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Jerusalem
May 20, 2004

Would you be my new best friends?

Cleretic posted:

His run is full of nods to the fact that Eleven is a crazy person who just doesn't get normal logic and thought process, and it's great.

I love in The God Complex when he reflects on how dangerous and irresponsible it is of him to bring along human companions on his journeys, and how he feels guilty about it and knows it is wrong.... then like 10 seconds later he's eagerly offering that same human he was just telling this to a ride in the TARDIS :allears:

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NieR Occomata
Jan 18, 2009

Glory to Mankind.

Doctor Who
"Time of the Doctor"
Series 7, Episode 16

"We all change. When you think about it, we're all different people, all through our lives. And that's okay, that's good, you gotta keep moving, so long as you remember all the people that you used to be. I will not forget one line of this. Not one day. I swear. I will always remember...when The Doctor was me."

Well, see ya, Eleven.

Ten's "my" Doctor, but as I've mentioned before he's not the best-written or best-acted one. If I were to be objective, the unequivocal "best" Doctor - the one who had the best actor portraying him, who received the overall best scripts, and had the best start-to-finish arc - is Eleven. Not even a contest. I used to buy into the meme that Eccleston's acting was better than Smith's, and Eccleston's post-Who acting gigs support that assertion, but looking back on Nine's run in direct comparison to Eleven's run - I just don't know. Across Series Five, Six, and Seven, Smith got an absolute murderer's row of brilliant scripts to really flex his acting chops, and one only has to look at his performance in such episodes as "The Eleventh Hour", "The Pandorica Opens", "The Big Bang", "The Doctor's Wife", "The Girl Who Waited"...

And that's just a short list. Eccleston was great but the writing was never there, and even if it were I'd be hard pressed to say he would do a hypothetically better job than Smith's desperate, pointless speech to cap "The Pandorica Opens", or his tearful goodbye to Amelia at the end of "The Big Bang". Smith was not only just a giant goofy man with a face made out of play-doh, he was an incredible dramatic actor that produced some of the best moments in the Who revival, a man who put in a genuinely brilliant performance from start to finish.

Looking back on my reviews I feel kind of bad that I didn't spend more time in them singling out Smith for specific praise. Since "Time" deals with Eleven's regeneration, I ended up watching Ten's regeneration for comparison's sake, which led me into watching "The Eleventh Hour" and then, subsequently, a whole bunch of Eleven's best scenes on Doctor Who. I think that's the strongest praise that I can give for Smith and his time on Who; I remember what Oxx and I were like after viewing "The End of Time, Part Two". I was the one who liked Ten and Tennant on Doctor Who, the one who thought (and still thinks) that I prefer RTD's potential over Moffat's consistency. But even me, a guy who forgave a lot of transgressions on either Tennant or Davies' part, by the time the final episode of the Year of Specials aired I was well and truly loving sick of the Tenth Doctor. I appreciated and even loved the accomplishments that Ten made on the program, the specific ways in which he (and Davies, to be fair) made me understand, appreciate, and eventually adore Doctor Who after the deep dark loving pit that is Series One, but when Tennant left I was glad to see him gone. I wrote the "End of Time Part Two" review with a feeling of relief; finally, out with Tennant. I only rewatched for review Ten's regeneration sequence; I couldn't even force myself through the entirety of his final episode because I was just so loving done with the concept of the Tenth Doctor, every single aspect of his personality had been wrung dry. His chapter had ended. I love Ten, and he's my Doctor, as I've aforementioned, but when Ten ticked over to Eleven it was the release valve for a lot of pent-up frustration and general exhaustion with RTD's Who and Tennant's Doctor on my part. It was time for him to go, and he did, in a brilliant and affecting way, but I was glad to see him gone. There just wasn't any more there there for Ten.

In contrast, when Eleven regenerated at the end of "Time of the Doctor", my general feeling was nostalgia, a deep-seated appreciation, and most strangely an overwhelming sense of loss. Eleven doesn't hold that special place in my heart that Ten does but he was never a real negative during his time on Who (outside of some, incredibly loving rare, exceptions). In fact I ended up, when writing this review for "Time", getting constantly distracted, which is common, but solely because I just kept on watching clips of Eleven's greatest hits; his first words when he regenerated at the end of "The End of Time, Part Two", his speech to the Atraxi in "The Eleventh Hour", his sobbing, desperate plea to "LISTEN TO ME!" as he realizes that he's the direct cause of the end of the universe in "The Pandorica Opens", his monologue to cap off "The Big Bang", his one-word "No!" as Amy kills herself in "The Angels Take Manhattan"...and that's just his dramatic bits. There's so many brilliant, amazing comedic moments that Eleven has, so much wonderful physical comedy and line deliveries and scenes. It's just insane, the length and sheer breadth of wondrous moments on Doctor Who that come from Matt Smith. He was an unbelievable Doctor and an unbelievable actor.

Nowhere is this more evident than in his regeneration scene into the Twelfth Doctor (Peter Capaldi) at the end of "Time", capped off with that wonderful little monologue I detailed above. The first time I watched it, I was impressed by Eleven's performance and how well he nailed the final line; I was viewing it like I typically do, contrasting Eleven's final words (and what statement they made about his personality) with Nine's "fantastic" and Ten's "I don't wanna go." I was, of course, impressed by both Smith's acting and how Eleven's final words form a neat arc for his character, but it was all cerebral. My appreciation was objective and fairly removed.

