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Jerusalem posted:Yeah.... was it in PYF or something? It's easy to forget it existed when you haven't looked at it for a while.
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Sep 18, 2014 00:50
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It was the PYF thread, it's already reopened, no one actually cares.
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Sep 18, 2014 00:52
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Dabir posted:Looks to me more like it was the GBS ladies thread, I don't see anything about this thread at all. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3662147&perpage=40&pagenumber=5 Sleep of Bronze posted:It was the PYF thread, it's already reopened, no one actually cares.
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Sep 18, 2014 01:01
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Oxx was nearly incoherent with rage this entire episode some choice bits quote:Oxx: where did they get all these guns quote:
quote:me: so in 22 minutes, what has happened quote:Oxx: shush, please, tallulah quote:Oxx: doctor, whaty quote:Oxx: oh my god you were right quote:me: ahahahahahhahahahahhaha
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Sep 18, 2014 02:49
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I would like to make it clear that I told him not to do this and there will be Punishment for it later.
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Sep 18, 2014 02:54
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Oxxidation posted:I would like to make it clear that I told him not to do this and there will be Punishment for it later. OOOH OOH OOH make him listen to The Marian Conspiracy!!!
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Sep 18, 2014 02:56
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You know, it really is the little things in life that make it worth living  .
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Sep 18, 2014 03:04
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This should be good.
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Sep 18, 2014 03:05
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Yeah, these episodes are appallingly bad. I can't recall ever encountering anybody who liked them.
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Sep 18, 2014 03:31
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I think there are some, but they're usually "that guy" who never shuts up about how Doctor Who is a silly kid's show and is thus obligated to be lovely and any teen or adult who likes it is automatically stupid.
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Sep 18, 2014 03:37
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I'll usually give a pass to episodes that are clearly aimed at children, but I don't see how this two-parter fits that. It's just bad.
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Sep 18, 2014 03:56
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Jerusalem posted:Yeah, these episodes are appallingly bad. I can't recall ever encountering anybody who liked them. As I said last page, it's me. I'm the guy who likes these episodes. I mean, this is not a logical thing. I hold these as objectively terrible episodes of Doctor Who and television in general. I still like them, though.
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Sep 18, 2014 04:17
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Doctor Who "Evolution of the Daleks" Series 3, Episode 5 So, Oxx and I are usually online chatting whenever I watch an episode fresh for the first time- I watch it and he antagonizes me over gchat, taking a sick schadenfreudian pleasure out of my wails of frustration. However, for any episode that neither of us have watched, or he hasn't seen all the way through (of which there are only four: "Love and Monsters", "Fear Her", and this two-parter), we make it a point to set up a specific time to watch it together and react to it organically. This doesn't usually change my specific qualitative feelings about the episode I watched; "Love and Monsters" was still loving atrocious even though I had a lot of fun talking to Oxx about it, "Fear Her" was still an episode that we both felt like the thread had rather exaggerated its lack of quality. And "Daleks in Manhattan" was still terrible, and terribly boring, even when watching it with a friend. "Evolution of the Daleks", though... You know how I said, way back in my "The Christmas Invasion" review, that I love dumb poo poo? Well, I also love ironically loving dumb poo poo. I love making fun of dumb poo poo. And I especially love watching something horrendous next to someone else who genuinely hates it, feeding off their misery, laughing the entire time. This episode was the trifecta for me. It was an incredible, terrible episode of television, one which I couldn't stop laughing at, especially when Oxx was right there with me, fuse slowly simmering, ready to explode, until finally at the very end he couldn't take it any more and just melted down. This was not a good episode of television. This was a terrible episode of television, but it was so bad it was incredible, and watching this episode of Oxx might be my single most enjoyable viewing experience this year, especially since I never felt as (justifiably) angry as he did during this episode. The episode is...it's a complete failure, on every level. So very, very little happens- The Doctor engineers the humans' escape at the very beginning