|
docbeard posted:Hahaha, I hadn't even thought of that. I'm hoping for a gradual reveal too as the first few episodes have Killgrave in a slimy-but-somewhat-seductive role so you get a lot of posts saying "I've only seen the first few episodes but I don't see what the big deal is" before getting to the big deal and doubling down in trying to justify mind-controlling a woman into a sex robot/slave solely for Killgrave's own pleasure because they find Tennant dreamy in a suit. For those who don't want to read the spoiler but want an idea, let's just say the role Tennant has in Jessica Jones has way more in common with his role in Secret Smile and Harry Potter than it does Casanova or Doctor Who.
|
#
?
May 4, 2015 11:48
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 25, 2024 15:12 |
|
|
Huh. I always forget that Tennant was in Harry Potter. Had to go look it up.
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2015 12:05
|
|
|
Harry Potter has a lot of people. It's not quite like Who where sometimes it feels like you've seen every British actor by watching it, but there's a lot.
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2015 12:08
|
|
|
Toxxupation posted:in vaguely related news i was spoiled on some events that happen in the jessica jones comics and let me just say that whoever decided to cast david tennant in that role deserves a loving medal Yeah, that was an incredible casting choice.
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2015 12:25
|
|
|
Toxxupation posted:in vaguely related news i was spoiled on some events that happen in the jessica jones comics and let me just say that whoever decided to cast david tennant in that role deserves a loving medal Yeah, that was an incredible casting choice. mind the walrus posted:I'm hoping for a gradual reveal too as the first few episodes have Killgrave in a slimy-but-somewhat-seductive role so you get a lot of posts saying "I've only seen the first few episodes but I don't see what the big deal is" before getting to the big deal and doubling down in trying to justify mind-controlling a woman into a sex robot/slave solely for Killgrave's own pleasure because they find Tennant dreamy in a suit. This is getting pretty specific about details of the Jessica Jones comic so avoid if you want to go into the show (or read the comic) fresh, but in my mind what he did was "worse" - He didn't rape her, he just made her stand blankly by watching while he raped other girls, and he ended each night by making her beg him to gently caress her before smugly refusing "her advances". I've never felt such disgust and hatred for a character in pretty much anything before as I did for that character when the reveal finally came. It's an incredible comic.
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2015 12:28
|
|
|
Jerusalem posted:This is getting pretty specific about details of the Jessica Jones comic so avoid if you want to go into the show (or read the comic) fresh, but in my mind what he did was "worse" - He didn't rape her, he just made her stand blankly by watching while he raped other girls, and he ended each night by making her beg him to gently caress her before smugly refusing "her advances". There's definitely a subtext regarding comics fans and characters like her that is going to make for a lot of buzz and is long overdue to be a discussion point in the "mainstream" superhero crowd. I also fully expect the critical circuit to eviscerate the show for not doing a good enough job with such a sensitive subject for whatever reason, and more than a few trashing the hell out of the show for going there at all.
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2015 12:32
|
|
|
Capfalcon posted:Huh. I always forget that Tennant was in Harry Potter. Had to go look it up. It's a minor enough role that you can be forgiven for forgetting it was him, since he spends most of the movie shapeshifted into somebody else anyway. Tennant himself gets what, two scenes?
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2015 12:34
|
|
|
Secret Smile gives us a pretty good idea how Tennant's going to play that role, I think. Which is to say creepy as gently caress.
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2015 12:48
|
|
|
Considering how much stuff about Alias they will have the change when they are making AKA Jessica Jones*, I would be really loving suprised if any of the really egregious Kilgrave stuff makes it to the screen in anything but the most watered down way. Thats not even considering what Disney would say about making that part of the extremely lucrative MCU. Sure Daredevil was comparitively dark, but not multiple rapes dark. *Just with the current status quo for the MCU vs the status quo in the comics when Alias was written will require a tonne of changes, but this really isnt the thread for that. Talking about tennats role is arguably relevant but a big list of "well in the comics..." not so much.
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2015 14:05
|
|
|
mind the walrus posted:
I don't think even RTD thinks "Boy, there should be more Doctor Who written by Russell 'the' Davies." His unwavering, bombastic thing had run its course, and it's nice that it got to go out at the same time as Tennant, and leave a fresh start for Moffat to work with. I think with Davies, the flaws mostly are the kind that make you want to cringe with embarrassment while you're watching a bad high school play, while with Moffat, the flaws are half that, and half the kind of thing that makes you want to clock him. I actually think with season 6, the bad moments more closely resemble Davies's flaws, and as Jeru says, there are some incredible moments all over the place to make up for it.