It took me until my second viewing to actually be personally affected by it; watching it for review, writing the dialog down, I inexplicably started to cry. It was weird. As I'm sure anyone who is reading this is well aware, it's not exactly unusual for me to cry at especially emotive media, but it's always the first time through. It's always rooted in base empathy for the characters I'm viewing onscreen; I cry or am affected because I can feel the way the characters are feeling and that, in turn, changes my emotional mood.

As the music swelled, as Eleven happily, sadly came to terms with his imminent death with the line "I will always remember...when The Doctor was me," tears started to trickle down my cheek. And I had no idea why. It was only on reflection that I realized that Doctor Who, for once, resonated with me. I'm affected, emotionally, by things that happen and what people say, sure, but Eleven's final speech imparted a moral statement on humanity that I felt was utterly true. Doctor Who is rarely an overtly philosophical show; its moral statements are constant, but buried behind the layer of theme, with beauty and understanding in the form of The Doctor triumphing over hatred and fear in the form of his enemies. The fact that Eleven spent his final moments speaking about the human condition felt honest. Eleven spent his last moments speaking not about himself (unlike Nine or Ten), but about humanity in general, and how the changes he was going through were a more explicit version of the changes that every human being experiences. It was powerful in a way that Nine or Ten's regenerations never were, because such a statement was generally true, more relatable to on the part of the average viewer than Nine's Time War guilt or Ten's inability to overcome his own narcissism.

Eleven's final scene was personally affecting and relevant, but it was also a wonderful scene in allowing the arc of Eleven's time on Who to be full and complete.

Neither of the previous Doctors before him had a finished narrative; Nine had far too little time on the show for his story to close satisfyingly. It was compounded by the general terribleness of Series One, but even so Nine didn't receive any real arc; he's described as having deep self-loathing and paralyzing PTSD, and by the end of "The Parting of the Ways" he gets just enough perspective to forgive himself. Nine's time on Who was so short his progression was mercenary and more of a disparate collection of plot points.

Ten's arc on Who is defined by a lack of an arc; part of this is dude to the fact that RTD is clearly inferior at planning his stories on any sort of grander, serialized, seasonal scale, not to mention a multiple-season scale. Davies knew where the story ended (he always planned for Ten to die saving a relatively "insignificant" life, and apparently even knew Ten's last words of "I don't want to go," but there's no real sense that Davies pre-Series Four had any idea how he wanted Ten to arrive there, which compounded with his hit-or-miss writing and narrative progression to have Ten's overall story feel schizophrenic and loose. Eventually, the show just leaned into that failure and turned it into a strength; Ten's overarcing narrative turned into how he didn't have one, how he was trying to discover who he was and change for the better, to accept his mortality and disregard his own vanity and narcissism. Unfortunately, Ten never does, so his "arc" becomes about how his arc didn't reach a natural endpoint.

Eleven's story of Series Five through Seven, in contrast, was clearly plotted out from beginning to end. "Time of the Doctor" has serious problems, but the one thing it totally nails is how it closes out Eleven's time on Who. One can go back and watch the very first episode Eleven was in, "The Eleventh Hour", as I did, and see that the show under Moffat's guidance laid the groundwork for Eleven's exit from it from the very beginning. There's the overt stuff, like how Amelia shows up in the TARDIS as he's regenerating, but there's other things, much more subtle things, that impress upon the audience how deeply Eleven has changed and progressed since his initial outing.

Eleven is defined as "The Man Who Forgets" in the fiftieth anniversary special. He's introduced into the story as a cheerful coward; the single biggest defining characteristic of Eleven is "liar". He's a man who plasters a big doofy smile over his face to cover up his own internal turmoil, a man who ignores and runs away from any potential threat. When he's forced to actually address a problem head-on, he uses whatever guile he has and his silver tongue to escape conflict every chance he can. His unreliability is legend; he tells his first lie accidentally, to a ten-year-old Amelia that he'll only be "gone five minutes". He compounds that further by the end of that same episode, where he welcomes Amy aboard the TARDIS for "no reason", conveniently neglecting to mention the Crack that excites his curiosity, that Amy is the center of.

He's a man who is always searching for the easy way, the obvious way, the simple way to solve any problem, merrily skipping through time as his whims dictate. Essentially, he's the Doctor from "The Girl in the Fireplace", another Moffat joint: he always takes the fast path over the slow, and will deceive everyone else along the way, gently caress the consequences.

Much of Eleven's three-season arc on Who is punishing his own worst impulses, his own hubris and laziness, as his predilection for playing up his own legend as a way to escape disaster comes back to bite him in a major way as it directly leads into the destruction of the universe at large. Much of Eleven's time on the show is spent on him realizing how flawed he is; starting with "The God Complex", he starts confessing his sins directly, telling Amy to lose her faith in him. He then makes overt steps to change his ways starting in Series Seven, removing all references to himself throughout history both as a way to quell his own vanity and so he can't rely on the crutch of his legacy.

Every single disparate theme of Eleven, every single explicitly negative characteristic is addressed in some major way in "Time". A lying, sneaky, deceptive, manipulative coward who takes every shortcut available to him is stuck in one place for hundreds of years, forced to constantly tell the truth and isn't allowed to wander off. A young-at-heart is forced to grow old, wither, and eventually die of old age - I don't think it's coincidence that Eleven is the only Doctor to die nonviolently. He's embroiled in constant conflict, and even the central reason why he can't leave - the utterance of his true name would summon the Time Lords back, which would immediately re-initiate the Time War - is the exact antithesis of his desires.

