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Jerusalem posted:I just found it so.... boring. It's so uninspired, and even though this is a gross oversimplification it does feel like the redesign is basically "human beings with green facepaint". Sure there is the scaling/make-up stuff, but they basically just look like green humans and that's lazy, that's Star Trek lazy. Having Pointy-ears and funny eyebrows is Star Trek Lazy. Just having a weird hairdo or dress is Star Trek Lazy. Dressing up as Greek/Roman gods and having powers is Star Trek Lazy. Full on facial work is not Star Trek lazy. That's pretty much best you can do with Human Actors.
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Jan 27, 2015 02:33
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adhuin posted:Full on facial work is not Star Trek lazy. That's pretty much best you can do with Human Actors. You can go animatronic puppet heads, but that's a bit much for Doctor Who.
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Jan 27, 2015 02:35
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adhuin posted:Having Pointy-ears and funny eyebrows is Star Trek Lazy. It's all spots, forehead ridges and bald wigs, except for the poor saps who got talked into playing Ferengi and have to talk through fake teeth for seven seasons.
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Jan 27, 2015 02:36
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Bicyclops posted:It's all spots, forehead ridges and bald wigs, except for the poor saps who got talked into playing Ferengi and have to talk through fake teeth for seven seasons. Modern Klingons have either Bad Teeth props or they're really really selective about who they cast. Old Klingons were just basically Turkish-ish people without any props.
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Jan 27, 2015 02:40
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forbidden lesbian posted:make the voidburger joke, because I don't know what that is Way too tired to make it into an actual joke so I'll explain the reference because that's always better- Voidburger did some let's plays of Silent Hill a while back, one of which, Origins I believe, had an over sized van for no goddamn reason that they just copy pasted through out. She ended up replacing the final boss with it in photoshop because the van was my more concerning and scary. They're up on the LP Archive.
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Jan 27, 2015 02:53
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ah, LP humor, one of the great oxymorons of our time.
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Jan 27, 2015 02:58
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forbidden lesbian posted:ah, LP humor, one of the great oxymorons of our time. To be fair, my explanation was just as funny as my joke would have been.
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Jan 27, 2015 02:59
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I'm a fraud Burkion, I signed up for let's play I'm a charleton, a sham, a...nother word that means fraud.
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Jan 27, 2015 03:02
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Bicyclops posted:There is something very "slap some spots and a forehead ridge on a bald wig and call it a day" Star Trek about it, I'll give you that. It works for the Silurians, though, because they're actually supposed to make you feel like they're vaguely humanoid, and it gives the actors their full range of movement without having to rely on CG, which I think was important. I agree, silurians basically being humans with funny skin wasn't as bad as most startrek aliens. Silurians are Earthlings. They must have DNA very much like ours. We have a distant common ancestor. Head + torso + 4 limbs is a very popular design among vertebrates that evolved on Earth. Silurians being basic humanoids is much less troublesome than any alien being a humanoid, and Doctor Who has plenty of humanoid aliens. In the original series they were green lizard men. Making them Cassowary men would have been more fun, but as green lizard men go they are pretty good green lizard men.
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Jan 27, 2015 03:04
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Toxxupation posted:gently caress this loving piece of poo poo loving episode, gently caress We've been deprived of this all season.
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Jan 27, 2015 03:05
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adhuin posted:The capturing of a Silurian was hilarious. If you're cold-blooded then getting blasted with a snootful of freezing-cold chemical foam is probably going to tucker you right out. It still looked stupid, though.
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Jan 27, 2015 03:10
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Oxxidation posted:If you're cold-blooded then getting blasted with a snootful of freezing-cold chemical foam is probably going to tucker you right out. It still looked stupid, though. Woulda been hilarious if it was the non cold stuff. I mean Rory could have still just clocked her upside the head with it but you know
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Jan 27, 2015 03:12
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This one just felt lazy to me. Like a Ten script that no one wanted to film, so it rotted in the back for a while. The only good bits are: - Amy and Rory visiting themselves. - Eleven showing, once again, that he should never be allowed to watch children. - Rory trying to be Mr Cool Inspector Guy and mostly failing.