of the episode via some sort of sonic...pulse thing, after which the cast regroups at the Hooverville before Solomon unceremoniously bites it (from, of all things, trying to make friends with the Daleks). Then The Doctor quickly goes back to the Daleks' lair, and proceeds to have a very long, very intensely boring conversation about what The Daleks' overall plan is- surprise, Dalek Sec wants to start a race of Dalek-Human hybrids, and needs The Doctor's help to put together his magic- er "Science" machine that will be able to do so. There's a big thing about solar flares that is the key to the Dalek/human hybridization or something, it's all just confusing technobabble. Anyways, The Doctor agrees to help the Daleks for reasons never really adequately explained. Unfortunately, it turns out the other, subservient Daleks to Dalek Sec are growing steadily more disillusioned with his steadily more heretical statements- to be fair, insisting that "Emotions are strength" and that "Daleks need to be imperfect" is pretty much antithetical to the Dalek thought process - and at the final moment, decide to overthrow Dalek Sec and decide to create, instead of Dalek-Human hybrids, pure Daleks in human bodies. Unfortunately, they're foiled by The Doctor grasping onto the lightning rod that's the source of their Dalekization machine thingie, which makes all the "pure" Daleks (that have human bodies) into Dalek-Time Lords (that have human bodies, which means in the climax of the episode when the Daleks order the "pure" Daleks (the ones in human bodies, remember) to kill The Doctor they instead kill the Dalek Lords themselves, and so The Doctor then wins? But then all the Dalek-Time Lords are remotely killed by a Dalek who then escapes through time, again? But then The Doctor saves Laszlo's life off screen so all is well, I guess. Hoor...ay? As you can see, the plot starts off as a retread of the prior episode's- as in, virtually nonexistent, and needlessly expository in a way that's brain deadening. Like...Dalek Sec's explanation for his grand master plan for the Daleks is stuff we were already aware of in the first part of this two-parter, so it all sounds quite boring and obvious when hearing it all again (even if The Doctor wasn't there when the Cult of Skaro were ruminating about having to evolve to survive in "Daleks in Manhattan"). It makes the episode as a whole feel like it's needlessly stalling for no real payoff. It's compounded, too, by scenes that are clear padding- having The Doctor free the humans, only for the mind-numbingly boring Hooverville sequence ending in The Doctor offering himself up is just bewildering storytelling- why not just have him trade the release of the hostages back to their Central Park safe zone in exchange for his own imprisonment? Well, if he did that then the episode would need another ten minutes to film and would be down a hilariously poorly executed action sequence, that's why. The acting is a clear highlight in atrociousness- everyone in this episode, everyone is overacting the hell out of the terrible script they are given, with Tennant as the frontrunner- his scenes of rage are so hammy he mine as well literally take a bite out of the literal scenery, he's showing so much teeth in his enraged grimaces. But it doesn't just stop there- Martha, Tallulah, Laszlo, that southern guy that Andrew Garfield is playing -all of them, to a one, are acting so poorly at certain points it feels like a high school stage play thrown by Drama 1 students...' understudies. In a way, it's kind of incredible, when you think that this is arguably the most famous and popular show in Britain that was airing, and the level of quality inversely proportional to its importance. I mean, this is how bad the acting was- Dalek Sec was no-contest the best acted character in this episode, and he's a dude in a terrible looking rubber mask with dildos on it speaking in a horrendous New Jersey accent. The second half of the episode, though, that's when it goes insane. The editing takes a nosedive, the plotting goes from droll to incoherent- it's so nonsensical that there's a specific disregard for basic story structure, making a clear point of having The Doctor lose his Sonic Screwdriver only for him to inexplicably have it again in the very next scene. The Daleks that are humans that are also Time Lords? are a ridiculous plot device, there's an extended, absolutely terrible subplot again directly involving Tallulah and Laszlo (he's dying now, except when he's made all better by The Doctor in the emotional payoff that happens entirely offscreen Jesus Christ who did the editing for this episode of television), oh, and there's a scene of The Doctor hugging a giant rod as he gets struck by lightning. This episode is like some sort of weirdo fever dream. Everyone in the episode, and this includes but is not limited to the Daleks, become complete and utter morons as the plot demands- I mean, the Daleks just let The Doctor waltz his way into the elevator and run away for no explained reason! The Doctor offers himself up to be killed not once, not twice, but three separate times! The Daleks have The Doctor dead to rights in the climax, but don't kill him themselves over ordering their slave not-Daleks to do so! The Doctor confronts the final remaining Dalek (Dalek KHAAAAAN) and allows the Dalek to escape, with The Doctor's reaction essentially amounting to a disinterested shrug! It's a complete and utter failure of an episode. Everything, again, is absolutely atrociously