It's part of why Eleven's regeneration scene ends up being as powerful as it is, because it's a capper to an episode that ran Eleven through the wringer. The fact that Eleven's farewell episode is this culmination of this three-season journey on Eleven's part, with Eleven's final scene being this repeated and unrepentant liar not only telling the truth, but he's impressing upon both Clara and the audience a greater moral truth with his limited time left on the show. The end of Eleven is so satisfying because it's him finally learning to reject his own worse tendencies and finally, truly, be at peace with himself and his place in the universe in a way that neither of his previous incarnations were able. The regeneration of Eleven isn't just a great scene on its face, it's not just a fantastic moment of acting on Matt Smith's part, and it's not just a wonderful departure for one of the best characters this show had produced, but it was this supremely effective character moment that summarized and validated The Eleventh Doctor's three-season arc on the program.

Eleven's regeneration, and more broadly his story on Who was executed more-or-less perfectly. His overall story was well-told and well-acted pretty much from beginning to end, and it's "Time"'s by-far strongest aspect: it's an ill-disguised character study of Eleven, his strengths and weaknesses, his admirable traits and his many, many flaws, and allows The Doctor to recognize, internalize, and move past them, setting up Twelve's debut perfectly.

Unfortunately, that "ill-disguised" is the crucial word in that past paragraph. On one hand, "Time" is a perfect goodbye to Eleven, and Matt Smith playing Eleven. On the other...it's not a...great episode of Who.

There's a lot of problems "Time" has. In many ways, "Time" ends up a condemnation of Moffat's worst excesses as a showrunner while simultaneously praising his greatest strengths. Sorta like "Journey's End", if I want to be honest; I would argue that "Time of the Doctor" is Moffat's "Journey's End", in fact.

"Journey's End" ends up unintentionally being RTD's opus, and not in the sense that it's his greatest accomplishment, but in the sense of it being a summation of everything good and bad he did within the space of a single episode. RTD was prone to excess, in all of its forms, so his final episode is this giant universe-spanning "everything's in danger" malarkey. RTD was prone to never leaving well enough alone so "Journey's End" brought in virtually every single major and minor character within Davies' four seasons running Who and involved them in some way. RTD loved big scenes of emotionality and rewarding his pet favorite characters while (probably unintentionally) punishing everyone he didn't care about, so Donna gets mindwiped while Rose gets her Tennant clone. RTD loved setting up impossible cliffhangers he immediately cheapened the stakes of, so he had Tennant regenerating into himself. RTD loved reintroducing old series villains incredibly badly and with not enough information for newer fans, so Davros just fuckin' shows up with no real explanation. Davies loved his run-shout, his big swooping scenes of Tennant's face going red as he verbally flagellated the enemy. Davies loved people flipping switches and people shouting technobabble as things sparked in the background. He loved big, whiplash-inducing tone and quality changes on a scene-to-scene basis. "Journey's End" is not the episode I would show to explain why I personally love Davies over Moffat, but it's the episode I would show to people who asked me what Davies' most Davies-rear end Davies episode of Who is. It's the one episode that most honestly reflects his writing and showrunning methodology, for better and for worse.

"Time of the Doctor" is Moffat's strengths and weaknesses writ large. Moffat worships process as the single most important aspect of his screenwriting, so he spends the entirety of "Time" setting up and explaining in unnecessarily explicit detail exactly how everything happens, despite "Time" directly benefitting from some narrative leaps in logic. The episode's plot contorts itself more than an underage Chinese gymnast to explain exactly how everything within it happens, so it ironically ends up exposing its seams all the more; the episode is so singularly focused on making everything make sense that on some, subconscious level how implausible it all is is really noticeable. Moffat is obsessed with tying up every single loose end and having all of them form some major narrative whole, so he attempts to explain how Trenzalore and the Silence and the Crack and the explosion of the TARDIS and what he saw in "The God Complex" and the Time War and Amy and Clara and the humanized Daleks were all actually part of this huge swooping story. It's both so overexplained it comes across as vaguely implausible - so, wait, you're trying to say that everything that happened was all part of some grand conspiracy? Huh? Well, uh, ok - and also gives a whole bunch of plotlines narrative short shrift because he has to gloss some stuff over. It's sorta like what happened in the video game Mass Effect 3 - that, too, was a video game that emphasized narrative choice, but the big problem was that there had been so much established narrative at that point and so many different plotlines (and so many plotlines that were player-determined, making it worse) that ME3 ended up tying up a bunch of the more minor ones by just having Shepard meet someone for literally a minute as they vomited out some one-line closer. "Time" does the same thing, so for example the revelation of what the Silence are - former priests that were designed so the confessor would forget what they said as soon as they stopped talking to them, that for some reason went rogue from the Papal Mainframe and started trying to prevent The Doctor from landing in Trenzalore - is both cool but immediately backgrounded so it doesn't have any narrative weight. Uh, the Silence were like the bad guys of Series Six, Moffat! They deserved more explanation than a throwaway line from Eleven! And why do they look like that? Why do they skitter on ceilings? Why did they split off from the Papal Mainframe? You simultaneously gave us too much and way too little information, dude!