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Jan 27, 2015 03:42
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Bobulus posted:The only good bits are: -Nasreen applauding.
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Jan 27, 2015 04:00
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forbidden lesbian posted:ah, LP humor, one of the great oxymorons of our time. An... Oxximoron if you will? 
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Jan 27, 2015 05:24
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I'm worried that hedging my bet at a C was a mistake.
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Jan 27, 2015 06:01
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Toxxupation posted:at least this episode affirmed what i already knew, deep in my heart of hearts: scalies are not to be trusted I googled this thinking it was gonna be Monster Hunter thing or whatever, drat it.
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Jan 27, 2015 06:07
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The makeup for the lizard men was better than the cactus people or whatever they were in The End Of Time. Yeah, that's all I got.
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Jan 27, 2015 06:49
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Is this the Chris loving Chibnall episode? (Goes to look it up...) Yes, yes it is. The man with the dubious distinction of writing the most Torchwood next to RTD and also the only bad episodes of Life on Mars. Than man can make anything suck, even Doctor Who season five.
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Jan 27, 2015 07:05
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Stuporstar posted:Is this the Chris loving Chibnall episode? (Goes to look it up...) And yet, Broadchurch.
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Jan 27, 2015 07:07
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Chibnall's gone and done a Helen Raynor with this one: He's tried to make an old series story, structurally, work in the new series with its comic beats and pacing. Honestly I think that compared with previous attempts to pull that off, this one isn't that bad.
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Jan 27, 2015 07:11
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thexerox123 posted:And yet, Broadchurch. Without wanting to spoil anything, season 2 of Broadchurch indicates that season 1 may have been an aberration or the result of him throwing EVERYTHING he had into the first season and simply not being up to maintaining that quality (it's still better than most everything else he has done). That could just be my own opinion though!
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Jan 27, 2015 07:16
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Doctor Who "The Hungry Earth" Series 5, Episode 8 The worst part of Doctor Who is that it's not a bad show. If it was, then episodes like "The Hungry Earth" would be easier to tolerate. There are plenty of people who like bad shows, both ironically and sincerely. Look at the threads for Sons of Anarchy, for Glee, for American Horror Story. Those are bad shows, and nobody would argue you that fact. And yet they all have sizable fanbases, largely because everyone involved within it knows exactly what sort of show they're watching and why they're a fan of that show. The reasons they're watching might vary- inertia, hatewatching, ironic enjoyment, etc- but nobody is under any delusions. So what it means is that when those shows are garbage- and they often are -it's an expected outcome. It's the expected outcome. Depending on the reason why a fan is watching, it might be perversely appealing; ask an average Glee fan to describe some plot arcs that occurred within the show last season, and it sounds like they're describing some sort of Ketamine-induced fever dream. But the point is the expectations for those shows, such as they are, are non-existent. I came into this dumb experiment confident that under no circumstances would I change my opinion as to Doctor Who's general quality, and indeed for a season and a half I was not mistaken. Plots were threadbare, scripts generally garbage, acting nearly always a complete mess, dialog cringe-inducing. Serialization? Either non-existent or a loving embarrassment. Doctor Who, to me, was a Bad Show. So it made my viewing experience, somewhat perversely, more enjoyable to me, in the early goings. The bar was so low, the expectations so minimal that the wretched- and almost all of Series One was truly, truly wretched -merely washed over me, leaving no lasting effect. The good parts, the actually well-crafted and executed episodes, were all the more enjoyable because they were so rare, so unexpected. Finally, at around the middle of Series Two (right around the Impossible Planet two-parter), the show started finding itself and slowly, ever so slowly, raised the expectation levels I had for it. It stopped being a Bad Show in my