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CobiWann posted:Only if you double cross Jason Statham. Or the other two transporters, as apparently that got a fourth movie and a TV series 
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Apr 15, 2015 16:09
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Whenever someone gets all hot and bothered about "the bad thread" it amuses me since all three Doctor Who threads are almost exactly the same with 95% the same posters in each.
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Apr 15, 2015 16:54
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i have never posted in The Bad Thread, and never will. GoT is for weirdos 
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Apr 15, 2015 16:58
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marktheando posted:Whenever someone gets all hot and bothered about "the bad thread" it amuses me since all three Doctor Who threads are almost exactly the same with 95% the same posters in each. Besides that the spoiler thread is totally empty lately! It might drop off the active forums at this point, because they've apparently been very careful about filming and leaks. Normally by now there are a couple of set photos, which is what I stick around for and then drop out once full episode summaries come in. You can probably tell from how far we are in the reviews how seriously Moffat wants to guard against spoilers as a showrunner, although the rest of the funny production details about that kind of stuff will have to wait until future episodes to be relevant.
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Apr 15, 2015 16:59
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Bicyclops posted:Or the other two transporters, as apparently that got a fourth movie and a TV series Six movies and a season?
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Apr 15, 2015 17:06
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Doctor Who "A Good Man Goes to War" Series 6, Episode 7 "A Good Man Goes to War" is Moffat's first actual misstep in relation to Doctor Who, but Christ is it a big one. We've seen minor mistakes- moving Angels, specific repetition of themes that come across as hackneyed, trite, and/or going to the well one too many times, one-dimensional characters, a certain clumsiness and roughness that permeates the episode at large (looking at you, "The Beast Below"), but "A Good Man Goes to War" has all of these things at once, which reduces what should have been a meteoric, unforgettable mid-season finale that capped off a seven-episode arc into merely kinda pleasant, if unbelievably infuriating. Oxx said at the start of Series Five that Moffat's failures, in contrast to RTD's, were rooted in stylistic, authorial mistakes. Since up until this point I hadn't seen any major missteps on his part when he was acting as a writer, I couldn't understand that criticism practically- it was all theoretical, since Moffat's fuckups haven't been that significant. "A Good Man Goes to War" came around, however, and unfortunately I now understand what "bad" Moffat looks like, even in an episode that's still overall decent-to-good. It's a disconcerting harbinger for what is to come, though, that "A Good Man" already contains so many obvious failures. Chief among them is the ending. Let's start there and work backwards; River's monologue about how the events of "A Good Man" are all The Doctor's fault was some grade-A loving horseshit. I cannot stress enough how much I hated that piece of poo poo "reveal"; very rarely do I get Actually Mad at Doctor Who, and I certainly haven't been this upset by a plot point since the RTD days. But that dumbshit completely unearned plot point did it, as Oxx can attest. In order to grasp how fully that reveal pissed me off I guess I should explain how the tone of Oxx and I's chatlogs are. When something I don't like happens, I note it but more in a disconnected, weighting-the-episode sense, and I keep it in mind moving forward through the episode. Oxx likes to characterize it as whining, and he's probably right, but things that irritate me I don't get angry at in the moment, my irritation calcifies over the course of viewing so when we discuss the episode afterwards I can address it without having to feel like I'm not paying attention to the episode at large. In contrast my reaction to River's "No, Doctor, you are the monsters" speech was, and I'm quoting myself directly, "None of this makes any sense! What in the gently caress?!" The sheer fact I had so violently, in the moment, flatly rejected that plot point almost never happens, and speaks more fully to how bad it actually was. My brain refused to even humor it, because it was so unearned and so trite and so forced. "A Good Man Goes to War" is essentially "The Pandorica Opens" redux, in plot and setup and act structure and progression leading into a twist reveal ending. "The Pandorica Opens" might be the single best episode Moffat's ever written, which reinforces how lovely the reveal of "A Good Man" is: "Pandorica"'s reveal of the enemies acting in their own best interest and not as antagonists only works because it's a payoff to a season long arc that was, since the very first episode of Series Five, central to the theme of the season as a whole. The Doctor forcing the Atraxi to leave only to summon them back just to tell them off comes off, in the moment, as Eleven in triumph, but in retrospect is the first sign of many that Eleven's major weakness is his hubris, which the season in general seeks to illustrate. This is what makes "The Pandorica Opens"' reveal land, because