On the micro over the macro level, there's also more obvious, repeated niggles that Moffat has always engaged in, that he engages in here. Moffat's inability to write non-main female characters rears its head here as Orla Brady, who's just Madame Kovarian with a who's just Madame Kovarian, enters the story. Underexplained and the exact same "badass female character who unexplainedly has the hots for The Doctor", she serves no real purpose and isn't given any real definition at all, just eating up screentime until the episode ends. Moffat's inability to write Clara well rears its head here, too- Clara has been and continues to be a Major Problem in Series Seven, with Jenna Coleman giving a knock-em-dead performance but feeling completely superfluous within the episode as written, outside of its ending in which Clara is amazing. There's other stuff like the episode feeling too rushed because Moffat has so much he has to cover, so the episode relies on awkward and misplaced voiceover to skip the episode around. And there's, finally, things like how Moffat's emphasis (some would, probably rightly, say overemphasis) on plot coherence means that his cheatier moments stand in starker contrast. Eleven's paralyzing fear of oblivion - how it's his no-poo poo, for-reals final life and how Ten's little hand trick and the existence of War means Eleven's actually Thirteen - was a good moment for Eleven, tying into the narrative themes of the episode as a whole. The "last regeneration" conceit is also in keeping with Moffat's aspiration to respect and lend weight to prior events in the show, no matter how outlandish, over RTD's approach of "ignore, ignore ignore." But, all of this also means that Eleven gaining more regenerations because he's literally gifted magic Time Lord space dust is, uh...stupid as poo poo.. The resolution felt weak and awkward and made me raise my eyebrows in the moment, even knowing that Plot Shenanigans were gonna give Eleven a way to regenerate anyways.

But it's with all that said that "Time" is perfectly acceptable. Yes, Moffat's inability to actually perform his duties as showrunner handicapped his storytelling abilities - I don't like bringing up stuff that happened outside of the episode in question, since it almost always clouds intention and makes me grade the situation over the episode. "The Unquiet Dead" isn't xenophobic, and just because Moffat is a sexist doesn't mean his scripts are. Just because Davies is progressive doesn't mean his scripts are, either. Here, though, "Time" is clearly a result of a rushed and drama-filled production schedule. The episode feels too fast, events aren't given time to breathe, and at certain points it feels like Moffat is using the lady VO as a way to list off plot points in quick succession. It's quite clear that Time should've, at least, been a two-parter. That being said, it's a testament to how skilled Moffat is as a storyteller that even with all that said, "Time" is still enjoyable. Even with all those caveats and all those faults, even with Moffat being at his absolute worst in several key aspects, "Time" is still eminently watchable. The worst Moffat can do, even when all of his worst traits are happening simultaneously, even when he crafts an episode that's a paean to "Moffat, the Flawed Showrunner", is make an episode kind of annoying at points. Contrast "Time of the Doctor" to "Love and Monsters", and realize that Moffat is obscenely skilled at what he does.

In the end, "Time" shakes out not only as a goodbye to Eleven, but a strong, honest statement of Moffat's strengths and flaws as a showrunner. It's a problematic episode, and if I were to
be honest it would get a C or B grade if removed from its greater aims. But, on the other hand, removing it from its greater aims ignores the central point of the thing. "Time" is faulty, the "Journey's End" of Moffat's run, but it's more importantly a long goodbye to The Eleventh Doctor and Matt Smith playing The Eleventh Doctor. The story of Eleven is a three-season long one, and in that sense "Time" is the perfect ending to his story. "Time" is weak in many aspects, but in the end it's a summary of who Eleven is, and why he was such a fantastic and flawed
character. "The Time of the Doctor" is, ultimately, about Eleven. If anyone deserves an A, it's him. In other words:

"Raggedy Man, goodnight."

Grade: A

Random Thoughts:
  • Oh, and as an aside, I would like to express my theory as to why Clara didn't really work in Series Seven. As that amazing final scene makes clear, Amy was not only Eleven's first Companion, she was the first face he ever saw. So much of the show under Moffat was about the Amy and Doctor dynamic - its most powerful episodes usually revolved around how Amy and the Doctor viewed and interacted with each other. Rory was the necessary glue that held The Doctor and Amy together when he was introduced - sort of the middle ground both characters could appreciate, as I mentioned way back when he was introduced he was the straight man around whom The Doctor and Amy were in conflict. The Rory-Amy-Doctor chemistry was so central to so many of their stories, and so crucial a relationship to all three characters that when Rory and Amy left there was a vacuum in Eleven's life that Clara just couldn't fill. Moffat planned out the Doctor-Amy-Rory relationship from the start, clearly, and thus The Doctor and Amy's personalities worked in perfect harmony and in perfect conflict. Eleven was this childlike liar, this fun and fancy free character, so Amy had to be this passionate, emotive firebrand to rein in his own worse tendencies. On the other hand, The Doctor acted at times almost as a father figure to Amy, giving her hope and guidance when she most needed it and looking out for her own best interests.

    The Doctor needed Amy, needed her specific personality because it was built from the ground up to work perfectly with The Doctor. So when Clara arrives in Series Seven Part Two the whole balance is thrown off - even disregarding how Moffat didn't put in the work to characterize her, what little personality she has is too similar to Eleven's to make it work. A generally good-humored, vaguely disinterested character who goes all bug-eyed when Eleven's being all...Eleven...y, the one who watches him put on a fez with a shrug over tosses it in the air for his wife, who's also your daughter, to shoot a laser gun at just isn't strong enough to balance Eleven. She felt superfluous this half-season, which is why it's in my opinion by far weaker than its first half, because she was never adequately integrated within Eleven's dynamic. I think the fact that Eleven makes so specific a note of how Amelia was the "first face he saw" before immediately regenerating into Twelve, whose first face he saw was Clara's, means that Clara was always meant to be Twelve's Companion and was introduced a little early into the narrative. It makes the weird careless way that she's characterized and marginalized within the story make a ton of retrospective sense. Moffat always intended for Clara's growth to happen with Twelve, so didn't even bother having her do that with Eleven. But, she still needed a reason to exist so Moffat just turned her into "The Impossible Girl" and had Smith repeat it until osmosis kicked in and the audience suddenly cared about Clara. It makes sense to me, at least.
  • Handles is LITERALLY THE ONLY GOOD CYBERMAN TO HAVE EVER EXISTED ON DOCTOR WHO.
  • As per tradition, Twelve's first words, and mini analysis of who he is from what little I've seen: The Doctor: "Kidneys! I've got new kidneys! I don't like the color." Clara (incredulous): "Of your kidneys? What's happening?" The Doctor: "We're probably crashing!" Clara: "Into what?!" The Doctor: "Stay calm. Just, one question. Do you happen to know how to fly this thing?" From what I gather Twelve's probably gonna be a miserable cynical sarcastic rear end in a top hat, mostly because, one, that's what you cast Peter Capaldi to play, two, that's what Oxxidation is and Twelve's his Doctor for a reason, and three because then it makes Clara's sort of disinterested, bemused good nature make more sense. A more muted, vaguely angry Doctor doesn't need some crazy expressive firebrand as a Companion, he needs someone who can tolerate his general bullshit but tap him on the shoulder and go "Hey, yo, you're being a loving rear end in a top hat" when he gets to be too much, which is exactly what Clara can be.