handled, just like in "Daleks in Manhattan", only this time with added insanity. Tallulah's accent remains hilariously, bar-raisingly terrible; her romantic subplot remains completely unnecessary, her terrible scene with Martha where Martha, twice in two episodes, complains about how The Doctor doesn't notice her- this time, explicitly mentioning Rose - remains superfluous and insultingly stupid. It's terrible. It's a terrible episode. And I loved it. Because, well, I didn't expect anything other than this second part of the two-parter to anything more than terribly boring, so I was able to roll with all the hackneyed, nonsensical poo poo behind a layer of irony. Quickly, I bathed in and outright enjoyed the horrible poo poo I was watching; especially with Oxxidation's slow-building rage to add a layer of schadenfreude to the whole thing. You know what's better than liking something because it's bad? Liking something because it's bad while the person right next to you is hating it, especially when you're mocking and reveling in the badness the entire time. It's "So bad its good" under the perfect set of circumstances, and it made for one hell of a hilarious hour of television. Which is basically my reaction as a whole to the episode- It's bad. It's nonsense. You shouldn't watch it, under any circumstances. Just skip this episode, and the one before it, if you care at all about quality. But, if the grades I give an episode are at all reflective of my time spent enjoying an episode of Who, and the level of enjoyment I attained from watching it, well then this was some incredible poo poo. And because of that, this episode gets an "A". Because watching this and laughing my rear end off as Oxx freaked out- probably my best televistic experience this year. Grade: A Random Thoughts:
NieR Occomata fucked around with this message at 04:37 on Sep 18, 2014 |
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Sep 18, 2014 04:29
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Doctor Who "Evolution of the Daleks" Series 3, Episode 5 Okay, Occupation gave this an A. Great. Cool. Awesome. Lovin' it! Gonna pretend that didn't happen and just get on with things. I'm hard on the showrunners (well, showrunner, singular, presently) of Doctor Who, but I rarely pick on the individual writers - partly because I don't know how much their scripts are rearranged by the showrunners and partly because, well, I'm sure most of them are doing the best they can, regardless of the final product. That also applies to Helen Raynor, the hapless writer of this two-parter. I don't doubt that she put these episodes together with the best of intentions and honestly tried to create a decent product, and I can sympathize with her reaction upon stumbling into the shrieking Sarlacc pit that is Internet criticism; no one deserves full-blast exposure to that noise, except for maybe whoever was responsible for running off Eccleston. But man, sympathy or not, these episodes were horrid. I'm rarely interested in behind-the-scenes commentary for things, but I have to wonder if anyone on-set was cognizant of just how incoherent these scripts were when they tried to act them out. Tennant cranks up the ham to near-lethal levels as if to compensate for the lack of proper direction and every other character just seems lost, even the Daleks, who forlornly swivel their eyestalks hither and thither as if looking for a cue card for a better episode. Every plot twist hinges upon every character being an idiot, every attempt at an emotional moment is undercut by the accents or the terrible pig prosthetics, the characters are forgettable, the editing eye-watering, the sets cheap, the villains (which are loving Daleks!) dull and inconsistent. I didn't enjoy a single second of this entire 90 minutes, which kind of unsettles me because even I don't like to waste that much of my time on something I abjectly hate. I don't "ironically like" things. While I may hide my emotions behind the reinforced concrete of contempt, the electric fence of sarcasm, and the single, disconcertingly-ogling clown of academia, everything that comes back out of that fortress tends to be sincere. "So bad it's good" doesn't really exist in my lexicon; if I like something, it's because there's some element of it I find legitimately clever, impactful, or well-executed, not because it's such an utter disaster that I want to keep it in a glass jar and file it in some greater catalog of Things The Human Race Has Bungled. Occupation might get a kick out of this stuff, but I don't. He might also get a kick out of my unhappiness at exposure to this stuff, and I can't really fault him for that because turnabout is fair play, but if I gave out grades this two-parter would be a solid F all around, accompanied possibly by that cute Negative Man emoticon. There's really not a whole lot I can say about "Evolution of the Daleks," because the plot-recapping is left to Occ and there's no thematic thread or greater context I can contribute beyond just pointing to every single solitary minute of every single event in the last two episodes and going "what the gently caress was that!?" It's a real crime that the Cult of Skaro, a pretty interesting concept all told, got used up here, because one of them turned into a phallic-headed wiseguy (and died), two of the others were exploded by the most bored-sounding zombies this side of Warm Bodies, and the last teleported away and was turned into a blatant plot hook. There's something almost pathetically slapdash about how events