eyes, and improved more and more in general quality as RTD's tenure persisted. Of course, RTD's ironically greatest strength was in his inconsistencies, because what it meant to me, as a new viewer, was to never expect his show to be good. His show was so jarringly inconsistent in quality, up until the very end of his run, that it conversely was more tolerable than it should've been when the show was bad. It was almost RTD's signature, in a way; it helped paper over the fact that Davies, at least when he acted as showrunner for Who, had fundamental writing and execution failures that plagued his run up until he left the show. Then Moffat became showrunner and everything changed. The show stopped being "good", spoken of with heavy quotation marks and a sheepish look on the face when describing it to friends. It stopped being "good", but with a hurried caveat of "if you're into that shlocky sort of thing". If you're into cheesy british sci-fi. If you can tolerate a show often being very, very bad, often within the same episode. It was just good. Period. "The Eleventh Hour" is an episode of television that I would recommend anyone watch, not just sci-fi fans. So is "Amy's Choice". The run of "The Eleventh Hour"/"The Beast Below"/"Victory of the Daleks"/"The Time of Angels"/"Flesh and Stone"/"The Vampires of Venice"/"Amy's Choice" is most certainly the longest run of sustained quality that I've witnessed Doctor Who perform and, honestly, is the highest overall average quality I've seen in a group of sequential episodes of that size. The only episode I would even be willing to admit being even arguably "bad" is "Victory", but even that is worth a watch, simply because of how fascinating and unique it is. It's in many respects a failure but even with that caveat it's certainly worth watching, which is more than I can say than a full half of RTD's episodes. This is what Moffat did. This is the crime he committed, the evil spell he cast. He made me expect Doctor Who to be good. Because once he did that, once he raised the bar, Doctor Who being Doctor loving Who, it of course- of course -had to lower it. It had to punish me, for the sin of unreservedly liking it. Because that's what makes "The Hungry Earth" so truly, truly awful, to be quite honest. Don't get me wrong- there's a bunch to hate about it, removed from the greater narrative of the season. The plot to "The Hungry Earth" is both predictable and virtually nonexistent- our intrepid trio land in Wales in the year 2020 and soon get caught up in a drill-related fiasco, where two researchers, Nasreen Chaudhry (Meera Syal) and Tony Mack (Robert Pugh), have drilled (natch) 21 kilometers into the Earth, which has caused sinkholes that swallow up humans to appear. The Doctor and Amy soon split off to go investigate as Rory lags behind to put away Amy's engagement ring on the TARDIS, and as he exits he is mistaken for a cop by Ambrose (Nia Roberts) and her son Elliot (Samuel Davies). He decides to play along with the deception out of, I guess, politeness or something as Ambrose and the unbelievably annoying Elliot explain to him that all the coffins in the cemetery are being stolen, but without the dirt on top being disturbed at all! Oh god what a mystery! Amy then disappears into a sinkhole and is subsequently almost entirely written out of "Earth" as The Doctor, desperate to get her back, realizes that the sinkholes are actually caused by a malevolent being or beings that have been disturbed from the drilling. Those beings end up causing earthquakes and then quickly kidnap Elliot. The Doctor and Rory then kidnap one of the warriors- who turns out to be a lizard-person from the Silurian race, which had their home disturbed by the drilling and thus decided to kidnap corpses and like three people as, like, retribution or something. Anyways, The Doctor decides to leave the Silurian warrior who will end up the humans' bargaining chip alone with Rory, Ambrose, and Tony as he and Nasreen decide to go parley with the Silurians underground. As the Silurian, Alaya (Neve McIntosh) smugly informs Rory et al, one of them will kill her and touch off a Silurian/Human war that will end up with the destruction of the human race, as a now-chained-up Amy is about to vivisected on....cut to credits. "The Hungry Earth" is a lurching, nonsensical thing. It contains too many threats, and plot points in general, almost all of them pointless, half-baked, and underexplained. Why do the Silurians kidnap people with sinkholes if they can just send dudes to do so? Why vice versa? There's a good argument for either but not both, and the only real reason that the Silurians seem to send one of their own to take people is so the plot point of Alaya being kidnapped can happen. What was up with that dome bubble thing the Silurians deployed, anyways? Why was that even a thing? Why did the dome thing happen? Why do the Silurians do the whole earthquake bit if it seems like their whole kidnapping plot is surreptitious? Why would