    Oh, also, just for reference I don't consider Twelve's opening words to be that strong, certainly weaker than Eleven's and probably weaker than Ten's (if I could remember Ten's, which I can't). I get where they're going for with Twelve, I think, it's just sorta...well, okay. Great backing music when Twelve regenerated, though, and the fact that Eleven essentially snapped his fingers and, with no fanfare, was just suddenly Twelve was pretty great.
  • The Doctor: "Why is everyone here if they don't understand it?" Handles: "YOU'RE HERE." The Doctor: "Yeah, well, you know, I'm OCD, what's their excuse?"
  • The Doctor: "And remind me, I gotta patch the telephone back through the console unit, this is getting ridiculous." Handles: "ATTENTION. INFORMATION AVAILABLE." The Doctor: "Okay." Handles: "YOU MUST PATCH THE TELEPHONE DEVICE BACK THROUGH THE CONSOLE UNIT." The Doctor: "No, n-no no, no no no, no, not now, remind me later." Handles: "WHEN?" The Doctor: "I dunno, just later, just pick a time." Handles: "WHEN?" The Doctor: "I dunno, just any old time, just when you think I've forgotten." Handles: "WHEN?" The Doctor: "Just pick a random number, express that number as a quantity of minutes, and when that time has elapsed, remind me, to patch the telephone back through the console unit." Handles: "AFFIRMATIVE."

NieR Occomata fucked around with this message at 05:56 on Jun 25, 2015

NieR Occomata
Jan 18, 2009

Glory to Mankind.

that's it guys

I'm legally dead

i'm dead from word poisoning

i'ma ghost poster now, a posting ghost

Dabir
Nov 10, 2012

A post in the... drat, can't think of a way to finish that.

NieR Occomata
Jan 18, 2009

Glory to Mankind.

i just want to be clear, being a posting ghost, that my posts are for sure rooted in deep-seated xenophobia

thexerox123
Aug 17, 2007

Toxxupation posted:

i just want to be clear, being a posting ghost, that my posts are for sure rooted in deep-seated xenophobia

Are you actually a ghost, though, or will you turn out to have been a POSTING CYBERMAN!?

Facebook Aunt
Oct 4, 2008

wiggle wiggle




RIP Handles. :(

mind the walrus
Sep 22, 2006

Somewhere in the Multiverse there is an Eighth Season of NuWho where Eleven is stranded on Trenzalore the entire time with Handles as his only companion and it is brilliant.

Toxxupation posted:

It took me until my second viewing to actually be personally affected by it; watching it for review, writing the dialog down, I inexplicably started to cry. It was weird. As I'm sure anyone who is reading this is well aware, it's not exactly unusual for me to cry at especially emotive media, but it's always the first time through. It's always rooted in base empathy for the characters I'm viewing onscreen; I cry or am affected because I can feel the way the characters are feeling and that, in turn, changes my emotional mood.

As the music swelled, as Eleven happily, sadly came to terms with his imminent death with the line "I will always remember...when The Doctor was me," tears started to trickle down my cheek. And I had no idea why. It was only on reflection that I realized that Doctor Who, for once, resonated with me.

Now you know how I felt during that speech in the Rings of Akhaten. Say whatever else you loving want about Doctor Who, when it eventually resonates with you it loving resonates.

quote:

[*] Handles is LITERALLY THE ONLY GOOD CYBERMAN TO HAVE EVER EXISTED ON DOCTOR WHO.

I don't know of anyone who would disagree.

---

And this is where I personally stopped watching. I tried to watch the first few episodes of Twelve but despite being a cynical rear end in a top hat myself it just.... completely failed to grab me on any level, and I say that as someone who actually liked Clara a whole lot in Season Seven.

SirSamVimes
Jul 21, 2008

~* Challenge *~


I feel like this should be pointed out again.

quote:

Note: I loving hate Doctor Who. It cannot be stressed how much I despise this show. I watched the first, like, four episodes of Eccleston's run like three years ago (at Oxx's insistence/deceit) and hated literally everything about it- the acting, the godawful special effects, every stupid-as-poo poo tired injoke, every single catchphrase, the terrible, terrible,. TERRIBLE plotting, the wretched, grade school dialog, the camera angles, the scene blocking...everything. I hated everything, and vowed never to watch it ever again. So it's with that caveat that I say: don't read my reviews if you expect anything more than a guy who absolutely despises this show watching it.

