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Eleven shot the gravity orb in the angels two-parter.
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Jul 16, 2015 13:01
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Ten had a pistol in his finale, too.
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Jul 16, 2015 13:34
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Plus a sword in Christmas Invasion.
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Jul 16, 2015 13:40
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The man who never would! Pew pew pew!
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Jul 16, 2015 13:55
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The Doctor's gonna bust a cap in yo rear end. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzmnPs64K74
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Jul 16, 2015 14:20
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Welp, i guess it was spoon = funny then
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Jul 16, 2015 14:50
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Attitude Indicator posted:Welp, i guess it was spoon = funny then Considering the Third, Fourth and Fifth Doctors were all expert swordsmen? Relatively speaking. Yeah. 'funny'
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Jul 16, 2015 15:13
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It got a chuckle out of me.
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Jul 16, 2015 15:15
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I adored this entire series, even the bits that didn't quite work. Hell, especially those bits. Every episode is trying hard to do something new, or else something old in a way that feels fresh. Love all the wild variations in tone and setting. And I didn't think anyone could replace Matt Smith in my heart but by gods, Capaldi managed it. I guess I like my Doctors rude and crotchety on top of being weird. I liked the spoon fighting even if I was rolling my eyes through the entire scene. That's Who for you.
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Jul 16, 2015 16:04
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I am a bit surprised at people saying this is one of the worst Dr. Who episodes of the whole revival. Even if the humour doesn't land for you, which is understandable, the worst you can really say about it is that it's just unfunny and pointless. It doesn't do anything blatantly offensive like Love and Monsters or Voyage of the Damned did. Or some other parts of Series 8 we haven't gotten to yet. Even if you consider it a bad episode, it's relatively harmless. I think its biggest fault is that the show still hasn't gotten used to Capaldi's Doctor yet, and tried to put in some of the physical humour that Smith could do so well with. Capaldi is still good in his own ways, but his performance is so different from Smith's that it just doesn't mesh at all. All the bits with The Doctor and Robin arguing while Clara plays the part of the exasperated school teacher are really funny though.
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Jul 16, 2015 19:53
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I don't think it's actively awful or terrible, it just obviously wasn't going to be something I enjoyed at all. Very Not For Me. The wacky crap in the parts I saw annoyed me but yeah even just going from that it's absolutely nowhere near my least favourite eps.
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Jul 16, 2015 20:43
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People tend to overstate their dislike for things that try for goofy humor and don't land, calling it monkey cheese and saying it actively angers them. I think it comes from being on this forum and reading the takedowns of CTRL ALT DEL and all the other awful webcomics out there and trying to catch it in everything else. The spoon thing isn't even a random joke out of nowhere. It's a take on the masculine one upmanship from the Errol Flynn Robin Hood movies, and I'm fairly certain the scene has been done before with a table knife or something similar instead of a spoon.
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Jul 16, 2015 22:28
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Practical Demon posted:People tend to overstate their dislike for things that try for goofy humor and don't land, calling it monkey cheese and saying it actively angers them. I think it comes from being on this forum and reading the takedowns of CTRL ALT DEL and all the other awful webcomics out there and trying to catch it in everything else. I think it's also because something about humor that doesn't land, even if it is a pretty minor offense, really makes people cringe. Drama that doesn't land can be funny or aggravating, but something about someone trying to make me laugh and not quite pulling it off gives me a sense of vicarious embarrassment. You're definitely right that sometimes people overstate it, though, and will hyper-focus on a single joke as the reason something is "the worst ever." I think "monkeycheese" has just come to mean "randomly wacky as the sole source of humor" for whatever reason, but, like all criticisms that take the form of neologism, it gets over-applied and has its definition broadened until it loses a lots of its meaning. Which is why half of all debates about criticizing media are semantics debates, like the "sitcom humor" one we had ages ago in this thread (in which I was very definitely in the wrong for using all of the wrong terms for things).