it was built to naturally over the course of Series Five and not just shoved in fuckin' randomly at the end of the episode, unlike in "A Good Man". "Pandorica"'s reveal also works because not only did it have a season of build (actually, it kind of had that build since the beginning of the show's run) but, just as important, it had an episode of build; "Pandorica" gives Eleven yet another smug monologue about how he can't and shouldn't ever be messed with that ends up reinforcing to his adversaries that they're doing the right thing in imprisoning him. The most important lesson that "The Pandorica Opens" imparts is its underlining of theme within the episode itself, so the arc of the episode flows naturally into its twist ending; the twist is earned because the episode is built entirely around revealing it. "A Good Man" does none of this. It's funny because it's so clearly Moffat copying himself- every aspect of this episode is a very nearly scene-for-scene retelling of "Pandorica" (The Doctor goes around gathering a group of heroes to help him out, The Doctor fights the antagonists, The Doctor wins or so he thinks, the antagonists reveal that this was all part of some greater plan all along, the episode ends with some sort of twist reveal that seeks to criticize The Doctor's character), except worse. It would be worse even if it weren't so blatantly a copy of what came before; the plot progression of this episode is a muddled loving mess with no real explanation of why the antagonists are doing what they're doing. We don't even really get a sense of who or what the antagonists actually are beyond some vaguely religious stuff; The Headless Monks might be the single most pointless and unnecessary villains Doctor Who has ever had, and seek only to make an already difficult to understand episode ever more opaque. So much of "A Good Man" is devoted to running and shouting and grand statements and gestures without even a mote of explanation to the audience even contextually why people are doing whatever they're doing; it contains the exact same problems the first act of "Day of the Moon" had only spread out over an entire episode, which is kind of a feat when you consider it's almost an exact copy of an episode Moffat's already written. This would be repetitious and dull in and of itself, but the ending reveal makes it all the worse. Very rarely have I seen a writer so blatantly and obviously have a character say exactly what the writer thinks about the episode at large; Moffat essentially turns River into a proxy version of himself to deliver the aforementioned and afore-hated "The Doctor is responsible for this" monologue. Except none of it loving works because it wasn't built to in the episode in specific or the season in general, so it's just this random bit where River busts into the final five minutes of the episode to randomly lecture The Doctor about how bad of a person he is like some sort of deranged loving guidance counselor. It's so tonally dissonant from the aims of the episode at large that's it's impossible to see the move as anything but Moffat exercising undue authorial control to impress upon the audience the moral of the story, no matter how illogical and undeserved it is; Moffat completely misunderstands the reason why "The Pandorica Opens" worked in the first place, because the antagonist in "A Good Man" isn't given the slightest hint of empathy or even sympathy. They're a bunch of literal kidnappers, child thieves, and mind rapists (that child ganger poo poo they pulled on Amy was especially egregious), so having the episode end with River snidely explaining to The Doctor "no, you are the demons" comes across as Moffat RTD-like completely and utterly missing the implication of his own narrative. But unlike RTD, who at least had the sense to do so if only to force "a cool scene", this is Moffat doing so to force his own lovely views on the narrative, which in some ways is a lot worse. He turns River into an author avatar, selling out her own character in the process, and disrespects the character of The Doctor by punishing him for doing the right thing within the narrative as established, and it's loving intolerable. The ending of this episode is bad. Just, like, straight up bad. Infuriatingly bad. But what makes it worse is how avoidable it all was; there's a moment where The Doctor, in a fury, counters Madame Kovarian's smug discounting of his anger, pointing out that a "good man has too many rules" with "Good men don't need rules. Today is not the day to find out why I have so many." And it's that implication that should've been explored more fully- instead of making the end of the episode an indictment of The Doctor's hubris, which does not functionally work at all or land in any practical sense, if the episode's end was instead an indictment of The Doctor's morality, or played with the concept of him being a "good man" at all (as his angry declaration implies), then it could've worked. It would've been shades of RTD, but the concept of The Doctor being just as bad as the things he fights has more emotional weight and value to it then a sort of rough, ugly, easy reiteration of a theme that was already established perfectly last season, in an episode that doesn't make any effort whatsoever to make that theme land. Beyond the terrible ending, what's most irritating about this episode is how everything surrounding it is so interesting and good. Despite Moffat's blatant copying of the plot structure of "The Pandorica Opens", it still generally works, leading to a myriad number of really enjoyable and fascinating sequences. Smith still