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NowonSA
Jul 19, 2013

I am the sexiest poster in the world!
I'd be kind of behind the idea that the "monsters" are so good at hiding that they can't turn it off. Perhaps an incredible disguise ability combined with a psychological NEED to not be seen or acknowledged. So they're able to throw "Listen" on the board as a way to get him on their trail. Meanwhile, the ones at the end of the universe are able to break past their psychological coding because they're out of time, and they need to get their message to the Doctor.

It's also worth noting that the video feed goes out and there's a pause between when we see the Doctor staring at the door and the air shell being breached. It'd be classic moffat to have him receive the message then, and just not tell anybody about it.

This theory doesn't explain why the cloister bell alarm would be going off, or why the creature would seemingly be trying to enter the TARDIS. Maybe the message didn't get fully transmitted?

I don't know, whenever cool ambiguous things have showed up in Moffat's Who he's always explained them later (Room 11 holding the Doctor's greatest fear, for instance), so I wouldn't be at all surprised to see the Doctor push out half-face and the creatures either be explicitly shown meeting with the Doctor on the last planet or shown to not exist. As it is right now both of those are in limbo, and are open to either interpretation.

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Cruel Rose
May 27, 2010

saaave gotham~
come on~
DO IT, BATMAN
FUCKING BATMAN I FUCKING HATE YOU

DoctorWhat posted:

Yeah, probably a Time Warrior reference, but the thing under the covers LOOKED like a Sontaran to me...

It's a really elaborate prank by Strax.

"IGNORE MY PRESENCE, HUMAN SCUM."

DoctorWhat
Nov 18, 2011

A little privacy, please?

Cruel Rose posted:

It's a really elaborate prank by Strax.

"IGNORE MY PRESENCE, HUMAN SCUM."

It's actually turned out to be a reference to some of Four's first words... but it could ALSO be true.

Spatula City
Oct 21, 2010

LET ME EXPLAIN TO YOU WHY YOU ARE WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING
This was a loving great episode. I was hoping we'd eventually get an episode where there wasn't actually a monster, and here it is!
I guess I understand some people being angry about Clara meeting potentially the Doctor as a child, because you love the character so much that you're hyperprotective of anything that could remotely be perceived to violate how you see him.

Whatever. This is a great episode, the third good one of the season, and probably easily going to jump on my top ten. In my book the season's batting 3.5/4.

Khanstant
Apr 5, 2007

Cliff Racer posted:

Why do all these modern companions have to be shown as being so loving special. Rose, Clara, even Amy and Rory. Can't we just have a bunch of average guys/girls with no special characteristics for once?

Why would the Doctor pick out some arbitrary "normal" person as a companion? I mean, I'd be interested in seeing what some overweight, balding, office drone with no sense of humour or adventure would do as a companion, but it's fairly obvious why they always have someone exceptional be a character instead of the opposite.

Cliff Racer posted:

Oh, and I was never really scared for anyone's safety (or even weirded out by the monsters) like I was in Blink.


Is Blink that episode with the dumbass statue monsters? What is it about those monsters that get people all riled up. I'm trying to find a way to make fun of the stupidity of them without acknowledging the stupidity of the whole enterprise. In any case is there something I'm missing about why that episode is so popular or did I just miss out on formative childhood experiences involving fear of sculpture.

Kilo147
Apr 14, 2007

You remind me of the boss
What boss?
The boss with the power
What power?
The power of voodoo
Who-doo?
You do.
Do what?
Remind me of the Boss.

I thought the cloister bell went off because the Doctor was about to be vented into space...

computer parts
Nov 18, 2010

PLEASE CLAP

Khanstant posted:


Is Blink that episode with the dumbass statue monsters? What is it about those monsters that get people all riled up. I'm trying to find a way to make fun of the stupidity of them without acknowledging the stupidity of the whole enterprise. In any case is there something I'm missing about why that episode is so popular or did I just miss out on formative childhood experiences involving fear of sculpture.