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Jul 16, 2015 22:47
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Bicyclops posted:I think it's also because something about humor that doesn't land, even if it is a pretty minor offense, really makes people cringe. Drama that doesn't land can be funny or aggravating, but something about someone trying to make me laugh and not quite pulling it off gives me a sense of vicarious embarrassment. You're definitely right that sometimes people overstate it, though, and will hyper-focus on a single joke as the reason something is "the worst ever." That's a good point too, there's a difference between just being boring and being 'unfunny'. All of the movies I've quit watching in disgust have been bad comedies, other types of bad movies I usually just knuckle through. I just had trouble understanding why people hated it so much when I compared it to other episodes that were just flat out offensive. The latter is less fun to take the piss out of.
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Jul 16, 2015 22:58
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so to force myself to not be a lazy gently caress, review up tomorrow
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Jul 17, 2015 06:42
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Also everyone everywhere should stop watching whatever poo poo they normally watch and just watch this, forever https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7lAE7gAaGE
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Jul 17, 2015 18:20
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Toxxupation posted:Also everyone everywhere should stop watching whatever poo poo they normally watch and just watch this, forever I don't think I will. No sir I don't think I will.
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Jul 17, 2015 18:23
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Toxxupation posted:Also everyone everywhere should stop watching whatever poo poo they normally watch and just watch this, forever 
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Jul 17, 2015 20:45
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This one was so weird because it was both a totally ok and amusing episode of Who, and also such a giant pile of crap which I will loath forever, and I honestly still couldn't put my finger on why.
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Jul 17, 2015 21:59
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surc posted:This one was so weird because it was both a totally ok and amusing episode of Who, and also such a giant pile of crap which I will loath forever, and I honestly still couldn't put my finger on why. Yeah, I kind of get it. I liked (but wouldn't say I loved) it, but it felt a bit like the Doctor had landed in an episode of Blackadder. Which is so not a problem for me but I can see why it wouldn't land for some.
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Jul 17, 2015 22:49
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I watched and enjoyed blackadder (although not in a while), so I don't think that's it. It was just totally a fine episode (I even laughed out loud at some scenes in it) while at the same time being complete poo poo. 
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Jul 18, 2015 00:46
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Doctor Who "Robot of Sherwood" Series 8, Episode 3 When this episode's intro started, and the Twelfth Doctor stared on in bemused incredulity as the heretofore unreal-according-to-him Robin Hood (Tom Riley) merrily shot an arrow into his TARDIS, I leaned over and messaged Oxxidation "Oh, so this is the Gatiss episode huh." Which says something as to how templated the episodes he writes are; from a bare five minutes of exposure to "Robot of Sherwood" I immediately knew who the writer for it was. Past episode of Who? Check! The Doctor meets a famous historical figure and hangs out with them? Check! Lighter, breezier atmosphere? Check, check, check. "Robot of Sherwood" is, perhaps, the Ur-example of Gatiss' approach to writing on Doctor Who. If some complete unknown approached me on the street and wanted my opinion on Doctor Who - a reality that grows more and more likely with each passing second - and asked me what episode best represents Gatiss' narrative leitmotifs, I would point to "Robot of Sherwood". Twelve goes back in time and meets Robin Hood; after the aformentioned arrow-in-the-TARDIS bit, the two of them fence, Robin Hood with his sword and The Doctor with his spoon. Clara and The Doctor then get to meet the fabled Merry Men - Little John (Rusty Goffe), Friar Tuck (Trevor Cooper), Alan-a-Dale (Ian Hallard), and Will Scarlett (Joseph Kennedy).The evil Sherriff of Nottingham (Ben Miller) is, of course, terrorizing the countryside with his knights. Robin Hood confronts him, the knights turn out to be robots - hence the name of the episode - the Doctor, Robin Hood, and Clara are imprisoned, they break out and stop the robots' evil plan by blowing up their ship disguised as a castle. It's all