Is this ever explained?

They say that the machines shut down at a particular time each night (I can't remember why, or if they bother with a reason) but that they fully intend to scan Donna the next morning when the systems start back up again.

Really a lot of the questions about this episode can be answered with the rather unsatisfying,"Because they're so many degraded generations of soldiers apart from the originals that most everything is tied up in ceremony or misunderstood religious symbolism to them now". They don't go onto the surface because it's been ingrained into them and then reinforced through misunderstood interpretations that the surface is a deadly and evil place. They don't know about the extra tunnels because somebody on day 3 or something accidentally turned them off/hid them and then got killed and everybody who was alive back then has since died and left people who only know about the maps showing on the tunnels etc.

Not to excuse the story or the episode at all, because a lot of these things are still pretty awful and stupid, but there were at least attempts to roughly explain the world that was drafted out so haphazardly.

jng2058
Jul 17, 2010

We have the tools, we have the talent!





mind the walrus posted:

My guess is that Georgia Moffett probably didn't want to be a regular. The whole episode was most likely just a lark for her to play around with her husband at her dad's old job.

She wasn't married to Tennant yet. They got married in 2011. In fact, I'm pretty sure they met for the first time while filming this episode, which led to the romance and marriage later, not that she got the gig to play with David.

mind the walrus
Sep 22, 2006

Ah, very true then. Still I'm sure she was doing the gig partially out of family respect, and not because she wanted to take up the family business so to speak.

Soothing Vapors
Mar 26, 2006

Associate Justice Lena "Kegels" Dunham: An uncool thought to have: 'is that guy walking in the dark behind me a rapist? Never mind, he's Asian.

mind the walrus posted:

My guess is that Georgia Moffett probably didn't want to be a regular. The whole episode was most likely just a lark for her to play around with her husband at her dad's old job.

how did I not know Tennant was Davison's son-in-law

One Swell Foop
Aug 5, 2010

I'm afraid we have no time for codes and manners.

Sleep of Bronze posted:

Is it that bad? "Chinese whispers" has never been the most fortunate term, but what do you find especially egregious about it here?

As an ex-pat, it's one of those phrases that you grow up with in the UK and as you say it, it's hard to attach negative connotations; it's the name of a kid's game just like the 'British' in the game British Bulldogs.

Once you're outside the country looking in... it becomes a lot more troublesome. Imagine if it was called 'Jewish whispers'.

Irony Be My Shield
Jul 29, 2012

I actually liked the twist a lot, I think the idea of replicators causing a ridiculously intense war that killed off everyone who knew the reason for it is interesting.

Toxxupation posted:

[*] Why does The Doctor have a windup mouse in his jacket pocket at all times?[/list]
He had a water pistol in Fires of Pompeii, I think it's a running joke.

Smello posted:

Is it ever explained why exactly they have this progenation machine to begin with?
No, but it doesn't seem particularly hard to work out? Being able to suddenly pull extra workers or guards out of the air would be a pretty useful thing for colonists to be able to do.

zzMisc
Jun 26, 2002

Jerusalem posted:

Not to excuse the story or the episode at all, because a lot of these things are still pretty awful and stupid, but there were at least attempts to roughly explain the world that was drafted out so haphazardly.

Ah, right. The war started with a power vacuum and I guess at that time the whole ship including "the source" was accessible. The mystical narrative needn't build up until after it was locked away, which was done while fighting so some defense mechanisms might be left on. I guess that sort of makes sense, if you assume the narrative was specifically built up to justify the war, which it would have been if Cobb's been around the whole time and is for no explained reason completely deranged. Whether there's a Cobb-analogue on the giant fish people side is hard to tell, because every giant fish person looks like every other giant fish person.

^^ I don't mean why they'd want such a device, I mean how they got it while not seeming to have anything else so advanced.

zzMisc fucked around with this message at 03:33 on Oct 25, 2014

mind the walrus
Sep 22, 2006

Soothing Vapors posted:

how did I not know Tennant was Davison's son-in-law

The Doctor's Daughter played The Doctor's Daughter in an episode called "The Doctor's Daughter" wherein she married the Doctor in The Doctor's Daughter making the daughter of the Doctor married to the same Doctor who met the Doctor who had the Doctor's Daughter. :v:

One Swell Foop
Aug 5, 2010

I'm afraid we have no time for codes and manners.

mind the walrus posted:

The Doctor's Daughter played The Doctor's Daughter in an episode called "The Doctor's Daughter" wherein she married the Doctor in The Doctor's Daughter making the daughter of the Doctor married to the same Doctor who met the Doctor who had the Doctor's Daughter. :v:

You left out the last part, where the happily married couple had a daughter.

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mind the walrus
Sep 22, 2006

gently caress

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