Statues look creepy, and it's a non-traditional episode (i.e., the Doctor is hardly in it) so it's by default memorable.

Jerusalem
May 20, 2004

Would you be my new best friends?

7thBatallion posted:

I thought the cloister bell went off because the Doctor was about to be vented into space...

The Doctor was back inside the TARDIS (but unconscious) when the Cloister Bell began to go off.

To be fair, it's entirely possible the universe was about to crunch down to a singularity.

Slowpoke!
Feb 12, 2008

ANIME IS FOR ADULTS
Pretty good episode. I can see why some people would be upset about Clara getting woven even deeper into the Doctor's timeline, though.


Khanstant posted:

Why would the Doctor pick out some arbitrary "normal" person as a companion? I mean, I'd be interested in seeing what some overweight, balding, office drone with no sense of humour or adventure would do as a companion, but it's fairly obvious why they always have someone exceptional be a character instead of the opposite.

I get that in the course of being the Doctor's companion they are presenting with a lot more opportunities to be exceptional and act heroically, but he does have a point. I'm pretty sure all of them were, at some point, referred to as the most important person in the universe by the Doctor. Martha, the one who ends up being the most normal of the bunch, still ends up traveling the world on her own to save the Doctor and ends up being a Torchwood operative.

Wolfechu
May 2, 2009

All the world's a stage I'm going through


Re: "Doctor's Childhood" scene, I personally feel that if you're going to have a story in which the Doctor is obsessing about this dream of someone grabbing your ankles, you end up kinda needing a scene like that to show where the obsession is coming from.

Why he's never mentioned it in the last 2,000 years is another question. Still, I liked this episode a lot.

Celery Jello
Mar 21, 2005
Slippery Tilde

Wolfechu posted:

Re: "Doctor's Childhood" scene, I personally feel that if you're going to have a story in which the Doctor is obsessing about this dream of someone grabbing your ankles, you end up kinda needing a scene like that to show where the obsession is coming from.

Why he's never mentioned it in the last 2,000 years is another question. Still, I liked this episode a lot.

Yeah, up until then is a completely fine thing to do, especially with the recurring theme this season of people trying to prevent/fix something and actually creating a problem instead. It's nice, tidy causal loop that doesn't feel like a copout.

It's the big long speech where Clara suddenly gets to define arguably the key aspect of the Doctor's personality that ends up feeling like a bit much. I keep waffling on whether or not it's really bad in a larger sense (Clara gets to be super important *again*, etc.) but I keep leaning towards not really. Mechanically, it went on a bit long and crapped up the pacing of what was otherwise a really well-paced episode.

Basically, it was a 9 or 10 before that end part, and I can't figure out how many points the end drags it down.

Small Strange Bird
Sep 22, 2006

Merci, chaton!
Episode after episode of "the Doctor disses Clara but it's okay because he's an alien and just doesn't get that he's insulting her, ha ha!", and none of it with a fraction of the wit and characterisation of Douglas Adams and Tom Baker's "You're a beautiful woman, probably."

So we're now four episodes in (almost five if you count the extended runtime of the first), and I still don't have a handle on who Twelve is. Okay, he's a curmudgeon, but beyond that? After this much time with the previous Doctors their personalities were pretty solidly defined (think of how much Pertwee and Baker had already made the part their own - in terms of screentime, Baker would by now be into 'The Sontaran Experiment'), but Capaldi hasn't been able to stamp his own mark because he's alternating between 'grump' and 'leftover Eleven badinage'.

As for the episode itself, meh. "There was no monster. The Doctor was found alive, well and of normal size...."

DoctorWhat
Nov 18, 2011

A little privacy, please?

Payndz posted:

"There was no monster. The Doctor was found alive, well and of normal size...."

Listen-a-go-go.

Plavski
Feb 1, 2006

I could be a revolutionary

DoctorWhat posted:

Listen-a-go-go.