MikeJF
Dec 20, 2003




Toxxupation posted:

[*] The Doctor: "And remind me, I gotta patch the telephone back through the console unit, this is getting ridiculous." Handles: "ATTENTION. INFORMATION AVAILABLE." The Doctor: "Okay." Handles: "YOU MUST PATCH THE TELEPHONE DEVICE BACK THROUGH THE CONSOLE UNIT." The Doctor: "No, n-no no, no no no, no, not now, remind me later." Handles: "WHEN?" The Doctor: "I dunno, just later, just pick a time." Handles: "WHEN?" The Doctor: "I dunno, just any old time, just when you think I've forgotten." Handles: "WHEN?" The Doctor: "Just pick a random number, express that number as a quantity of minutes, and when that time has elapsed, remind me, to patch the telephone back through the console unit." Handles: "AFFIRMATIVE."[/list]

And then the random number handles picked was something along the lines of 157785492. Cybermen.

Facebook Aunt
Oct 4, 2008

wiggle wiggle




mind the walrus posted:

And this is where I personally stopped watching. I tried to watch the first few episodes of Twelve but despite being a cynical rear end in a top hat myself it just.... completely failed to grab me on any level, and I say that as someone who actually liked Clara a whole lot in Season Seven.

What are you talking about? 12 is a kindly grandfather.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZuNA8zMeSE

Xenoborg
Mar 10, 2007

I always figured that Tasha Lem was suposed to be River, but that it had to get cut because of whatever production issue. Their dialog was exactly the same as Doctor Vs River.

Jerusalem
May 20, 2004

Would you be my new best friends?

Gotta agree, there are a lot of issues with the surface story that Time is telling, but to me those issues are secondary to the marvelously well-handled farewell to Matt Smith as the Doctor. They knocked it out of the park, and I do so love how after he says his goodbyes (and his final act being to reach out a reassuring hand to Clara) he just snaps his head back and suddenly he's Peter Capaldi. No long drawn out scream or shifting of the face, because that was unnecessary - he'd said and done everything that needing doing, and so he went and did so gladly, satisfied that he'd done everything there was for him to do :unsmith:

MikeJF
Dec 20, 2003




Xenoborg posted:

I always figured that Tasha Lem was suposed to be River, but that it had to get cut because of whatever production issue. Their dialog was exactly the same as Doctor Vs River.

Can't see River heading the church, though.

Small Strange Bird
Sep 22, 2006

Merci, chaton!

mind the walrus posted:

And this is where I personally stopped watching. I tried to watch the first few episodes of Twelve but despite being a cynical rear end in a top hat myself it just.... completely failed to grab me on any level, and I say that as someone who actually liked Clara a whole lot in Season Seven.
I didn't like Clara when she was with Eleven (okay, that's a bit strong - she was too bland to dislike). I did like her with Twelve... but unfortunately, I really disliked Twelve!

It's ironic that Peter Capaldi was such a huge fan of Jon Pertwee that he had a costume (and publicity photo) specifically designed to echo him, then was given a character to play that couldn't be any further from the suave, controlled, aristocratic Three.

Small Strange Bird fucked around with this message at 07:35 on Jun 25, 2015

Grouchio
Aug 31, 2014

Now go watch a Fourth Doctor serial.

Blasmeister
Jan 15, 2012




2Time TRP Sack Race Champion

Really good review, a lot of the thematic appropriateness of 11's situation passed me by when I watched it, but it all does work rather neatly as the doctor's final exam, doesn't it? Some of the things you've written make me really eager to see how you find season 8 and Capaldi in particular but after blasting through the tail end of 11's run you've more than earned a break. Are you planning to watch An Adventure in Space and Time at all? It probably doesn't need a review but its a heartfelt counterpart to all the 50th celebration stuff and worth the time, in my opinion at least.

Blasmeister fucked around with this message at 07:39 on Jun 25, 2015

fatherboxx
Mar 25, 2013

Xenoborg posted:

I always figured that Tasha Lem was suposed to be River, but that it had to get cut because of whatever production issue. Their dialog was exactly the same as Doctor Vs River.

Steven Moffat just likes a certain type.

Paul.Power
Feb 7, 2009

The three roles of APCs:
Transports.
Supply trucks.
Distractions.

mind the walrus posted:

And this is where I personally stopped watching. I tried to watch the first few episodes of Twelve but despite being a cynical rear end in a top hat myself it just.... completely failed to grab me on any level, and I say that as someone who actually liked Clara a whole lot in Season Seven.
Twelve took a little while to get going for me - Ten had me by the end of his first episode, Eleven had me by the end of his first scene, but Twelve needed a bit of a run-up. There's a certain pair of episodes towards the back end of Series Eight that really sold him for me (hopefully that's not too spoilery for this thread).

SirSamVimes
Jul 21, 2008

~* Challenge *~


Let's not start talking about which future episodes sell you on 12. We want the reviews to be spoiler free if he continues. If you do want to continue this discussion, the main Doctor Who thread is still a thing.

CobiWann
Oct 21, 2009

Have fun!

SirSamVimes posted:

Let's not start talking about which future episodes sell you on 12. We want the reviews to be spoiler free if he continues. If you do want to continue this discussion, the main Doctor Who thread is still a thing.

Yeah, we are currently discussing the deeper ramifications of the phrase "Tom's putting it in now."

DoctorWhat posted:

ding ding ding!

Heh. Would this be a bad time to tell you that I'm the one who bought your current avatar?

CobiWann fucked around with this message at 11:36 on Jun 25, 2015

Escobarbarian
Jun 18, 2004


Grimey Drawer
Great review, sums up my feelings on the episode exactly, and so on. It really does bother me that Moffat aged Eleven so much in order to make him the most important one, though. It barely matters in the long run but it seems emblematic of Moffat's penchant for making a character or thing important via convoluted plot mechanics rather than having it actually be earned (like the Clara stuff in Name). Eleven was still a good/important Doctor without needing to be aged hundreds of years. If we follow the caveat that this is Moffat's Journey's End then that's the equivalent of the big apocalyptic universe-ending stakes. But there's a better time to return to this subject.