remains as fantastic as ever and the episode really does allow him to play all aspects of Eleven's emotional spectrum. I've always liked "let's get the band together" moments in cinema and television, so watching The Doctor's time and space hopping to grab up everyone he needs to grab is still really fun, and the minor characters this time around are all fun in their own ways- especially the character of Commander Strax, played incredibly by Dan Starkey. The plot might've been various flavors of confusing repetitive nonsense, but what it enabled was individual fun scenes, so on the whole I was consistently entertained and emotionally affected by the things happening onscreen. And as I've mentioned before, the fact that a plot is bad doesn't really affect me outside of egregious violations because character is more important anyways, and in "Good Man"'s case it populated the story with really fascinating, well-done characters. To put it more finely, the ending is so enraging, to me, not really because it's a bad plot point, but because it sells out River and The Doctor's characters to force a lesson the episode hadn't learned, which to me is, as I have mentioned before, the greatest sin a writer can commit: refusing to honor your characters. I really hope this isn't indicative of a trend on Moffat's part, although I'm getting the sense that it is. His violation of the construction and flow of his own narrative to make a moral point is just as bad as RTD's need to have every episode end with the Earth in danger. Or RTD's inability to respect his minor characters. Or RTD's complete inability to plan a narrative. Or RTD's romance arcs, or- you know what Moffat's still a way better showrunner than RTD, even at his worst he still makes watchable episodes this gets a B. Grade: B Random Thoughts:
NieR Occomata fucked around with this message at 21:50 on Apr 15, 2015 |
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Apr 15, 2015 21:47
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There are so many things I want to say in relation to that review but I won't for obvious reasons. That said Toxx you should go back and re-watch "Time of Angels" at the very least to see how Amy/River's relationship is initially cast with River meeting Amy in a sort-of Fraternal/Maternal role. I can't remember too many overt instances of foreshadowing otherwise, but that particular bit is enjoyable when you realize just how much River is humoring her very young mother.
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Apr 15, 2015 21:55
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River is wrong. She's just wrong. Deep inside she blames the Doctor for what happened to her, and that colours her perceptions. She is utterly obsessed with him, he's an almost godlike figure, so she thinks everything that gone wrong is at least partly his fault. She blames him for being an imperfect hero. She's a bit crazy. That isn't exactly the same as Moffet blaming him for being an imperfect hero. Right now it seems the same because we don't have an alternate explanation for why the Silence are being dicks, but that doesn't mean there isn't an alternate explanation. Madame says Melody is hope in the "endless bitter war" which sounds like it is hinting at more than just being mad at the Doctor for being famous.
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Apr 15, 2015 22:43
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Huh. I was expecting to disagree more with that review than I actually did. That particular plot point really is bad, it just didn't dominate my thinking on the episode as it appears to have done yours; I love this episode because it is basically a cavalcade of badass moments for each of the characters. You can't do that every episode, or even very often, or it starts to get stale, but it's been a while since people who aren't the Doctor were allowed to be amazing on a grand scale and, as has been pointed out in this thread, he doesn't even SHOW UP in the episode until a quarter of the way in. The entire opening with Rory is essentially perfect, especially the way Moffat keeps loving with people who (at the time) still thought the Doctor and Amy were shacking up the side. Also, this episode contains Commander Strax. I know this has come up a few times in the thread, I just felt it necessary to mention it once more.  
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Apr 15, 2015 22:45
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Toxxupation posted:
i don't really think there are any. if i remember correctly, moffat said he hadn't figured out their relationship until writing season 6.
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Apr 15, 2015 22:49
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Attitude Indicator posted:i don't really think there are any. if i remember correctly, moffat said he hadn't figured out their relationship until writing season 6. He named Amy what he did in hopes that Kingston would come back, but it was really up to her. Once she signed on then he was able to do the whole storyline. It wasn't the case in the Library, at that point he was ok with her never appearing on Doctor Who again, but by Angles they knew.
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Apr 15, 2015 23:12
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"The only water in the forest is the river" is even dumber now though. Idris/TARDIS thought that was a critically important thing to say over and over? Violate causality to tell them something that doesn't make a difference and nobody understands until it is too late anyway? WTF.