very formulaic, both to the plot of a Who episode in general and the plot of a Gatiss episode in specific. I have a soft spot for Gatiss, and I've spent much time in the past defending his output on Who. So my first inclination when writing this review was to continue doing so. And there's a fair amount to defend, to be fair; he writes Robin Hood fairly well, and he checks all the necessary boxes that viewers expect an episode centered around Robin Hood to check. It's a Robin Hood-rear end Robin Hood episode dealing with all the standard Robin Hood and Merry Men tropes, with variously successful comedic bits. It's light, there's a clear three-act structure, and the narrative progresses competently. The problem I have with "Robot", however, is rooted in this slavish devotion to its source material. I view Robin Hood narratives in the exact opposite way that I view Christmas Carol narratives; with the latter, as I mentioned in the "Christmas Carol" review, I find that derivation for derivation's sake is hacky and unnecessary. In contrast, I find straight-line interpretations of the Robin Hood mythos to be at best lazy and at worst downright pointless. Why? With A Christmas Carol, the story is so well-told initially and so specific to its own narrative that any changes come across as unnecessary modification of a near-perfect narrative. The story of A Christmas Carol is loving brilliant; the initial meeting with Marley, the way Ghosts Past, Present, and Future are introduced within the narrative and their roles within the story as written. Scrooge's character development over the course of the story. I could go on, but you get the picture; A Christmas Carol has persisted for so long because the story its tells is timeless. So, on the other end of that, when some other fiction takes that and twists it two degrees to the right or the left for their narrative it's all the more irritating because of the quality of the source material. The most offensive example of this trend, to my mind, is Winnie the Pooh: Springtime with Roo, a movie I was forced to watch a decade ago as I babysat my siblings. I gazed on in stunned bemusement as I watched this direct-to-video pile of Disney horseshit with some of the most endearing characters from my childhood. They were forced into a carbon copy of the Christmas Carol, but - get this - it was about Easter. With Robin Hood, though, I take the contradictory tack. Part of this is because Christmas Carol is a complete, end-to-end narrative. That story requires all of its component pieces to really function, and it's much more of a complete whole than Robin Hood, who is more of a Middle Ages fable than a work of fiction. Robin Hood is a template, because so much of his character is ill-defined. He's an archetype, he's the roguish hero who doesn't play by the rules but ultimately has a heart of gold beating underneath it all. He robs from the rich and gives to the poor, and he fights entrenched systems that allow for social justice to blossom. The specifics of his own narrative aren't very compelling - the Maid Marian, Sherriff of Nottingham poo poo exist within his sphere as the person he's fighting for and fighting against not as real people. He's an urban legend, sorta like Johnny Appleseed and Paul Bunyan, and because of that the specifics of his character don't make for very compelling reading or viewing. I mean, what is Robin Hood? He's a well-intentioned scoundrel who fights for the disenfranchised. You know who that describes? Han Solo. Batman. The Doctor himself. The list goes on. The point being that Robin Hood is merely a template to frame a character around, to the point the term "Robin Hood" is itself a phrase used in both pop culture lexicon and in literary analysis to describe a trope of both fiction and real life - "he's a modern-day Robin Hood". He's so commonly understood as a flat definition he's essentially a stock character. The Uncertain Hero. The Anti-Hero. The Evil Villain. The Robin Hood. What does this mean? Stories that star him, just him, are boring as gently caress. He's lifeless, he's a loose collection of quirks over a complete character. He's a mold you build a character around or form a character from. Batman is interesting because he's Robin Hood, plus Sherlock Holmes, with a horribly tragic backstory, for example. Straight-line Robin Hood stories just don't work as a result, and so "Robot" centrally fails. It's a story about Robin Hood, the twelfth century archer Robin Hood, and guess what? That character just isn't very compelling. But it's the hagiography that "Robot" approaches the fact that it's a Robin Hood story that makes it downright bad over merely mediocre. Even in the context of source-faithful Robin Hood stories, it's a character that has existed for so long that there have been lights-out excellent portrayals of him in the near century that cinema has existed. Most notably Errol Flynn, an actor that "Robot" even deigns to address by name within the running time of the episode itself. Tom Riley does his best Errol Flynn impersonation, which just highlights and underlines how