the Silurians spend any time kidnapping humans over sabotaging the drill, which according to Alaya was threatening their life-support systems? Why would The Doctor leave Alaya alone with a bunch of humans he doesn't know (and Rory) when he recognizes that she's the only way he has of brokering peace? Why would he not put Alaya on the TARDIS, at least, if only to keep her within easy access? And then you get to the pacing issues. Rory ends up stuck in his own like, I guess I'll call it B-plot with the unbearably boring Ambrose character and the horrendously terrible Elliot character. There seems to be no point in this other than dragging out the episode length and preventing Rory from rejoining The Doctor where the actual plot is happening, although even calling it a "plot" seems to be charitable. The episode is vintage RTD run-shout, yet somehow lacking any sense of forward progression or even the vaguest amount of narrative tension. Characters just seem to enjoy yelling on things as scary music plays. It's simultaneously insultingly inane and unbearably boring, because the pacing is loving GLACIAL. This despite the fact that like 60% of the scenes in "Earth" are action sequences. It's loving mind-boggling. The script is a loving piece of loving garbage. There's literally no other way to describe it, being both needlessly explanatory and giving none of the hugely overstuffed side cast even one note of characterization- on the script they're just story-expositing statues that stand in place and look vaguely concerned as The Doctor waves his screwdriver around. It's snooze-inducing and one of the main reasons the pacing is as bad as it is- there's nothing in the script for anyone to do so they end up staring at each other as Bad Things Happen. And then there's the acting. Oh christ, the loving acting. Literally every side character in this episode is terrible. Every single one. What's kind of incredible is they're all the same base of badness, but interpret that terribleness in different ways- they're all desperately uninteresting, uninspired performances, which admittedly is at least partially in the way that they're written solely as backstory-vomiting statues. But then you get to Nia Roberts' Ambrose, which is boring but also, just for fun, puts in such a dislikeable performance, makes Ambrose into such a humorless nag that she somehow made me side against her justifiable anger over The Doctor losing track of her kid. Or Robert Pugh's Tony, who could disappear from the script entirely with nobody noticing.Or Samuel Davies' Elliot, which is every stereotypical too-clever-by-half overly earnest child archetype given form in one unbelievably irritating character. Or Alaya, who is somehow really boring and terribly hammy, in addition to being an RTD-era completely inept analogy for something else- in this case the displaced native who has their land threatened by the evil [strike]white man[/strike] human. And then we get to the crowing jewel of this shitpile of side characters in Meera Syal's Nasreen, who is so unbearably smug and annoying that it defies belief, on top of being a carbon loving copy of River Song except with an actress who lacks even a tenth of the talent. And she somehow ends up as The Doctor's temporary Companion, in an inexplicable and downright insulting move, especially when Rory is like, right loving there. "The Hungry Earth" can be broken down to its component parts, which are all at the very least just lovely. But what's almost hilarious if it weren't so goddamn pathetic is how even with one pass, with one single loving script pass the episode could've been improved to at least tolerable. Cut out the Tony, Elliot, and Nasreen characters entirely, since none of them add anything to the episode. Use that extra money you saved from casting three bad actors to cast one good one in Ambrose, who you then rewrite into a researcher who had her husband Mo, mysteriously disappear. Okay yeah, sure, it's a River Song archetype but you were already casting one with Nasreen and at least she has the added complication of not being romantically interested in The Doctor. Remove all the sinkholes and earthquake poo poo, I guess the dumbass dome can stay if its sole purpose is preventing The Doctor from being able to retrieve help (which it kind of clearly is only there for since its addition is so tonally loving dissonant and pointless). Remove the "Rory is a fake cop" plot and instead have him dealing with The Doctor for the episode's duration, since that one moment in "Earth", quickly glossed over, where Rory is pissed at The Doctor for letting Amy get swallowed up is one of the only emotionally resonant and dramatic ones. Removing all the extra, unimportant, and terrible characters and just focusing on Ambrose means that she could be dimensionalized beyond being a backstory-explainer, then have her achieve a level of trust with The Doctor that he feels somewhat comfortable leaving Alaya with her as he ventures off with Rory to