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Apr 15, 2015 23:19
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incidentally the spoiler thread was called something like "a river starts life as a pond, doctor" as a joke for a while before the episode aired because we all thought it would be such a dumb reveal that it could never happen the people freaking out after the episode aired were fantastic
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Apr 16, 2015 00:12
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Also I really can't stand this episode at all
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Apr 16, 2015 00:14
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Like Toxx says, I actually enjoy a great deal about this episode but it's colored by the ending. The ending itself makes for a pretty great cliffhanger - the baby is kidnapped, the Doctor's only just rumbled that something deeper is going on but he's also got an idea on how to resolve it etc - but the tone of it, especially with River's condemnation of the Doctor, is incredibly off-putting. It's also an episode that I can no longer look back on without considering it in the wider context of the full season, and it is difficult to put myself back into the mindset I had after I first saw it because now I'm aware of everything that comes after it, which colors my recollection/viewpoint. So I'll just say, again, that I love that the Doctor's name is written (in a language only the Doctor and River can read) on the side of the crib and there's a shot of River looking directly at it, because I just laugh and laugh every time I consider the possibility that she only knows his "real" name because she happened to read it on the side of a crib one day.
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Apr 16, 2015 00:23
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I think the cliffhanger would've been better had they not revealed the River Song origin until very early in the second episode. Leave it with everyone morose, and the Doctor vowing to find Melody. Use the first two minutes of the following episode to do the River Song reveal, along with the "last time on Doctor Who [Dunh dunh duuunh]" recap. To be fair, I binged this after it aired, so I didn't have to deal with any wait between episodes, so I may be clouded with hindsight. However, I think it would've left a better impression on me.
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Apr 16, 2015 00:31
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Imasalmon posted:I think the cliffhanger would've been better had they not revealed the River Song origin until very early in the second episode. Leave it with everyone morose, and the Doctor vowing to find Melody. Use the first two minutes of the following episode to do the River Song reveal, along with the "last time on Doctor Who [Dunh dunh duuunh]" recap. It is more morose this way, really. If baby Melody is simply missing, of course the Doctor will find her and everything will be fine. Of course he'll save her, that's what he does. If she's River, then she probably can't be saved as a baby. Adult River has interacted with the Doctor's own timeline too much for him to safely undo her life. River doesn't seem like a girl who grew up in Leadworth. The Doctor runs off promising to save her, but from what we know of time travel rules there isn't an easy way to do that.
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Apr 16, 2015 00:41
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Deadpool posted:Oxxidation if you think you're so far above this thread and whatever community you keep referring to then you're free to stop posting in it. Otherwise you and the others arguing with you keep the bullshit out of it and just get on with what you're doing here. This just makes me the idiot for never asking anyone. Yeah, I'm done. Occupation can keep this up for as long as he's willing, obviously, but my "participation" with this thread's run its course.
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Apr 16, 2015 01:27
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Oxxidation posted:This just makes me the idiot for never asking anyone. Fly to the Homestuck thread, where clowns will trumpet your freedom.
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Apr 16, 2015 01:36
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Oh this episode is loving tragic
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Apr 16, 2015 01:58
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Toxxupation posted:Oh this episode is loving tragic Oh you're watching the next episode already? Yeah this one is..... well, this one certainly IS.
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Apr 16, 2015 02:03
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Toxxupation posted:Oh this episode is loving tragic huh
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Apr 16, 2015 02:37
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Angela Christine posted:It is more morose this way, really. If baby Melody is simply missing, of course the Doctor will find her and everything will be fine. Of course he'll save her, that's what he does. I look at it as, "Melody is River, so I know it all works out well because she and the Doctor have an intimate relationship. Based on that, I feel zero tension at all from this cliffhanger." The alternative that I proposed as my preferred style at least leaves me wondering how the greater story will be resolved. The way it went down, to me, gave me the resolution if not the details. And given how jarring of a reveal it was, at least to me, I was left with little interest in the details. Just different narrative preferences, I suppose.
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Apr 16, 2015 02:48
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Jerusalem posted:So I'll just say, again, that I love that the Doctor's name is written (in a language only the Doctor and River can read) on the side of the crib and there's a shot of River looking directly at it, because I just laugh and laugh every time I consider the possibility that she only knows his "real" name because she happened to read it on the side of a crib one day. This was amusing, but when it happened I was initially let down because I thought on top of all this they were suddenly going to acknowledge Susan's existence.
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Apr 16, 2015 02:55
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in which the title is a lie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let%27s_Kill_Hitler
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Apr 16, 2015 02:58
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I'm pretty sure liking this episode is illegal on four continents, which means I am a loving FELON.
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Apr 16, 2015 03:03
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Toxxupation posted:in which the title is a lie A Doctor Who episode that premiered on my birthday, after months of waiting, with the greatest title ever, and it broke my heart.
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Apr 16, 2015 03:05
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Fungah! posted:incidentally the spoiler thread was called something like "a river starts life as a pond, doctor" as a joke for a while before the episode aired because we all thought it would be such a dumb reveal that it could never happen It was the finest moment of the spoiler thread. 