goddamn lazy from beginning to end this story was from conception to execution. Riley brings noflavor or dimension to his portrayal, opting instead to just straight-up copy the seventy-years-past performance of one of the greatest actors of all time. And the script validates his acting choices; "Robot" feels like a Greatest Hits version of the Robin Hood narrative, with the mustache-twirlingly evil Sheriff, and the archery contest, and the scenes of the Merry Men being a band of totally hetero rapscallions. They even had a loving lute guy, that's how goddamn hagiographic this was. If I want to watch a straight-line Robin Hood story, I'll just watch the Errol Flynn classic from 1938 again. Or The Princess Bride, which mine as loving well be a Robin Hood story. It makes "Robot" feel even more slipshod and lazy than it already is because the way that it approaches the Robin Hood mythos comes across as if Mark Gatiss read the Wikipedia summary a couple of times, watched The Adventures of Robin Hood a couple more times, then wrote "ROBIN HOOD STUFF HAPPENS" on 50 pages, double spaced. There's no perspective it has, no sense of originality; just a point by point retreading of material that was written eight hundred years prior. Even the Doctor Who twist of the knights under the Sheriff's employ being robots was one that read as derivative onscreen. Like, yeah, Doctor Who has to be about science poo poo, so...here you go. They're robots trying to get gold to fix their ship, to leave. That's, uh...that's...it. I guess. What this episode needed, to be honest, was someone taking the piss out of it the entire time, because it played so close to the vest on all of the Robin Hood stereotypes. Wait a second... Yes, the by-far best part of this episode was Twelve. His constant mocking and insults to both Robin Hood and the Merry Men, especially in direct contrast to Clara's mooning over the same, are the best parts of the largely forgettable and boring "Robot". It's the scenes when Twelve is a miserable oval office to everyone around him that the show finally comes to life and doesn't feel like bad Robin Hood fanfiction. On a meta-narrative level it even makes the worse parts of the story more justifiable; the fact that Robin Hood and his pals are all unbelievably annoying works in the sense of them existing solely to piss off Twelve, and the fact that the story is so goddamn rote and predictable is funny because of how incredulous it makes The Doctor. Honestly there's a much better and more interesting story within "Robot" that plays out with the same plot points but is itself a commentary on the aggressive mediocrity and sameness that permeates all Robin Hood tales; the fact that every single plot development is greeted with, at best, bemusement on Twelve's part sort of speaks to that. The problem is that story is not what the episode is at all about; it intimates the potentiality that everything that happens within it is too perfect, too mythical, too hagiographic, then validates that potentiality by implying a swerve that Robin Hood could, in fact, be a robot as well programmed to be the Robin Hood-est Robin Hood there ever was. Then, though, the episode immediately double-swerves not five minutes later, as the Sheriff outright states that such a plot development would be illogical. Oxxidation appreciated the double swerve because, to him, the Sheriff was right - creating a Robin Hood robot would make no loving sense. The problem I have is that by immediately selling out the "Robin Hood is a robot" angle, that means that all the incredibly obvious and predictable Robin Hood scenes I saw were meant to be taken strictly at face value, where they don't work at all. The episode, essentially, implied and built to a grander and more interesting narrative which it then backed away from almost immediately. Worse, still, that grander narrative only functioned by having its setup be as intentionally uninteresting and flat as possible - so it was all these bad, boring, cliched scenes of Robin Hood and his pals joking around, or that goddamn arrow contest scene which at this point I must've seen a dozen times by now across various media that all built to nothing. But even those scenes could've been saved if the episode kept its command of The Doctor. The Doctor is introduced within this episode as an unwilling participant - he's essentially dragged along on the adventure because Clara, stars in her eyes, wants to hang out with her childhood legend. This dynamic of The Doctor being the Doubting Thomas of the episode is what gives it its spark; people like me who find all the cliches and general chin-wagging annoying and full of itself has The Doctor as their audience avatar - constantly mocking and deriding the participants within it. "He doesn't exist", The Doctor imperiously declares to Clara before being immediately proven wrong. This is the Doctor this episode needs, to deflate its own overblown stakes and sense of self-importance. So it's all the more disappointing that the episode undercuts it by immediately lowering The Doctor to Robin Hood's level. The Doctor needed