It's nice to be one of the very few people in this thread to get that reference.

DoctorWhat
Nov 18, 2011

A little privacy, please?

Plavski posted:

It's nice to be one of the very few people in this thread to get that reference.

If I had remembered the quote that you had quoted, I would have posted it sooner.

But I didn't, so I didn't, and I have to be content with merely getting the reference, rather than making it.

Alas, alack.

The_Doctor
Mar 29, 2007

"The entire history of this incarnation is one of temporal orbits, retcons, paradoxes, parallel time lines, reiterations, and divergences. How anyone can make head or tail of all this chaos, I don't know."

WarLocke posted:

e: And you can see his hands during that scene, so he wasn't carrying the chalk absent-mindedly and then dropped it. Something Else was in the TARDIS with him.

He looked at the closed doors for a moment. Nothing can get into the TARDIS, thought the Doctor. Then he realised, Nothing had.

Linear Zoetrope
Nov 28, 2011

A hero must cook
I like to think the TARDIS was just loving with him and wrote "Listen" by itself. Like when it only showed Amy the pictures of the female companions.

SiKboy
Oct 28, 2007

Oh no!😱

Slowpoke! posted:

Pretty good episode. I can see why some people would be upset about Clara getting woven even deeper into the Doctor's timeline, though.


I get that in the course of being the Doctor's companion they are presenting with a lot more opportunities to be exceptional and act heroically, but he does have a point. I'm pretty sure all of them were, at some point, referred to as the most important person in the universe by the Doctor. Martha, the one who ends up being the most normal of the bunch, still ends up traveling the world on her own to save the Doctor and ends up being a Torchwood operative.

The doctor has never met anyone who wasnt important. Thats kind of part of his whole deal.

Ms Boods
Mar 19, 2009

Did you ever wonder where the Romans got bread from? It wasn't from Waitrose!

Plavski posted:

It's nice to be one of the very few people in this thread to get that reference.

At least they didn't snap him in half like a frozen dog.

Also, if they ever get around to remaking Blake's 7, Samuel Anderson as Orson Pink could easily, at least physically, reshaped into Rog Blake.

Linear Zoetrope
Nov 28, 2011

A hero must cook

SiKboy posted:

The doctor has never met anyone who wasnt important. Thats kind of part of his whole deal.

Too bad he never met Jerry.

NowonSA
Jul 19, 2013

I am the sexiest poster in the world!

Jerusalem posted:

The Doctor was back inside the TARDIS (but unconscious) when the Cloister Bell began to go off.

To be fair, it's entirely possible the universe was about to crunch down to a singularity.

Ah, I didn't think about that possibility. It should explain why the Tardis was shaking around too.

The more I think about it, the more I wish they didn't show anything when whatever it was sat on the bed. They could have built up just as much tension, and they wouldn't have to explain why the kid on the bed happened to be wearing a monster costume.

Myrddin_Emrys
Mar 27, 2007

by Hand Knit
Just seen this again. Yes this was brilliant, and this is how I want my Doctor to be. No more silly comedy, no more cheesiness. I think its about time the show 'grew up' a little and become a little more serious.
In this episode, Capaldi played the Doctor I have always wanted to see. None of that previous 3 episodes nonsense, I want this one. I hope he stays.
*Edit* a cameo by the War Doctor too. My favourite Doctor.

SirSamVimes
Jul 21, 2008

~* Challenge *~


You're watching the wrong show if you don't want comedy elements and cheesiness.

So this post actually has a bit of content, I'm going to say I enjoyed the pieces of foreshadowing disguised as jokes. The coffee ~mysteriously disappearing~ and turning out to be the Doctor taking it, much like the mysterious spookiness in this episode was similarly nothing. As well as that, the Doctor looking for Wally in a book where he doesn't exist, just as he was looking for a monster that didn't exist.