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2015 15:04
|
|
|
SiKboy posted:Considering how much stuff about Alias they will have the change when they are making AKA Jessica Jones*, I would be really loving suprised if any of the really egregious Kilgrave stuff makes it to the screen in anything but the most watered down way. Thats not even considering what Disney would say about making that part of the extremely lucrative MCU. Sure Daredevil was comparitively dark, but not multiple rapes dark. No, Daredevil was just child sex-trafficking and domestic abuse dark. I won't be shocked either way, but I will be disappointed if they dull the edge the story has to make it less objectionable. The whole point of the story, beyond any subtext about the treatment of women in media/comics, is a rape victim taking control of her life and literally showing her abuser he no longer has power over her. And then kicking the poo poo out of him.
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2015 15:06
|
|
|
Toxxupation posted:I feel like this is a good time to remind everyone that RTD wrote "Rose", the Aliens of London two-parter, "Boom Town", "The Parting of the Ways", "New Earth", "Love and Monsters", "Voyage of the Damned", and "Planet of the Dead" Agreed, Aliens of London owns
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2015 16:25
|
|
|
I would love an RTD episode. Written, not while he was a showrunner. Whatever he throws at the wall to stick, Moffat can weave together somehow.
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2015 21:13
|
|
|
Gaz-L posted:No, Daredevil was just child sex-trafficking and domestic abuse dark. Yeah, the resolution is tremendous and whether they water down the material for the show or not, I hope they keep that intact. Anyway I guess that's enough discussion about the comic that a show that hasn't even finished being made yet is based on - but people should seriously read that series, it's really good!
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2015 23:34
|
|
|
I remember the debate in the thread about RTD/Moffat era was either the tonal shift for lack of a better word. RTD for all his flaws had heart and (some) depth to his characters if they were never fully developed. Moffat had all these great ideas and wrote dialogue really well but I think suffers for focusing way too much on the awesomeness of the Doctor and his shadier side. It's a fine theme to explore occasionally but he went to that well way to many times. I get it, the Doctor lies but there has to be more than that.
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2015 01:26
|
|
|
I think this season's arc plot was kind of a dud, and while it's unfortunate that that one mistake (by its nature as a season arc) spread itself over a whole year's worth of episodes, retrospectively I still see it as one mistake and not worth totally giving up on Moffat over.
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2015 04:12
|
|
|
It's been said before, but Moffat's biggest sin is that season 5 was so off-the-charts great. Two or three lovely episodes, sure, but the show was finally everything we always wanted it to be.
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2015 05:39
|
|
|
On the other hand, season 5 worked by making the seasonal arc stronger than ever before. The cracks were responsible for how the fish people traveled to Earth, they were the mcguffin of the Angels episodes (and the Doctor's dress choices wound up being retroactively relevant), the lovely two partner was used to set up the Rory weirdness, and on. And that's before we get into how the finale tried to force Van Gogh, Churchill, and Space Whale Britain into the storyline. "Look! Look at how critically important each and every episode was in contributing to this moment!" Compare to Bad Wolf, where just before the finale The Doctor (who seemed naive to every other appearance of the phrase) finally pointed out it's consistency just before the hammer was dropped, to clue in any viewers who were especially 'thick'. Setting aside the critical flaw of Bad Wolf, that it didn't mean anything; I think viewers want, or at least expect, something close to the latter. Doctor Who seasons have a fairly predictable format now, where the first and last episodes of a season will tie together and maybe there will be a catch up episode in the middle reminding you of the looking finale. But I think people expect a bunch of self contained stories from a menagerie of writers in between that gives the universe it's flavor. In that regard, a show runner basically sets the theme. RTD's theme was very heavy on "protecting the earth" and later a discussion on humanity and mortality, and for better or worse the writers played along. Moffat's stories are less about Earth and more about the Doctor as this traveler, whose weariness becomes more apparent as the show reaches a franchise milestone. And the stories do show that. If you gave season six a story as long and involved as five's, there's less room for capsule episodes like The Doctor's Wife and The Girl Who Waited. And they're overall what defined it.
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2015 22:23
|
|
|
Eh, I think a lot of the reason those moments hit so hard is because they're not the norm. You can't have "super mysterous clues in the background " all the time, or else everybody spends the entire show looking for the secret clue. I think one of the issues with S5 is that people are expecting it to be something they can be all "oh my god that's so clever", when really it's just a neat way to tie together a show that's set up to have a season be a bunch of individual stories. The fact that writers are now wanting to tie it together just means they have to be even more careful about that. Not every season needs to be the most mysterious thing ever topping the last one, and we'd get better shows if more writers didn't just fall back on "oh it's a mysteryyyyyyyy" as a crutch  .
surc fucked around with this message at 18:04 on May 7, 2015 |
|
#
?