to be high status this episode from beginning to end - scenes like spoon fencing (which was just tedious and annoying besides) and The Doctor and Robin shouting at each other in the cell removes the insight through which Twelve functions on this episode. He's supposed to be above it all and in disbelief that anything that's happening is even real, so when the show shifts to impress that The Doctor is actually in constant competition with Robin Hood it makes The Doctor seem weak and petty when he's supposed to be cold and disinterested. At every turn "Robot" undercuts itself. There's stuff like the arrow contest, which has that funny moment where The Doctor splits Robin's split arrow. And there's even the kind of amusing button on the sequence, where The Doctor gets sick of all the ones-upsmanship going on and eventually decides to blow up the target out of hand. But it's the stuff in the middle of those two moments - when there's a brief montage of The Doctor and Robin doing increasingly ridiculous trick shots - that ruins the scene. Again, it's The Doctor giving up his status by humoring Robin at all that ruins it, and illustrates how Gatiss fundamentally misunderstands how Twelve's personality functions. The shooting-the-arrow scene makes sense for Twelve, because he loves a moment where he can effortlessly outclass someone else. The blowing up the target scene also makes sense because it's illustrative of Twelve's cynical, needlessly tactless approach to problem-solving. That stuff in the middle is Twelve humoring a person he doesn't like's bit, which isn't who Twelve is, not in general and especially not in this episode. And it's not just there, the spoon fencing has that same problem of running for a few beats too long, trying desperately to milk a few more moments of humor but in the process weakening Twelve's character. Pretty much everything in the jail cell from start to finish reduces Twelve into a chest-thumping gorilla marking his territory, which is antithetical to Twelve's perspective. No amount of strengthening Clara and her role in the story can excuse crippling The Doctor so effectively. And so we reach the end of the episode, where Robin Hood is first revealed to be a robot, then not a robot, as he then pushes the Sheriff of Nottingham into a pot of boiling gold (By the way, I sure did love the fact that they reused the exact same shot perspective they used for Astrid's death in "Voyage of the Damned". Then Twelve, Clara, and Robin shoot a golden arrow at the ship/castle hybrid, as you do, which causes it to blow up in lower-earth orbit. This then leads into the denouement and final scene. It's that final scene between Robin and Twelve that calcifies my general distaste for this episode. It's actually a really nice scene - removed from being Errol Flynn Light, Tom Riley puts in a fairly persuasive performance as an introspective, existentialist Robin who notes how both him and The Doctor work better as fables anyway. It's a good scene, and a fairly affecting end to an episode that wasn't this one. The final scene wants it both ways, and intimates that everything that came before was part of some big introspective thinkpiece episode on the nature of legacies and how people can become reduced to fable, how they become archetypes, templates. You know, what I wrote about having actually happened to the Robin Hood story. The episode wants the final scene to imply that the events of the episode were all about this big, broad-strokes narrative about the thematic similarities of Robin Hood and The Doctor, a character often reduced to a sole recounting of his exploits. It wanted to be this meta-contextual story about stories and how they change over time and how history can, uncaring, erase you. And that's an admirable goal, if the episode tried to explore that story at loving all. But, instead, it was a dumb nonsense Robin Hood story with The Doctor and Robin Hood fencing on a log that then, in its final minute, attempts to stare into its navel and be "about" something. An episode that at every moment Gatiss had little to no idea what he was writing that ended up a giant boring atonal mess, that then, in its final moments, insultingly tries to be "deep". Grade: D Random Thoughts:
NieR Occomata fucked around with this message at 03:40 on Jul 18, 2015 |
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Jul 18, 2015 03:36
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Listen_%28Doctor_Who%29 In which everyone is afraid.
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Jul 18, 2015 04:34
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ALSO IF YOU DON'T THINK HIDE IS GOOD GO gently caress YOURSELF GOD loving drat IT THAT EPISODE OF DOCTOR loving WHO HOLY poo poo THAT EPISODE WAS loving INCREDIBLE gently caress loving gently caress
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Jul 18, 2015 04:35
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Toxxupation posted:ALSO IF YOU DON'T THINK HIDE IS GOOD GO gently caress YOURSELF I always think of Listen when someone says Hide, which is sad because I like that episode. 