Amppelix
Aug 6, 2010

What annoyed me about this episode is that it contained lazy writing crutch #1, people being interrupted just as they're about to say something interesting so as to save the interesting bit for later. And also #2, the unwillingess to share information for no reason other than to satisfy plot requirements. Like, is there any actual reason for Clara to not just come out and say she's dating Pink? Of course there isn't, but Moffat wants to save it for The Finale to package it with a Shocking Revelation. I hope Pink just joins as a companion in like two episodes and we'll be done with this angle.

PriorMarcus
Oct 17, 2008

ASK ME ABOUT BEING ALLERGIC TO POSITIVITY

Amppelix posted:

Like, is there any actual reason for Clara to not just come out and say she's dating Pink?

It's because she's still romantically interested in the Doctor and he is in her. She's being shady about the date to leave the door open for her and the Doctor. He makes remarks about her looks because he's teasing her for attention. The script makes this a lot more clear.

Jerusalem
May 20, 2004

Would you be my new best friends?

PriorMarcus posted:

It's because she's still romantically interested in the Doctor and he is in her.

Actually it's because it is awkward talking about your love life with your goofy old Granddad.

Amppelix
Aug 6, 2010

PriorMarcus posted:

It's because she's still romantically interested in the Doctor and he is in her. She's being shady about the date to leave the door open for her and the Doctor. He makes remarks about her looks because he's teasing her for attention. The script makes this a lot more clear.

Even if any of this were true, she does actually say she's dating, just not who with. Which was my actual problem. Oh no, I can't possibly tell the doctor that I know and in fact see this man every day at work, there's no way that would be relevant information he should know?

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010


Ignore my posts!
I'm aggressively wrong about everything!
This episode was actually surprisingly good for what it was. I was expecting the usual 'Stephen Moffat Horror' fare, with typical childhood fears blown up into an actual threat and all that. And while there's certainly elements of it, they did go in a refreshingly different direction; there's a lot less dealing with the actual threat, and more dealing with the response to it. Which is a great way to approach Moffat's type of horror monsters, since they are very grounded things based in irrational human fears. It's far less about the monster, and far more about how we feel about them. We probably all expected to see the monster sometime around when it left Rupert's room, probably in some kind of jump scare, and I think it was a really strong move to shy away so much from that reveal that there's not even clear proof there was a monster. Personally, I expected it to be the Silence, but I'm happy that it (probably) wasn't.

I think we could've done without the end. It's not too terrible an idea, and they probably did it the best they could, but it ultimately just didn't need to happen. It's minor enough that it doesn't really hurt anything, but, well, the Doctor didn't really need an emotional connection to the barn he used the Moment in, and we didn't need to see the origin of a single line he said in Day of the Doctor. It probably just would've made for a better overall package if we got a less time-travel scene that paints the picture that, sometimes, the Doctor jumps at harmless shadows.

Shard
Jul 30, 2005

Watching these with a group really helps I think. I can understand some of the weaknesses others pointed out, but I had a blast watching it live. A lot of oh poo poo moments.

I'm interested in the Pink family history, because they haven't out and out said that Clara is getting with him, just that his grandparents are time travelers. So I think that comes in later. And he could have gotten that family heirloom from the Doctor later when he becomes a companion.

And just like it did when we found out the ultimate fate of humans in another series, being on the last planet was very depressing for me. Was that supposed to be Utopia?

Cojawfee
May 31, 2006
I think the US is dumb for not using Celsius
People keep forgetting we actually saw the thing under the blanket and it was cg and clearly not human. Then all three just happen to have the same hallucination about something being outside? Yes, the doctor's experience with the dream is explained, but these creatures still exist.

taerfu
Oct 7, 2013
Maybe there is no one creature, but a series of monsters and people just trying to keep out of view. Aliens trying to avoid discovery and time travellers hiding from past versions of themselves and their friends.

I liked the episode overall, wasn't too keen on the end with Clara comforting a young Doctor though.