May 7, 2015 17:59
|
|
|
surc posted:Eh, I think a lot of the reason those moments hit so hard is because they're not the norm. You can't have "super mysterous clues in the background " all the time, or else everybody spends the entire show looking for the secret clue. Like the ghastly painting in the background of The Lodger. Or one episode that had a classic red telephone booth in the background of a shot of london and people were wondering if it might be the master's TARDIS or something, because those booths aren't common in real life these days. It must mean something, right?
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2015 20:20
|
|
|
I still wonder if they didn't include that creepy painting as a hook that they'll eventually revisit ...
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2015 22:00
|
|
|
Angela Christine posted:Like the ghastly painting in the background of The Lodger. Or one episode that had... I want to respond to the second half of this post, but it's talking about future episodes... I guess I'll respond in the regular thread.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2015 23:40
|
|
|
Jsor posted:Harry Potter has a lot of people. It's not quite like Who where sometimes it feels like you've seen every British actor by watching it, but there's a lot. You mean to say it's not a who's who of British actors?
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2015 23:54
|
|
|
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQfvLpfXe2U
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2015 22:53
|
|
|
I do like Karen Gillan's mysterious bowling technique where she runs forward screaming, lobbs the ball in the general direction of the lane, then somehow gets a strike.
SirSamVimes fucked around with this message at 23:08 on May 8, 2015 |
|
#
?
May 8, 2015 23:05
|
|
|
SirSamVimes posted:I do like Karen Gillan's mysterious bowling technique where she runs forward screaming, lobbs the ball in the general direction of the lane, then somehow gets a strike. That's not normal? That's how we all bowl in Scotland.
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2015 00:25
|
|
|
Gaz-L posted:That's not normal? That's how we all bowl in Scotland. I imagine scottish bowling is like the Caber Toss, but with very spherical logs.
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2015 00:38
|
|
|
Ah yes, very soon you'll run into Eleven's latest hat.
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2015 00:47
|
|
|
Doctor Who "The Wedding of River Song" Series 6, Episode 13 "The Wedding of River Song" is a microcosm of Series Six as a whole, riddled with the exact same strengths and weaknesses that permeate the season at large. Viewed from that perspective, "Wedding" is a "perfect" finale for Series Six; not a perfect episode, oh lord no, but an episode that is utterly in keeping with the tonal, thematic, and narrative aims of the season at large. Personally, I loved it, a fun and rollicking way to end and inconsistent season of television. But again, not without its faults. "The Wedding of River Song" is a Series Six episode, and if it's one thing that Series Six is consistent at, it's being inconsistent. So while the highs of "Wedding" are so incredibly high, the lows are fairly low, and nowhere is this discrepancy more pointed than in the first scenes of the episode. For an episode that ends so strongly, it couldn't have started more weakly or disconcertingly; it's a whiplash-inducing montage of scenes and sequences that have barely anything to do with each other, that are so abrupt and poorly stitched together (a bearded, imprisoned Doctor brought into the modern-day Roman emperor Churchill's presence to recount him a story? Which then leads him into playing extreme death chess in a thunderdome against a heavily prosthetic'd up CyberViking? Leading him into having said CyberViking lead him through a crypt to speak to the head of Dorium Maldovar (Simon Fisher-Becker) and then get subsequently devoured...by living skulls?) that it reminds one of the worst excesses of the RTD years. Moffat penned this script so it's hard to figure out why he wrote so many odd and incoherent scenes in such quick succession since none of them add anything to the narrative, it's just a bunch of silly weird nonsense until the meat of the episode happens. To be fair, the act shift was handled incredibly well; it's very easy to point out how if The Doctor knows exactly when, where, and why he's gonna no-poo poo for-reals no-take-backsies die, being a coward with a time machine means that he can delay such an event indefinitely by, well, by simply never travelling to that time or place in the first place. The reason why he finally decides to take positive action over dilly-dallying endlessly- to wit, he's informed of the Brigadier's death (apparently the Brig was the closest thing he had to a friend before Craig, at least according to how Oxx described him when I asked) and the sobering realization that he'd been delaying the inevitable is what causes him to finally address his imminent death. It's a fairly strong, affecting scene that really does emphasize how so much of The Doctor's actions were naked fear and an unwillingness to confront his own demons, whether from within or without, and the Brig's death works as a strong wake-up call for The Doctor. The scene of the "death" of The Doctor was also incredibly strong, giving us a true, unvarnished glimpse into the feelings that River has for The Doctor. So much of The Doctor and River's interactions are hidden behind secrecy, evasion, overtones, subtext, and outright lies, and so this sort of true reflection of the level of affection the River has for The Doctor (even if it was, ironically, revealed to be at least partly a put-on) is what makes the eventual climax of the episode land- its emotional beats are seeded here and pay dividends near the end of the episode. Here's where the second set of problems within the episode emerge. After Amy et al "kidnap" The Doctor from Churchill and kick the episode's second half off, the stakes and weight of the situation immediately drain because there needs to be a re-establishment of the relationship Amy and The Doctor have and an explanation of what happened to Amy after the new, time-frozen universe came to be because of The Doctor's un-death. To be fair, having Amy be the bridge between the "old" universe and the "new" one is really smart; she's quite literally the only human in which it'd be plausible that no matter what version of herself exists, in any or all realities, she'd be able to remember things from her "primary" reality. But even so, what ends up happening functionally within the episode is that the stakes get immediately raised- oh no, The Silence are here and attacking! Time has frozen and is dying because The Doctor didn't die when he was supposed to! -and then just as quickly lowered as Amy vomits exposition on The Doctor. The scene itself is fun because Gillan and Smith interacting is always fun, but the episode as a whole has this janky, disconnected, all-over-the-map feel. Which, again, is emblematic of Series Six as a whole. Series Six isn't really one season of television so much as two half-seasons; Series Six Part One was all about The Doctor's death, the Silence, Madame Kovarian, Amy's kidnapping, etc, while Series Six Part Two was about Melody/River, her origin, revealing The Doctor to be immoral, his abandonment of his Companions, and so on. The bridging was done well in parts- most notably how revealing how much of a monster The Doctor was in the second half dovetailed nicely with the overarching refrain of his own imminent death -but on the whole there's a loose, disconnected feel where The Doctor getting murdered in Utah gets pushed way into the background to spend more time with River. In that same way "The Wedding of River Song" feels like two completely separate plots- quite literally, since the original finale was planned as a two-parter squished down into one episode -that are connected together in a really weak, somewhat incoherent way. The reveal of Amy-as-Silence-member and her subsequent shooting of The Doctor in the head feels like a genuine cliffhanger to part one of a two-parter, especially in how the framing device of the first half of "Wedding" was all about The Doctor explaining to Churchill what happened", and the reveal and exposition from Amy after The Doctor wakes up, having only been stunned, feels like the opening to part two. It's why the exposition dump works if one views it as part two of a second episode, since the beginning of an episode is about setup and world explanation. But since it's placed right smack dab in the middle of the episode it's this weird tonal downbeat of more explanation and exposition that gives the episode its loose feel. It sucks, too, in this specific case because the interaction with Amy and The Doctor is as usual fantastic, but overall it's this weird valley in the middle of the episode that doesn't really work. The re-introduction of River into the narrative livens things up but the episode doesn't really hit the third act until The Silence attack (like it was utterly obvious that they were going to). This is a central problem the episode has: it feels like because of the "two episodes squished into one" mandate it's split into six acts, not three, so you get two climaxes and twice as much world-building and exposition. The only reason any of it really works is because the acting and dialog is so on point, but as a paced episode of television it doesn't really fit into a traditional narrative, so it's this rush, garbled thing that flits from plot point to plot point as needed to set up its climax and finale, with almost reckless abandon. It's a lucky thing, therefore, that the climax is as utterly perfect as it ultimately is. Taken as a complete whole, "Wedding" ends up a neat inversion of "The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang", down to specific scenes like Amy abandoning Madame Kovarian to death (which is framed as an intentional tonal callback to River's Dalek-murdering in "Big Bang") or Amy saving Rory from certain death at the hands of the enemy (as opposed to Rory saving Amy from the Dalek) but what really sells it is the scene where Amy and River tell him that they reached out to all of his friends for help in solving the Doctor-dying conundrum. It works both as an optimistic counterpoint to the end of "Pandorica Opens"- one of the most emotionally powerful sequences in the show's history, where all of the villains of DW are assembled around him, certain that he's the biggest evil of all, instead replaced with the lights of all the peoples he's helped, living proof of all the good he's done over the centuries and millenia. But it also works as a final capper of the arc late in the second half of Series Six about how The Doctor is a morally compromised piece of poo poo, where this episode calcifies that no matter what The Doctor is a true force for good in this universe. It's a powerful scene so much because it pays off a running theme of the season in a smart and clever way while also working as visual callback to itself, and comes across as downright chilling. Watching River break into tears as she begs The Doctor to stay alive despite the disintegration of time- "I can't let you die without knowing you are loved. By so many, and so much! And no one more than me," comes across as so cathartic and affecting it moved me to tears as well. Not to say what River was doing wasn't loving stupid as loving hell. As even The Doctor angrily points out, her selfishness and unwillingness to kill The Doctor is literally dooming the universe. But to me the point isn't that The Doctor and River have some fairytale love story despite all appearances- if anything it's meant to be the exact opposite of that. Rory and Amy are the fairytale, two people realizing how deeply they care for each other and building a healthy, stable