the Silurian village. Heck, you could delve into the thematic similarities between Rory and Ambrose, both people who have had their loved ones taken from them by the Silurians. Just focus on Rory and The Doctor, because they're the only people who have actors giving not-horrendous performances in this piece of poo poo hour of "television". And finally, you could spend more time with Amy imprisoned by the Silurians, since more Karen Gillan is always good. There's just so many different loving ways this episode could've been made at least competent and it completely missed the mark at every point. The problem isn't that the side cast is so poorly written and terribly acted, it's that they spend so much loving screentime with our two mains (since Amy was, again, almost entirely written out of the story), who are inexplicably split up for no adequately explained reason. And nothing HAPPENS. Somehow so much time is spent with Tony and Ambrose and Elliot and Nasreen and I don't know who any of them are as characters. In that same vein, the problem isn't that the episode is so overobsessed with running and shouting and forced tension, it's that it so bungled the execution of that utterly, utterly rote concept of scenes of running and shouting and the camera panning around as Bad Stuff Happened that it's somehow lifeless and grating. It's a bad idea, a completely incompetent and uninteresting idea, achieved so poorly it almost defies belief. This isn't a Moffat episode of television, this is some RTD poo poo right here. The most infuriating thing about "The Hungry Earth" is that it's certainly a bad, bad episode of television, but if this aired during the RTD years then this would've earned a shrug. It more than likely would've gotten the same grade, but the reason why I'm mad at this piece of poo poo over many, many desperately uninteresting and poorly executed episodes of Doctor Who- your "New Earth"s, your "Smith and Jones"s, your "Doctor's Daughter"s -is that Moffat made me expect this show to be better than this. The anger is not from the fact that it's bad, although it is. But it's bad in a way I expected the show to have moved past being- "The Hungry Earth" is an episode that would've fit perfectly in the Davies years, and in fact practically is one, considering it has almost the exact same problems the Series Four Sontaran two-parter- terrible satellite cast, splitting up the mains in their own dumb storylines that all get short shrift due to time constraints, random and completely unnecessary plot complications, fuckin' run-shouting, and clear stalling in an anemic first half of a two-parter -had. The worst part of "The Hungry Earth" is that it's a cold reminder that despite the fact that Doctor Who is good, it can be very, very awful. And that's a loving bummer. Grade: F Random Thoughts:
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Jan 27, 2015 07:28
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Open the door Get on the floor Everybody walk the dinosaur Welcome to super mario bros movie starring doctor whooo
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Jan 27, 2015 07:33
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I really look forward to part 2 of this review. fatherboxx posted:Open the door I do not look forward to having this song stuck in my head, now.
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Jan 27, 2015 07:35
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quote:In the world of ludicrous and somewhat sexist Karen Gillan outfits by the costuming department of Doctor Who, I think "Amy in ridiculously short hotpants" takes the cake here. Interestingly, I seem to remember some interview where Karen Gillan mentioned that she herself came up with a lot of Amy's wardrobe.
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Jan 27, 2015 07:37
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Toxxupation posted:Why do the Silurians kidnap people with sinkholes if they can just send dudes to do so? Why vice versa? There's a good argument for either but not both, and the only real reason that the Silurians seem to send one of their own to take people is so the plot point of Alaya being kidnapped can happen. Were they kidnapping people on purpose? I thought the Doctor said that they were changing the composition of the earth to make it easier for their vehicle to come up through the surface?
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Jan 27, 2015 07:38
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Toxxupation posted:[*] "Homo Reptilia". My eyes rolled out of my head. I am literally blind from how goddamn hacky that line was. Clearly the lizard people are in the same genus as us. Totally makes sense.
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Jan 27, 2015 07:39
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Senor Tron posted:Interestingly, I seem to remember some interview where Karen Gillan mentioned that she herself came up with a lot of Amy's wardrobe.