proceed in this episode (one real howler is when the Doctor dropped his screwdriver only for Martha to scoop it back up again on her offscreen climb up the god damned Empire State Building), as though Raynor had written herself into a corner and was left to desperately lurch at any connection, no matter how flimsy, from one crisis to another until she filled out the 45 minutes - but again, I'm not in the writers' heads and I can't say for certain where things went wrong. All I know is that they did go wrong, and we, the humble viewers, are left to deal with the consequences. One more noteworthy scene - as Occ showed in those chatlog snippets, I nearly cracked down the middle when Andrew Garfield capped off the episode by portraying the Hoovervilles (and for gently caress's sake, they were "Hoovervilles," plural, there wasn't just one, it drove me nuts how everyone kept referring to it as some singular location) as some heartwarming bastion of acceptance, in effect trying to spin a saccharine, fuzzy ending out of the Great god drat loving Depression. That degree of tone-deafness isn't just embarrassing, it's downright harmful - you can't just whitewash some of the most tragic periods of history so that your asinine pig-squid-spaceman story can end on a high note. Compare to "The Doctor Dances," where the Blitz was ever-present for the whole story and the uplifting ending worked because it acknowledged, and opposed, the horror of the historical events in question; "Evolution of the Daleks" flat-out tries to pretend the Great Depression doesn't exist unless it's needed for a quick one-liner, which just emphasized the feverish, sloppy nature of the story in general. Doctor Who is bad, but it's very rarely bad like this. Normally it's an uproarious, campy brand of ineptitude that's at least peppered with a bit of witty banter here and there to maintain audience interest. The last two episodes lacked even that, due to the majority of the cast speaking in forced faux-American accents. Not only do they fail to entertain, ironically or otherwise, they insult the intelligence and erode the spirit, and I'm super-happy to see the back end of them. Helen Raynor will pen another two-parter later in the series that I've mostly forgotten, but I know for a drat fact that it can't be any worse than the Dalek Dickhead Glower Power Hour (featuring Laszlo & The Porkettes). Oxxidation fucked around with this message at 04:44 on Sep 18, 2014 |
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Sep 18, 2014 04:37
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"Let's live in this slum and slowly die because we can't even afford food." "Okay, but only if we can buy and somehow maintain a large number of firearms as well." "Seems reasonable."
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Sep 18, 2014 04:38
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I find it disappointing yet strangely reassuring that neither of you two have mentioned that in order to create ol' dildohead A DALEK SHOVES A GROWN MAN INTO ITS rear end in a top hat.
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Sep 18, 2014 04:44
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...I... I cannot fathom giving this episode an A, even with your reasoning. Someone mail this review, with just the grade and all the words removed, to Helen Raynor.
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Sep 18, 2014 04:47
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Bicyclops posted:...I... I cannot fathom giving this episode an A, even with your reasoning. She'd probably assume we were taking the piss. Besides, she's been through enough 
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Sep 18, 2014 04:49
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mind the walrus posted:I find it disappointing yet strangely reassuring that neither of you two have mentioned that in order to create ol' dildohead A DALEK SHOVES A GROWN MAN INTO ITS rear end in a top hat. quote:Oxxi: COME HERE AND GIVE PA-PA DA-LEK A HUUUUUUUUUUUG That was about all the comment it received and it doesn't deserve any more.
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Sep 18, 2014 04:55
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Jerusalem posted:"Let's live in this slum and slowly die because we can't even afford food."
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Sep 18, 2014 04:58
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I really liked the Cult of Skaro due to how cool they were in Doomsday, it's a real shame that most of them had to die in such a bad episode.
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Sep 18, 2014 05:17
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Yo Oxx was this or last ep the mythical third skipped episode?
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Sep 18, 2014 05:42
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I think he turned the last episode off and then this one was totally new to him
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Sep 18, 2014 09:04
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This show subscribes to the stereotype that every single American is always carrying a gun, not just in this episode but in other ones as well
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Sep 18, 2014 13:50
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Lycus posted:America! Woooooo! *fires gun in the air* Let's go visit the White House inside the Empire State Building, it's just the left of the Old West!