MikeJF
Dec 20, 2003




Bown posted:

Great review, sums up my feelings on the episode exactly, and so on. It really does bother me that Moffat aged Eleven so much in order to make him the most important one, though.

That's your take on his reasons. I kinda feel like Toxx is right, that it was because Eleven's always been depicted as the one who flees, so his final story forcing him to stay was as a counterpoint to that - and to make that point effectively with The Doctor, that has to be centuries.

CobiWann
Oct 21, 2009

Have fun!
Toxx, this might be up your alley...

http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2015-06-25/the-10-best-doctor-who-scenes-you-didnt-see-on-tv

A bunch of deleted scenes that may not have made the DVD's. If anything, I think you'd like #2 on the list.

2house2fly
Nov 14, 2012

You did a super job wrapping things up! And I'm not just saying that because I have to!

Xenoborg posted:

I always figured that Tasha Lem was suposed to be River, but that it had to get cut because of whatever production issue. Their dialog was exactly the same as Doctor Vs River.

Personally i think she was meant to be (or just should have been) Kovarian, but Moffat either couldn't get the actress to come back or wanted to write flirty dialogue so he cast someone sexier. Imagine first going onto the Papal Mainframe and seeing Kovarian, the Doctor sort of raising an eyebrow and saying "hello, Madame Kovarian" and her being confused because she's never met him before. Then going back later on but now they know each other and get on better, and she's apologetic about the whole Silence thing.

I also think it should have gone (and nothing in the episode contradicts it so I'm going to headcanon that it did go) that the confessional priests were the end of the Silence's story, not the beginning. After centuries of being killed on sight by humans they begged the Papal Mainframe for help, who erased the conditioning and put the Silence to work as penance for their sins. Kovarian then went back in time and found the "wild" Silence living on Earth and enlisted their help against the Doctor, ultimately being the source of those sins in the first place. The destiny trap!

On the topic of things which actually happened in the episode, I really like the Time Lords pouring magic dust through the Crack. It's an effective demonstration of the kind of power everyone in the universe was afraid of, it's the ultimate harbinger of death bringing life in its final appearance (a companion to the Doctor and the Silence standing back to back against the Daleks) and it's Eleven, whose specialty is manipulation and scheming, finally running out of words and ideas and almost getting a reward from a higher power for admitting that he's just a mortal.

Escobarbarian
Jun 18, 2004


Grimey Drawer

CobiWann posted:

Toxx, this might be up your alley...

http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2015-06-25/the-10-best-doctor-who-scenes-you-didnt-see-on-tv

A bunch of deleted scenes that may not have made the DVD's. If anything, I think you'd like #2 on the list.

Yeah definitely watch #2 on this list it is excellent

As for the Time thing, since when was Eleven the Doctor who flees? His thing was being the Doctor who lies, or who forgets in Day but that was largely invented within that episode to create more of a contrast between him and the others. Calling Eleven the Doctor who flees based on his arc is like calling Clara, I dunno, a really bossy character based on her 7.2 episodes. It just doesn't fit.

Escobarbarian fucked around with this message at 13:26 on Jun 25, 2015

Issaries
Sep 15, 2008

"Negotiations were going well. They were very impressed by my hat." -Issaries the Concilliator"
My favourite moment of the 11th Doctor are probably when he is explaining some utter nonsense and gets all :smug: about it.
For example:


That's why they call it Live Chess.

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010


Ignore my posts!
I'm aggressively wrong about everything!

Jerusalem posted:

Gotta agree, there are a lot of issues with the surface story that Time is telling, but to me those issues are secondary to the marvelously well-handled farewell to Matt Smith as the Doctor. They knocked it out of the park, and I do so love how after he says his goodbyes (and his final act being to reach out a reassuring hand to Clara) he just snaps his head back and suddenly he's Peter Capaldi. No long drawn out scream or shifting of the face, because that was unnecessary - he'd said and done everything that needing doing, and so he went and did so gladly, satisfied that he'd done everything there was for him to do :unsmith:

Yeah, I feel like regeneration episodes have to be considered differently to the regular for these sorts of reasons. Unlike most other episodes of Doctor Who--unlike most episodes of TV as a whole, in fact--a regeneration episode has a job beyond just being entertaining and telling a good story. The title character of the show is dying, he needs a proper sendoff, a resolution worthy of the character itself. It needs to get us excited about the next guy as well, but that's more the job of the immediate next episode; for an episode like Time, most of the script's emphasis really has to be on farewelling the passing Doctor.

As far as the revival goes, it's probably the best regeneration episode at doing that; Parting of the Ways and The End of Time just didn't manage to stand that fight as well. Regardless of the actual strength of their story, neither of them really managed to address the Doctor's life and death as they should; it's just a regular story, that the Doctor dies at the end of. Time of the Doctor could only be a regeneration story, because it's entirely predicated around what a regeneration story needs to do. And while the 'real' plot isn't very good, it's notactually the focus.

Time of the Doctor has a job, and it put doing that job well above everything else it had to do as an episode.

Regy Rusty
Apr 26, 2010

I've only seen one more episode now that Occ hasn't. Looks like it might finally be time to watch Season 8...

thrawn527
Mar 27, 2004

Thrawn/Pellaeon
Studying the art of terrorists
To keep you safe

fatherboxx posted:

Steven Moffat just likes a certain type.