Pocky In My Pocket
Jan 27, 2005

Giant robots shouldn't fight!






The pre-credits part was really well filmed and my s/o was getting really scared by the bedcovers scene so at least the horror parts were done really well.

I think i'd have preferred the young doctor scenes to have ended with Clara getting him to go back to bed then not having the Clara's Big Emotional Speech bit, 'cos it was too overly labored. But overall I liked it.

Slowpoke!
Feb 12, 2008

ANIME IS FOR ADULTS

Spikeguy posted:

Watching these with a group really helps I think. I can understand some of the weaknesses others pointed out, but I had a blast watching it live. A lot of oh poo poo moments.

I'm interested in the Pink family history, because they haven't out and out said that Clara is getting with him, just that his grandparents are time travelers. So I think that comes in later. And he could have gotten that family heirloom from the Doctor later when he becomes a companion.

And just like it did when we found out the ultimate fate of humans in another series, being on the last planet was very depressing for me. Was that supposed to be Utopia?

The heirloom is Danny Pink's toy soldier that was passed down to his son or grandson (Orson) who takes it with him when he time travels. Orson then gives the toy soldier back to Clara, implying that he knew her, and she gives it to a young Doctor.

So Danny won't need to become a companion just to get it back. He has always had the toy soldier with him. It's heavily implied though that he will find out Clara and the Doctor are time-travelers, both from what Orson said and the fact that well, it's probably going to happen. The Doctor has never been big on keeping his identity a secret. Odds are he'll be a companion for an episode or two at least.

Plavski
Feb 1, 2006

I could be a revolutionary
Based on a previous recommendation, I picked up Deadline. This story is going to stay with me for a long, long time. That's some of the finest writing I think I've ever heard.

Davros1
Jul 19, 2007

You've got to admit, you are kind of implausible



Well, count me among those who thought Orson's name was actually "Awesome", and since it was Moffat, didn't even bat an eye at that.

Gordon Shumway
Jan 21, 2008

That episode was absolutely brilliant. I can't decide if it's the best this series or not (Into the Dalek was fantastic as well), but this was miles above Robot of Sherwood and Deep Breath. A well crafted, creepy atmosphere that got creepier as the episode went on, and while I can understand that people might be upset about seeing the young Doctor, I'm not so bothered because Moffat already broke that barrier with Clara in The Name of the Doctor, and this time it was rather touching (and not as egregious).

Whatever creature they were after during the episode was a really interesting concept. Also this:

Cojawfee posted:

People keep forgetting we actually saw the thing under the blanket and it was cg and clearly not human. Then all three just happen to have the same hallucination about something being outside? Yes, the doctor's experience with the dream is explained, but these creatures still exist.

Also, the entire pre-credits sequence reminded me of a Big Finish audio with the way Capaldi monologued it.

MattD1zzl3
Oct 26, 2007
Probation
Can't post for 4 years!

Cojawfee posted:

People keep forgetting we actually saw the thing under the blanket and it was cg and clearly not human.

I am personally hand waving this away as the imagination of the three of them assuming it's a monster. None of them looked, so how would we (the audience) know what it looked like?

Also, Danny pinks noticing "where is your coat? When you left you were wearing your coat." was a fun reference :)

Overweight Shark
Mar 18, 2009
The Toclafane also started out as just a children's scary story, I wonder if we were meant to read into the Utopia connection. It might be too big of a stretch though.

thexerox123
Aug 17, 2007

MattD1zzl3 posted:

None of them looked, so how would we (the audience) know what it looked like?

Because the camera was pointed in the opposite direction from the way they were looking? It's not uncommon for information to be revealed to the audience that the characters don't know.

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Cojawfee
May 31, 2006
I think the US is dumb for not using Celsius

MattD1zzl3 posted:

I am personally hand waving this away as the imagination of the three of them assuming it's a monster. None of them looked, so how would we (the audience) know what it looked like?

Ever heard of dramatic irony?

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