relationship. The Doctor and River's relationship is based on lies, half-truths, obligation, and guilt- I mean, literally, the first time the two of them met was either when one tried to kill the other or when one sacrificed herself to save the other's life, depending on whose perspective you're viewing it from. The entire point of The Doctor and River's relationship is that it's a toxic relationship, an unhealthy love- one in which neither of them have perfect knowledge of the other at any given time, and the entire relationship is built on them having to, by necessity, lie about crucial aspects of it at all times. If one even thinks about where narratively River is at in her own personal narrative within "Wedding", she's in love with The Doctor after having met him in person once, and that was when she tried to assassinate him. None of her decisions make sense or are in the least bit rational, but that's more the point- The Doctor and River are in this toxic, fundamentally doomed relationship, and love is definitionally irrational. It's not the greatest love story in the world, but it's the most appropriate, Doctor Who-ish love story- some hosed up, weird causative-loop filled spacetime-spanning shenanigans between two giant Time Assholes. And it's why their relationship, and ultimately their wedding, lands- because River and The Doctor deserve each other. And yes, that's both a positive and a negative. Finally, though, let's address the much-derided and much-reviled final scene of the episode. Dorium's increasingly frantic repetition of The Question to the back of a slowly strutting Doctor- "Doctor Who? Doctor Who?! DOCTOR WHO?!" is possibly the most favorite single scene in DW I've ever seen. It's so flatly one of my favorite scenes that I genuinely do not understand (ugh, that criticism) people who hate it; I mean, I sort of do, but I can only really understand it by viewing it from the perspective of someone who hates Moffat's input into the show, where it essentially becomes an ad hominem criticism. Because, yeah, then I can understand why people don't like it; if a viewer hates Moffat then his "taking ownership" of the title of the show is some huge offensive act of hubris by a guy who didn't earn it, one who sells out something as bedrock as the show title as a narrative conceit, the man's ego being so unchecked and so inflated especially when viewed in light of his comparative abilities- that is to say, virtually none -that it's an actual offense. Is there nothing Moffat won't take advantage of, this theoretical hate-watcher asks. And from that perspective I can understand where the anger over the final scene comes from, even if I think it's fundamentally judgemental and subjective- it's not grading the development on its own merits, or lack thereof, but grading it based on the person who penned it, which I don't think is overall fair. There's also the argument for nostalgia, how the title of the show is based around one of the longest-running jokes of the series- to wit "Oh, he's The Doctor." "Doctor who?" and you Just Don't Mess With It. That the "Doctor WHO?!" scene changes the textural makeup of one of the most important aspects of the show- its name -into a dramatic point, which is verboten. Turning the show's title into a crucial narrative development would be like turning the Daleks into giant, featureless spheres, one argues; you just can't do it because it defines the show, in its own way. Here's my perspective- I think, and always have thought, that the title of the show has been loving stupid. The joke it's based on is so old and so hoary and so goddamn tired that at this point the times when the show specifically parodies that- "It's the Doctor." "Doctor what?" are, themselves, tired and overused. That's how irritating the joke has become- jokes riffing on the joke have become, themselves, irritating. It's a joke that may have worked once but has become so stretched in the usage that it's lost all definitional meaning, and turning it into the show's title was in my opinion ultimately a mistake, a reminder of how goddamn kitsch and camp the show almost always is, in that bad British way where every decent joke gets run into the ground and killed (see also: Python, Monty) over the fun way, the RTD way. It's also utterly reflective of what I think is the largest genuine problem the show has: its inability to ever stop worshipping its own backstory and narrative. So many problems the show has had- bad stories, bad villains, bad characters, bad characterizations -root from the fact that they're rewrites of "old" stories, or bringing back "old" villains (the Silurians, the Time Lords, the Cybermen, the Sontarans, even the Daleks) or "old" characters (The Master), who are all supposed to be defined in one way, can only be treated by the show from a specific perspective, because any other way would be not how the show is "supposed" to be. The Cybermen suck and always have and should have been loving abandoned decades- literally decades -ago, and they still showed up in this season and died like the stupid chump idiots they always were. Why did they do so? Because their defined powers and characterization loving suck and cannot be changed. And that's just one example! There are dozens more, and it's rooted in this central problem the show has- this bigger on the inside, "Oh you've redecorated. I don't like it." constant repetition of memes, this endless derivation and reference to itself that makes the show both incredibly insular and just endlessly iterative. For a show about a time-travelling space alien that can go literally anywhere in time and space there's so little originality in anything it does, and what little there is usually ends up rejected by the fanbase at large because it's not the way the show is "supposed" to be. Which is literally anything at all! I've talked up endlessly about how "Doctor Who is..." this or that, but the real secret is is that Doctor Who is ANYTHING. It can be whatever it wants