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Sep 18, 2014 14:09
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This thread is amazing. I just realized I'm going to have to watch along when you get to the Series 4 specials, since I've never seen them except maybe the first one? Ah well, any reason to watch more Who is never bad. Although now my boyfriend wants me to watch the Aztecs. Yech.
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Sep 18, 2014 14:15
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Zaggitz posted:Yo Oxx was this or last ep the mythical third skipped episode? This was it. I've seen the rest up to a certain point in Season 7 where I just kind of wandered off from the show. No statement on its quality, I just didn't have the time for TV-binging anymore.
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Sep 18, 2014 14:23
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Arivia posted:This thread is amazing. I just realized I'm going to have to watch along when you get to the Series 4 specials, since I've never seen them except maybe the first one? Ah well, any reason to watch more Who is never bad. Although now my boyfriend wants me to watch the Aztecs. Yech. The Aztecs is a gem in Doctor Who history (or as I like to call it, Whostory) second only to a number of audio plays such as Spare Parts and Jubilee. 
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Sep 18, 2014 16:43
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Evil Sagan posted:The Aztecs is a gem in Doctor Who history (or as I like to call it, Whostory) second only to a number of audio plays such as Spare Parts and Jubilee. It's not really one of my favorites, but it definitely establishes the formula for most of the classic historicals.
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Sep 18, 2014 16:49
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TWO LEGS GOOD, FOUR LEGS BLAM
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Sep 18, 2014 17:18
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DoctorWhat posted:OOOH OOH OOH  Jerusalem posted:"Let's live in this slum and slowly die because we can't even afford food."
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Sep 18, 2014 18:20
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Really one of the things this episode annoyed me with is that the Cult of Skaro were pretty interesting, and here they are unceremoniously killed off or sent away as a result of the most stupid plan ever. They were good fun in Doomsday, and here they were just rubbish.Irony Be My Shield posted:I really liked the Cult of Skaro due to how cool they were in Doomsday, it's a real shame that most of them had to die in such a bad episode. This, basically. Sec was my favourite Dalek design. (well, second to Special Weapons Dalek, I love that goofy fucker) Uh, when he was still in his shell I mean. And thank you to the Doctor Who wiki for supplying me with this ridiculous sentence explaining why he looked different. I was wondering why he had his own special paintjob. quote:He was then sent to the weapons research area for upgrades, where he was re-encased in Metalert, a type of Dalekanium that was defensively superior to standard Dalekanium. Sci-fi gibberish is the best gibberish.
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Sep 18, 2014 18:27
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Arivia posted:Although now my boyfriend wants me to watch the Aztecs. Yech. The Aztecs is great, if a little melodramatic (which may be part of the reason it is so great!).
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Sep 18, 2014 22:20
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Arivia posted:Although now my boyfriend wants me to watch the Aztecs. Yech. Your boyfriend is clearly out of your league.
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Sep 18, 2014 22:22
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Jerusalem posted:The Aztecs is great, if a little melodramatic (which may be part of the reason it is so great!). The villain is identical to the priest from Manos, and I love it.
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Sep 19, 2014 00:14
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Jurgan posted:The villain is identical to the priest from Manos, and I love it. He takes a very theatrical approach to the role which I love, he's basically an incredibly hammy Richard the Third wearing Aztec costuming.
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Sep 19, 2014 00:24
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It's weird how closely Occ's feelings towards Who matched mine as I went through it - I hated it at first, forced to watch it by allegedly well-meaning friends, stockholm syndrome, and then blowslab happened. I guess I don't have much to add, except... Hang in there, dude, 
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Sep 19, 2014 01:49
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When I started binge-ing this show earlier this year I tried to go back and watch that Aztecs stuff from the original run but I was really high and the Aztec guy's whole "YOU-UM STRANGER ME-UM AZTEC CHIEF YOU-UM OUR PRISONER" poo poo I almost choked from laughing and had to shut it off.
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Sep 19, 2014 03:12
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Toxxupation posted:it's so nonsensical that there's a specific disregard for basic story structure This is the episode in which the Daleks try to harness the power of a solar flare, in the middle of the night.
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Sep 19, 2014 22:49
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qntm posted:This is the episode in which the Daleks try to harness the power of a sYes, because the sun ttolar flare, in the middle of the night. Yes, because the sun turns out like a light at night 
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Sep 19, 2014 23:25
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