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Jul 18, 2015 04:38
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Toxxupation posted:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Listen_%28Doctor_Who%29 You should be. WELCOME TO A NOT GREAT EPISODE
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Jul 18, 2015 04:40
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Burkion posted:WELCOME TO A NOT GREAT EPISODE GET THE gently caress OUT OF THIS THREAD YOU gently caress
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Jul 18, 2015 04:40
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Toxxupation posted:GET THE gently caress OUT OF THIS THREAD YOU gently caress HAH HAH WE'RE IN THIS FUCKBOX TOGETHER BABY
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Jul 18, 2015 04:42
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Burkion posted:You should be. Its not great, its the best drat episode of the whole series!
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Jul 18, 2015 04:58
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OH poo poo I SAID HIDE OVER LISTEN LISTEN IS GREAT AND DOESN'T DESERVE THE ASSOCIATION WITH HIDE MY APOLOGIES
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Jul 18, 2015 05:00
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He liked Listen, everyone.
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Jul 18, 2015 05:04
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Toxxupation posted:OH poo poo I SAID HIDE OVER LISTEN I think your brain was just trying to correct your own conscious wrong thoughts
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Jul 18, 2015 05:09
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Robot of Sherwood Robin Hood is fun, both as a concept and in this episode, but I wouldn't have minded the Doctor crapping on him a bit more. And that ending... woof. Anyway, let's get to the scores. A Attitude Indicator Barometz blasmeister BSam cargohills Colonel Cool death .cab for qt ewe2 JoltSpree Jsor Rat Flavoured Rats Sinestro Weird Sandwich B And More AndwhatIseeisme DetoxP DoctorWhat Gandalf21 Grouchio jng2058 LabyaMynora MikeJF Ohtsam onetruepurple Organza Quiz Paul.Power Senerio C 2house2fly Alkarl Bicyclops egon_beeblebrox fatherboxx Howe_sam Labratio Lipset and Rock On Mo0 thexerox123 Xenoborg D Andrew_1985 Bown F Ha-HA! Overall Average Guess: B-. I guess people thought Toxx would be a little more attracted to the whimsy, or the Gatissness. Current rankings: Labratio: 1 Alkarl: 2 Andrew_1985: 3 fatherboxx: 3 Howe_sam: 3 Lipset and Rock On: 3 Organza Quiz: 3 thexerox123: 3 2house2fly: 4 blasmeister: 4 Bown: 4 DetoxP: 4 DoctorWhat: 4 Gandalf21: 4 Ohtsam: 4 onetruepurple: 4 Xenoborg: 4 AndwhatIseeisme: 5 Attitude Indicator: 5 Bicyclops: 5 Colonel Cool: 5 death .cab for qt: 5 egon_beeblebrox: 5 Grouchio: 5 jng2058: 5 JoltSpree: 5 LabyaMynora: 5 MikeJF: 5 Paul.Power: 5 Senerio: 5 Sinestro: 5 And More: 6 Barometz: 6 BSam: 6 cargohills: 6 Jsor: 6 Mo0: 6 Rat Flavoured Rats: 6 Weird Sandwich: 6 ewe2: 7 Labratio's still hanging on here, but has slipped a bit. We've actually created a pretty good spread for only being three episodes in, but even ewe2 has a shot at this depending on what happens in the next few episodes. idonotlikepeas fucked around with this message at 05:21 on Jul 18, 2015 |
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Jul 18, 2015 05:17
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armoredgorilla posted:He liked Listen, everyone. Water is wet.
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Jul 18, 2015 05:27
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We can probably go ahead and count Listen as an 'A'.
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Jul 18, 2015 05:30
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Everyone quickly amend your votes to A.
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Jul 18, 2015 05:32
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Jul 18, 2015 05:35
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yesssss. I knew he'd like Listen. Listen is the shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit. It's super ultra dope in every way AND THERE WAS NO MONSTER AND EVERYTHING WAS BEAUTIFUL. Also it creates a weird plot hole later on, but whatever, timey-wimey.