to be, and it loving should! It's generally an optimistic show about the triumph of humanity over the forces of cynicism and self-doubt but if it wants to be this brooding, dark, introspective, cynical, fatalistic treatise on the dark depths that humanity can sink to it should. A show with infinite possibilities should be truly infinite, and the universe of DW is so deliberately small, so hamstrung by its necessity to pay endless respect and its dues to whatever came before it. DW is a show burdened by its past, which it then makes worse by treating it as sacred and untouchable; the sheer fact that Moffat went "gently caress it" and turned its title into a plot point should be met with applause, even if you hated the execution of it. On a practical level, though, the execution of the final scene of "Wedding" was near-perfect. Firstly, it was a flawlessly conceived scene, where it just makes sense that The Question would have something to do with The Doctor (being that he's always been the most important person in the universe). But even more crucially than that, the only really interesting aspect of the extremely, extremely tired "Doctor who?" joke, and the only reason why it works, is because it underlines how absurd it is to not know who The Doctor is (since he's, again, the most important person in the universe) and paradoxically how little is actually known about him. Moffat taking that undercurrent of ignorance and intentional obfuscation that's signified by the title of the show and spinning that out into its own central plot development therefore just makes sense; it's taking something silly and stupid and treating it seriously, giving it the respect it doesn't necessarily deserve (because it's, again, a stupid bad joke repeated for literal decades on end) , but at least gives it some narrative weight for once. The final scene of "The Wedding of River Song" is just flat-out stupendous, a wonderful way to end an inconsistent and difficult season. It pays off the stakes promised and emphasized throughout Series Six, most specifically in how crucial The Question would be and what it ultimately was, and perfectly sets up Series Seven with a neat narrative cliffhanger that still does work by itself as a season-ender. "The Wedding of River Song" isn't a perfect episode, but the good parts so heavily outweigh the bad and are, themselves, such narrative and emotional highs it's hard not to be blown away by this season finale. A triumphant if still problematic episode to an ultimately triumphant if still problematic season. Grade: A Random Thoughts:
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2015 07:48
|
|
|
me irl
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2015 07:51
|
|
|
Toxxupation posted:It's also utterly reflective of what I think is the largest genuine problem the show has: its inability to ever stop worshipping its own backstory and narrative. So many problems the show has had- bad stories, bad villains, bad characters, bad characterizations -root from the fact that they're rewrites of "old" stories, or bringing back "old" villains (the Silurians, the Time Lords, the Cybermen, the Sontarans, even the Daleks) or "old" characters (The Master), who are all supposed to be defined in one way, can only be treated by the show from a specific perspective, because any other way would be not how the show is "supposed" to be. The Cybermen suck and always have and should have been loving abandoned decades- literally decades -ago, and they still showed up in this season and died like the stupid chump idiots they always were. Why did they do so? Because their defined powers and characterization loving suck and cannot be changed. And that's just one example! There are dozens more, and it's rooted in this central problem the show has- this bigger on the inside, "Oh you've redecorated. I don't like it." constant repetition of memes, this endless derivation and reference to itself that makes the show both incredibly insular and just endlessly iterative. For a show about a time-travelling space alien that can go literally anywhere in time and space there's so little originality in anything it does, and what little there is usually ends up rejected by the fanbase at large because it's not the way the show is "supposed" to be. This is the double-edged sword with any serial work ever. On the one hand you get a character like the Doctor whose character and ludicrous nature only really work precisely because it has so much established weight and backstory and narrative to it, and that lore can inform future writers and actors and creatives to play with all of those components in interesting ways. On the other hand what starts as a lark quickly transmutes to dogma in the eyes of fans, and adherence to lore can easily become a burden to any story that is interested in making a thematic point that can't be rubberbanded back to the expected status quo which any successful serial work wants to do because the brand has become a cash cow. Star Trek is another great example of this. Silly bullshit like Tribbles and Trelane and one-note allegories like the Romulans and Klingons made on a lark in the 60s became the unofficial cute mascot, the Q., and two of the primary lore-driving factions in the 80s and while some great stuff came out of taking all that bullshit half-seriously it also starts to look ludicrous when you start to wonder how the gently caress Klingon or Romulan society is actually supposed to work, which you do because the show is asking you to take all the dumb developments with the Dukat siblings or whatever the gently caress at least partially seriously. The irony is that even when JJ Abrams decided to remake Star Trek and start it as fresh as the fan-community would allow he still finds himself beholden to Khan and constant references to dumb poo poo that came before instead of having the balls to truly go off the established map and the end result doesn't satisfy anyone on more than a "sound and fury" level.