There was one line, though, that I thought was explicitly saying it was River. I'm paraphrasing because I can't remember the exact wording, but the Doctor tells her, "You've been fighting the psychopath all your life! Shut up and win!"" That line seems so clearly to be about River. That and, I figured, since The Doctor and River were a "relationship" where the Doctor looked so much younger than River, now that we had an older looking Doctor, maybe they wanted a younger looking River to flip the dynamic on it's head.

I was clearly wrong, and Tasha is just a new character we've never met before, and the psychopath she's been fighting all her life is just...something else we don't really get to know about. Oh well.

MikeJF
Dec 20, 2003




thrawn527 posted:

the psychopath she's been fighting all her life is just...

The kind of person you are if you're the head of a church. :smuggo: religion

Bicyclops
Aug 27, 2004

The "Raggedy man, goodnight" scene is definitely an emotional moment. I'm glad Karen Gillan came back for it.

Escobarbarian
Jun 18, 2004


Grimey Drawer
Hey Occ, seeing how we're getting a bit of a break before you start 8 iirc, how about an update on your top/bottom 10 episodes?

Stobbit
Mar 9, 2006
I also submit that An Adventure in Time and Space should be watched, even if a review isn't written. It, to me at least, was almost as integral to the 50th anniversary celebrations as The Day of the Doctor itself. I strongly recommend it before you get to Twelve's run.

NieR Occomata
Jan 18, 2009

Glory to Mankind.

Bown posted:

Hey Occ, seeing how we're getting a bit of a break before you start 8 iirc, how about an update on your top/bottom 10 episodes?

all right, again, don't make this pyf-y since i know this'll kick off a trend

I switched over to listing two-parters as one entry because otherwise this list is impossible

top ten favorite episodes occupation has seen thus far (1 being most favorite):

10. "The Doctor's Wife"
9. "The Angels Take Manhattan"
8. "The Girl Who Waited"
7. "Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead"
6. "Amy's Choice"
5. "The Time of the Doctor"
4. "The Day of the Doctor"
3. "The Christmas Invasion"
2. "The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang"
1. "The Eleventh Hour"

top ten least favorite episodes occupation has seen thus far (1 being most hated):

10. "The End of Time, Part One"
9. "The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe"
8. "The Snowmen"
7. "Planet of the Dead"
6. "The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood"
5. "Aliens of London/World War Three"
4. "Boom Town"
3. "Voyage of the Damned"
2. "Love and Monsters"
1. "The Parting of the Ways"

Blasmeister
Jan 15, 2012




2Time TRP Sack Race Champion

Have some amateur statistical analysis instead of pyf then.

Top ten favorite episodes occupation has seen thus far (grouped by season)

555
777
66
4
2

Top ten least favorite episodes occupation has seen thus far(grouped by season)

111
44
2
3
5
7
6

Looking forward to seeing how you think seasons six and seven rate overall, they make up a lot of your top episodes. Also the Christmas specials seem to be incredibly polarizing with 3 bottom ten eps, and 2 in the top ten.

Blasmeister fucked around with this message at 17:11 on Jun 25, 2015

marktheando
Nov 4, 2006

Huh you have *looks up list of Doctor Who serials on wikipedia to see which one is which* Time of the Doctor on there, controversial. I do agree that it has some really great bits, but also some awful poo poo, plus having to cram two full years of stuff into one episode (without Moffat fuckups we'd have two full series instead of series 7 parts one and two, plus Matt Smith would have stayed on for another year after that).

Also around the time you were watching series five I bet you never even imagined you would have two Moffat written episodes in your bottom ten.

Bicyclops
Aug 27, 2004

marktheando posted:

Huh you have *looks up list of Doctor Who serials on wikipedia to see which one is which* Time of the Doctor on there, controversial. I do agree that it has some really great bits, but also some awful poo poo, plus having to cram two full years of stuff into one episode (without Moffat fuckups we'd have two full series instead of series 7 parts one and two, plus Matt Smith would have stayed on for another year after that).

Also around the time you were watching series five I bet you never even imagined you would have two Moffat written episodes in your bottom ten.

Also The Angels Take Manhattan!

I'm not surprised that The Christmas Invasion is on there, given his reaction, but I am a little surprised it ranks so highly on his list.

thexerox123
Aug 17, 2007

Stobbit posted:

I also submit that An Adventure in Time and Space should be watched, even if a review isn't written. It, to me at least, was almost as integral to the 50th anniversary celebrations as The Day of the Doctor itself. I strongly recommend it before you get to Twelve's run.

I agree 100%!!

thexerox123 posted:

I will beat it four times to experience the true final ending and review it in this thread if you review Chimes of Midnight.

It arrived today!

So, uh.... roughly how long does one playthrough of this game take, anyways? Haha.

thexerox123 fucked around with this message at 18:23 on Jun 25, 2015

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NieR Occomata
Jan 18, 2009

Glory to Mankind.

Ending A is twenty-ish hours

Ending B is about...five to seven?

Endings C and D take about two hours total, the only thing that differentiates both of them is the final choice you make during the final boss battle, just keep a save right outside the final boss' room and you can get both of them 15 minutes apart from each other

other general tips:

1) do every single sidequest besides the one involving pink roses, you'll know it when you see it. the sidequests are basically reverse-RPG sidequests, in that they give pointless and immaterial rewards but are fairly plot crucial and are some absolutely brilliant worldbuilding

2) don't play the game on hard, it just makes the game more tedious over more difficult

3) drop rates are tied to the game's difficulty so whenever you're on a sidequest that involves farming stuff from dudes quit out to the main menu, pump up the difficulty, then go back in and farm until you get what you need, then drop the difficulty again

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