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Jan 27, 2015 07:40
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I do enjoy their excuses. "We were going to... Rio! And missed! That's why she's wearing that in Wales!"
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Jan 27, 2015 07:54
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Toxxupation posted:The most infuriating thing about "The Hungry Earth" is that it's certainly a bad, bad episode of television, but if this aired during the RTD years then this would've earned a shrug. Yeah, first time I saw this episode I was bitterly disappointed because the run of episodes under Moffat to this point had been consistently good (Victory was the "worst" and it was still fine). When I rewatched it a year or so back it wasn't as bad as I remembered in that I at least knew what was coming, but getting hit by it the first time after that stretch of great episodes is really disappointing and make the (many) bad things about it stand out even more. It's contrasts so strongly with all the other episodes so far, but as you say probably would have fit in with the RTD era without raising a single eyebrow. Chibnall didn't seem to get the message that RTD wasn't running the show anymore though, though to be fair it was the first season under Moffat's control and it's not like he got to see all the other episodes beforehand and then write it - I guess he produced what he figured was entirely in keeping with the way Doctor Who episodes went.
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Jan 27, 2015 07:55
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Lycus posted:Clearly the lizard people are in the same genus as us. Totally makes sense. It would even work okay if they'd put a bit of thought into it and done it the other way round. [Pick a genus] sapiens would have been... well, still cheesy, but it would've made sense at least.
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Jan 27, 2015 08:33
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God if i got this one wrong I'll get the next wrong. I gave this episode a D because it was boring not so much bad, else I would have given it an F. It started out looking like a cheap episode but possibly a good one, but then got expensive and witless.
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Jan 27, 2015 08:38
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Toxxupation posted:Doctor Who I gave this one a B. No idea why. I was doing so well, too!
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Jan 27, 2015 08:48
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Paul.Power posted:It would even work okay if they'd put a bit of thought into it and done it the other way round. [Pick a genus] sapiens would have been... well, still cheesy, but it would've made sense at least. And dinosaurs aren't even reptiles anymore. 
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Jan 27, 2015 08:57
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poo poo, I voted D. I didn't remember this episode being this bad. In fact, I don't remember this episode at all! Everything I remember from this two-parter comes from the second episode. This is the only episode I can't remember anything from in series 5. I can't remember much from part 2, either.
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Jan 27, 2015 09:01
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cargohills posted:I gave this one a B. No idea why. I was doing so well, too! Same, I remembered it being bland by not offensive. I doubled my points off with this one.
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Jan 27, 2015 09:26
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ThePlague-Daemon posted:poo poo, I voted D. I didn't remember this episode being this bad. Yeah, I keep doing that. I give it a D, he gives it a F. I give it a B, he gives it a A. I guess I should have been more extreme, since my moderation has left my position in the standings as mediocre.
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Jan 27, 2015 09:50
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I have my own review game. I take a shot for every part where "doctor who is a show about..." or "the thing about [showrunner] is..." or some description of what it takes to make a show (wildly inaccurate, of course) and also a cover-all shot for every miscellaneous tangent. I would take a shot every time a new review grade completely contradicts with all the paragraphs of moon logic used to rationalize old grades, but I always pass out before I find out. Basically, occupation you one crazy fucker and now I'm an alcoholic.
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Jan 27, 2015 10:26
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Paul.Power posted:It would even work okay if they'd put a bit of thought into it and done it the other way round. [Pick a genus] sapiens would have been... well, still cheesy, but it would've made sense at least. It reminds me of how back in the classic series, someone apparently glanced at a science textbook long enough to realise the Silurian era was too early for reptiles to have evolved, and thus had the Doctor randomly announce that the Silurians should really have been called Eocenes... which was nice and all, except the Eocene is the era after dinosaurs went extinct and therefore probably not the best idea for the home era of, well, dinosaur people. I think this is a tradition that should be maintained, and every couple of Silurian episodes, someone should come up with a new and even more scientifically ludicrous name for them!
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Jan 27, 2015 10:34
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