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2015 08:10
|
|
|
I liked Wedding of River Song, although I'm not sure I'd have given it an A.Toxxupation posted:Bravely Default (a largely bad game) Well gently caress you too, buddy, Bravely Default is great as long as you ignore at least one of the time-warp chapters.
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2015 08:22
|
|
|
Cleretic posted:
Chapters 5, 6, and 7 are pointless and should've been condensed into one chapter at most when half the game is an awful grind- literally, half the loving game -the game is largely bad again though, title reveal and the incredibleness of its ending sequence (especially if you used a friends list) was sick af also my sent attack was death knight edea doing 300k damage, it was titled REVENGEANCE, and her slogan was RULES OF NATURE when summoned
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2015 08:29
|
|
|
Those chapters are not half the game though. The Optional boss battles in the latter chapters are very good.
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2015 08:32
|
|
|
The show title has been in the script before. It's used as the cliffhanger in cold open to The Christmas Invasion ffs. (Jackie: "Who is he?" Rose: "He's the Doctor." Jackie: "Doctor Who?") When done just once and then walked away from, like a sort of one-off mic drop moment, it works. The problem is that Moff is looking here to turn it into the new "Silence will fall". In fact, it's the evolution of "Silence will fall when the question is asked." So it's taking on Arc Words level of importance. The problem is, is there any payoff in doing that? Taken literally, you're playing around with the identity of a character that is not necessarily 'yours' but more like the class textbook you've come into possession of this year. As a metaphor, it seems a strong contender to fall into the 'ultimately meaningless' trap that Bad Wolf did. Craptacular! fucked around with this message at 08:50 on May 9, 2015 |
|
#
?
May 9, 2015 08:40
|
|
|
Craptacular! posted:The show title has been in the script before. It's used as the cliffhanger in cold open to The Christmas Invasion ffs. (Jackie: "Who is he?" Rose: "He's the Doctor." Jackie: "Doctor Who?") When done just once and then walked away from, like a sort of one-off mic drop moment, it works. He acknowledged that it's been in as gags, he likes that it's in as an actual plot point instead.
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2015 09:02
|
|
|
Kurtofan posted:Those chapters are not half the game though. The Optional boss battles in the latter chapters are very good. Yeah, this is why I say you'd do well to cut out only one or two of the time-warp chapters. The first one serves no purpose that the others don't, while the others change things up enough that it's not just a retread. It also allows them to be really clever with the 'you can finish the game now, but there's more to do' bonus bosses that were staples of the classic Final Fantasies that Bravely Default was a callback to. Much like Wedding of River Song, Bravely Default takes a really neat idea and simultaneously stretches it out way too far while not really doing enough with it. It spends a lot of time milling around, yet can only really manage anticlimaxes when it tries to do a lot of things. I'm not sure if that metaphor actually works as well as it does in my head, but I'm going with it. EDIT: I wasn't sure about it at the time, but looking back on it another thing I really liked about Bravely Default's playing with its own conceits and lineage is that the 'True Ending' requires your party being pretty loving stupid. So often the True Ending is the Best Ending, so I like that they change convention by making the True Ending 'your party went right along with the horrible trap and only pulled it out at the end because other people bailed them out'. Cleretic fucked around with this message at 09:20 on May 9, 2015 |
|
#
?
May 9, 2015 09:10
|
|
|
MikeJF posted:He acknowledged that it's been in as gags, he likes that it's in as an actual plot point instead. Didn't realize I couldn't elucidate, even if it's redundant. I'm not saying "you're an idiot, Occ", but instead there are reasons I explained it works sparingly as a joke. Because it's happened a number of times in the history of the series (there's a YouTube video out there with every example, including some I think from Second Doctor episodes that exist only as audio) but a guy yelling it in your face like "get it? GET IT??" is a bit different. That's in addition to the whole legacy of the character I likened to a used textbook, and the possible disappointment that something that has been teased since The Eleventh Hour turns out to just be the series title. (This is dumb, but it's not Bravely Default chat.)