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Apr 16, 2015 03:07
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It's kinda surprising to me that I've had no real comments to make about any of the episodes in season 6 so far. I sent in my guesses but I don't really feel strongly about any of them. This next one is different.
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Apr 16, 2015 03:10
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It would have been nice if they'd managed to mention a friend named Mels even once before this episode.
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Apr 16, 2015 03:12
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I can't believe Oxxidation quit right before series 6 really got interesting to read about! After he said series 6 "owns" I wanted to see him justify some of this stuff. Last episode the wheels came off the Moffatmobile. This episode the Moffatmobile crashes. I barely remember anything about the rest of the series because I spent weeks fuming about this episode instead of paying attention.
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Apr 16, 2015 03:12
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Angela Christine posted:It would have been nice if they'd managed to mention a friend named Mels even once before this episode. That was a big problem. The actress was a huge problem.
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Apr 16, 2015 03:16
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I honestly like this episode just because it's kind of ridiculous. At worst I'd give it a C. It's not really good, but not actively awful the way fart aliens or concrete blowjobs are. E: vvvv At least how I remember it, it's entirely plausible I don't actually remember this that well.
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Apr 16, 2015 03:33
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To me the biggest problem Let's Kill Hitler has is that there is a lot of really cool/good stuff in it, but the bad stuff in the episode is SO unbelievably bad that it not only completely overwhelms it but makes people forget about it - visually the episode looks great, it has a lot of very good humor (anything with Rory is great, as always), the time traveling shapeshifting robot with tiny people inside is cool as hell etc. But the bad stuff is AWFUL, just astonishingly bad, the actresses who plays Mels are all terrible and completely fail to salvage the awful writing they have (which Alex Kingston always carries off very well), the very concept of Mels is the most terrible retroactive continuity and makes no sense at all, the closing line is hilariously bad, etc, etc. Worst of all though is the complete no-sell of the brutal emotional trauma that Amy and Rory must have gone through and are STILL going through - they don't even ignore it which would be bad in a different way, they acknowledge it and then just kinda move on like nothing happened. It's Moffat being too concerned with being "clever" and forgetting the emotional side of the story beyond the surface level. Usually an episode with this mix of good/bad stuff I'd simply call a mixed episode, but the bad stuff really is so incredibly bad that it sucks the whole episode down with it like a giant crab at the bottom of a hovercar freeway.
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Apr 16, 2015 03:34
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I've typed into the reply box and deleted a few meltdown-length rants about Mels already since Occ put the wiki page for the episode up, but yeah, the terrible retcon and horrible actress would be totally fine if the episode didn't literally resolve a kidnapped baby plot with the parents knowing beyond a doubt that they will never get their baby back and just shrugging about it. Mels is just the personification of Plot Over Character, the concept boiled down to its essence and given tangible form. The kidnapped baby doesn't matter, the big River plot matters, so forget about the baby and whoosh, follow me into Magic Land!
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Apr 16, 2015 03:44
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I've got this episode on right now and I think every time I watch it I notice a new thing I hate, while the amount of things I like remain constant. I only just noticed the part where the captain of the Tesselecta identifies River and makes a comment like "Forget about Hitler, if we go after this war criminal we'll get, like, hella vacation days", implying that in the future, River Song is regarded as a greater monster for killing the Doctor than Hitler is for, y'know, the entire Holocaust NuWho can be pretty obnoxious about its Doctor-fellatio but that is just... wow.
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Apr 16, 2015 04:28
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Toxxupation posted:It's so tonally dissonant Attaboy. 
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Apr 16, 2015 04:33
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Toxxupation posted:Oh this episode is loving tragic I await this review with baited breath. There are things I like about this episode, but mostly, I think it's really bad. And hoo boy, I had forgotten about the cunnilingus joke. Speaking of loving tragedies. (Finally, as an odd personal favor, would you PM the name of that movie you recommended? I got busier than I expected to be, but if I have it there, I can watch it when I get a free hour or two.  )
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Apr 16, 2015 05:13
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Yeah, I'm not a big fan of Moffat for reasons. A lot of them are in "Good Man Goes to War" and "Let's Kill Hitler". And I'll shut up right there because spoilers and stuff. What I can't figure is why it pisses me off more when Moffat sucks than it ever did when RTD sucked.
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Apr 16, 2015 05:52
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Because RTD's default mode was being terrible. With Moffat you know he's capable of doing better.
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Apr 16, 2015 06:00
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