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Jul 18, 2015 05:40
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Listen is a loving awesome episode. It's fantastic. It's so weird and great and the fact you never know whether or not there even was a monster is sooooo effective and it's one of my favourite Moffat scripts ever. Despite this, there is a scene in the episode that's so bad, so loving bad, so egregiously lovely and arrogant that it stopped me watching the rest of the series until a few weeks ago and that I consider Moffat's overall greatest "sin" (if we want to be hyperbolic) as showrunner. You know the one, right? The one where the two thousand year old Doctor is only brave, only the person he is, only has his strongest personality trait, because Clara went back to his childhood and said some nice things to him? I'm not....someone who really cares that much about loving with continuity and retconning stuff, or even having any respect for the classic series at all, as long as the story it's telling is good. And the scene, by itself, is pretty good. The reveal that Clara is the monster is loving ace and "fear is a weapon" is an excellent theme portrayed well. But that moment really feels to me like a slap in the face to anyone who loves classic Who, any fan who ever watched it, any writer or crew member who ever worked on it. I've talked a bit before about what I perceive as Moffat's arrogance about needing his run on Who to be "the important one", so he makes massive storytelling decisions wherein he ages the Doctor by 300 years at a time and poo poo in order to add extra "weight" where it really isn't necessary. And absolutely the worst example of this before Listen was in Name of the Doc; the attempt at quick-fix characterisation for Clara where she's mega important throughout his whole timeline and even tells him what freakin' TARDIS to get. But this is on another level. Literally suggesting that the only reason your lead was able to become the good, strong person he is and has been over decades and decades of television, books, audios, whatever, only become the yes flawed but overall inspiring, brave man he is, is because this one companion from 50 years in who hasn't even been there a full season and is still far from fully drawn as a character was supportive to him as a scared child, is such a loving insulting thing to do to a long-established franchise in my eyes. It's just.....it's so lovely. However it's disconnected enough from the rest of the episode that I can still appreciate all of that for how good it is and adore the episode overall. And this is, if it isn't too spoilery, the last major issue I have with the guy so far. But.....poo poo, dude! What a goddamn crappy thing to do! hey it's bown i got a name change whas crackin Escobarbarian fucked around with this message at 06:11 on Jul 18, 2015 |
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Jul 18, 2015 06:06
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 11:22 |
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I wanted to love Listen, I really did. The stuff with Clara and Danny is A++ material that deserves the highest of accolades and could fool a passerby into thinking they're watching something classy, and sophisticated, and deep. But the whole "under the bed" poo poo just did not work for me, and not for lore-related reasons although those are dumb too.Escobarbarian posted:I'm not....someone who really cares that much about loving with continuity and retconning stuff, or even having any respect for the classic series at all, as long as the story it's telling is good. And the scene, by itself, is pretty good. The reveal that Clara is the monster is loving ace and "fear is a weapon" is an excellent theme portrayed well. But that moment really feels to me like a slap in the face to anyone who loves classic Who, any fan who ever watched it, any writer or crew member who ever worked on it. I've talked a bit before about what I perceive as Moffat's arrogance about needing his run on Who to be "the important one", so he makes massive storytelling decisions wherein he ages the Doctor by 300 years at a time and poo poo in order to add extra "weight" where it really isn't necessary. And absolutely the worst example of this before Listen was in Name of the Doc; the attempt at quick-fix characterisation for Clara where she's mega important throughout his whole timeline and even tells him what freakin' TARDIS to get. But this is on another level. Literally suggesting that the only reason your lead was able to become the good, strong person he is and has been over decades and decades of television, books, audios, whatever, only become the yes flawed but overall inspiring, brave man he is, is because this one companion from 50 years in who hasn't even been there a full season and is still far from fully drawn as a character was supportive to him as a scared child, is such a loving insulting thing to do to a long-established franchise in my eyes. It's just.....it's so lovely. Despite agreeing with this completely, for some reason it bothers me less than 90% of anything involving Rose.
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Jul 18, 2015 06:34
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