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2015 09:19
|
|
|
mind the walrus posted:On the one hand you get a character like the Doctor whose character and ludicrous nature only really work precisely because it has so much established weight and backstory and narrative to it, and that lore can inform future writers and actors and creatives to play with all of those components in interesting ways. I'd really strongly disagree with this. Doctor Who spent a decent thirty or so years not being like this, for the most part. I'm pretty sure there are cases when that kind of characterisation has emerged -- though The Brain Of Morbius, The War Games and that one line from The Pyramids Of Mars are the only ones I can think of -- but for the most part, the show really didn't emphasise the weight of the main character's past until Sylvester McCoy came along. Even then, that kind of moralising and mythologising wasn't really codified until Paul Cornell started using it to bolster his narratives in Timewyrm: Revelation and Human Nature, which of course found its way back into the show through RTD and Cornell (and every single other writer in the show's first season). I think it's a kind of knowledge and perspective that's generated by a fan's curative knowledge of the show, and it's incredibly meta-aware. "I am the Doctor! I fight the Monsters!" "I am the Doctor! I'm a hero to children!" "You can't die, Doctor! No-one wants you to!" They're these really boilerplate, prescriptive statements that not only tell people how the Doctor acts, but tell people what to expect from the show and what the show should be. Which is a bit of a lie, honestly, since it's only what the show's really been for the last ten years or so. I'm not saying that it's a bad thing, but I do think overindulging on this kind of material moves the show's writing steadily away from character, and rapidly towards emotional grandstanding and rhetoric, and I find that pretty grating (though the fact that The Wedding Of River Song's an almost complete shaggy dog story with a misaimed focus is more frustrating, to me). Basically, the show went for decades and decades without every really playing up this kind of characterisation, so I do think the character can "work" without having to indulge in the sort of universal mythologising that both Davies and Moffat do. Don't know if this comment's really too  for this thread, but that's my two cents.
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2015 09:35
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 25, 2024 15:12 |
|
|
Open Source Idiom posted:Don't know if this comment's really too By Doctor Who standards we're on a p. low level tbqh.Open Source Idiom posted:Doctor Who spent a decent thirty or so years not being like this, for the most part. I'm pretty sure there are cases when that kind of characterisation has emerged -- though The Brain Of Morbius, The War Games and that one line from The Pyramids Of Mars are the only ones I can think of -- but for the most part, the show really didn't emphasise the weight of the main character's past until Sylvester McCoy came along. Even then, that kind of moralising and mythologising wasn't really codified until Paul Cornell started using it to bolster his narratives in Timewyrm: Revelation and Human Nature, which of course found its way back into the show through RTD and Cornell (and every single other writer in the show's first season). I'd respectfully disagree. You're right that it avoided indulging into such meta-characterization inside the show itself, at least partially due to the fact that the syndicated nature of genre shows on television strongly discouraged such throughlines, but such meta-characterization is itself hard to ignore given how a serial media of any stripe is inevitably handed off to different artists and all of them ultimately need a foundation of sorts to follow. The same way you can't just decide Fox Mulder's true conviction was always to be a Reggae superstar in a new season of the X-Files the same way every writer, actor, and producer on the show needed to be at least nominally aware of what came before and what character weight was needed to go forward. Open Source Idiom posted:I think it's a kind of knowledge and perspective that's generated by a fan's curative knowledge of the show, and it's incredibly meta-aware. This on the other hand, I do agree with. The nuance you're missing is that if any serial work runs long enough the fans become the artists creating it, and while it inevitably backfires there are also plenty of good examples of weighted stories you can only get from having fans who truly believe in the mythology the original creators founded across many stories. It happened with Cthullu, Sherlock Holmes, every Marvel/DC superhero, Star Trek, and any other genre soap opera character you can think of who ran in a successful series long enough. Open Source Idiom posted:"I am the Doctor! I fight the Monsters!" "I am the Doctor! I'm a hero to children!" "You can't die, Doctor! No-one wants you to!" They're these really boilerplate, prescriptive statements that not only tell people how the Doctor acts, but tell people what to expect from the show and what the show should be. Which is a bit of a lie, honestly, since it's only what the show's really been for the last ten years or so. I think here you're picking nits over the inherent vague nature that comes from any serial character that loses their ability to well, be human and instead ascend to the level of pop culture icons. This also happened with Cthullu, Sherlock Holmes, every Marvel/DC superhero, Star Trek, and any other genre soap opera character you can think of who ran in a successful series long enough. Open Source Idiom posted:I'm not saying that it's a bad thing, but I do think overindulging on this kind of material moves the show's writing steadily away from character, and rapidly towards emotional grandstanding and rhetoric, and I find that pretty grating (though the fact that The Wedding Of River Song's an almost complete shaggy dog story with a misaimed focus is more frustrating, to me). As I said in my very first sentence it's a double-edged sword. You get to do stories that only work because you have a character that is so old and established, both in the fictional mythos and without like "The Doctor's Wife"--something Toxx explicitly noted--but you also end up with the same kind of empty bombast that defines "A Good Man Goes to War" and Marvel's "Civil War" and Sherlock Holmes coming back to life after Reichenbach Falls and dozens of other examples of a series' longevity sacrificing real creative weight in order to keep the almighty brand going.
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2015 10:09
|
|