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chaosbreather posted:Oh and there's a weird predestination paradox with the doctor's appearance, I guess he now gets to choose what he looks like which is weird because he always seemed surprised by it before. Ok cool, and the paradox doesn't matter it's a time travel show, who cares about time travel. People are acting like this is a throw away line but it's part of a bigger mystery that is on-going. Why does the Doctor look like that forgettable Roman dude and that child killer politician?
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Aug 24, 2014 13:47
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"It's times like this I miss Amy"
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Aug 24, 2014 13:53
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PriorMarcus posted:People are acting like this is a throw away line but it's part of a bigger mystery that is on-going. Why does the Doctor look like that forgettable Roman dude and that child killer politician? Well Tom Baker at the end of the 50th basically stated that Time Lords can choose their faces to some extent by saying that the Doctor might find himself revisiting some old favorites in the future. The time-travelling clockwork robots make maybe a bit more sense if you just think that they go into periods of dormancy and wake up every once in a while to replace parts to make sure they keep running. Also, I almost liked the moment where the Doctor realizes what he's saying with the broom metaphor but then they beat you over the head with it by reflecting him on the plate too. Just let a man act dammit 
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Aug 24, 2014 14:08
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Genetic Toaster posted:We seem to be ignoring the most heinous poo poo this episode pulled, and that is casting Bronn as a character with no dialogue. Jerome Flynn. Mr Beens posted:What? He wasn't in the episode at all.  I think hes referring to this guy who has a passing resembelence to him. I thought the same thing for a second. HardKase fucked around with this message at 14:28 on Aug 24, 2014 |
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Aug 24, 2014 14:26
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Clipperton posted:And all the cat-piss "Whovians" are up in arms about...something...so you know it was good. Back in the late Tennent era I would always be shocked when I would finish an episode, come to the thread thrilled and ready to discuss how awesome the episode was, and everyone was panning it. This has continued constantly for the last half decade (I have never seen an episode of doctor who live I didn't enjoy) so it doesn't break my heart like it used to. It even pushed me into saying some dramatic things about live theater. As for deep breath, I enjoyed it and wouldn't change a thing.
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Aug 24, 2014 14:27
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MattD1zzl3 posted:Back in the late Tennent era I would always be shocked when I would finish an episode, come to the thread thrilled and ready to discuss how awesome the episode was, and everyone was panning it. This has continued constantly for the last half decade (I have never seen an episode of doctor who live I didn't enjoy) so it doesn't break my heart like it used to. It even pushed me into saying some dramatic things about live theater. I have gone in hard on some of the recent episodes but I thought Nightmare in Silver was awesome and genuinely enjoyed (gasp) The Doctor, The Widow and The Wardrobe. I took on board why people didn't like Nightmare but for me Matt Smith's performance easily carried it through, and the latter was at Christmas so I didn't really care. During RTD's time I found I generally agreed with the bulk of reactions on here to series high/lowlights but it's definitely less predictable now how people will react. I think people are less forgiving of Moffat because he's done better, whereas you knew exactly where you stood with RTD, infuriatingly.
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Aug 24, 2014 14:38
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Also, I thought it was dumb that the "new" console room is just the old one shot with a wider lens and some shelves added in.
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Aug 24, 2014 14:41
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chaosbreather posted:
The show has been consistently inconsistent about how much control a Time Lord has over there new appearance. Usually, there's no indication that they have any control, but then there are also counter-examples like Two being presented with several choices by the Time Lords, or Romana trying on different faces as if they were outfits before settling on a face she knew from a previous adventure (sounds familiar). That said, I don't think this episode was inconsistent with most regenerations. Any control he had over the new face seemed to be completely subconscious. He even said he doesn't know where the faces come from. His subconscious self is trying to tell his conscious self something, and he doesn't know what it is yet. I think it's perfectly believable that he's always had some amount of control subconsciously without him ever realizing it most of the time. As for the episode itself, I enjoyed it but didn't love it when I saw it at the New York event last week. Now after seeing it again, I realize that the big party atmosphere of seeing it at a big fan event must have predisposed me to liking it, because that was just not very good. It picked up for me once The Doctor seemed to lose his regeneration amnesia or whatever, and I think Capaldi and Coleman were great together, but the episode itself was still mediocre at best. MattD1zzl3 posted:Back in the late Tennent era I would always be shocked when I would finish an episode, come to the thread thrilled and ready to discuss how awesome the episode was, and everyone was panning it. This has continued constantly for the last half decade (I have never seen an episode of doctor who live I didn't enjoy) so it doesn't break my heart like it used to. It even pushed me into saying some dramatic things about live theater. This is generally me too, but sometimes on a second viewing I enjoy it a lot less, as was the case here. Maybe the lesson is that I should only watch things once. And finally, as for the opening titles, I could take or leave the visuals, but I love the new version of the theme music. My only complaint is they still don't include the middle eight.
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Aug 24, 2014 14:43
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In a surprise burst of positivity, here's a quick thing about why I really liked Deep Breath.
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Aug 24, 2014 14:48
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Psybro posted:During RTD's time I found I generally agreed with the bulk of reactions on here to series high/lowlights but it's definitely less predictable now how people will react. I think people are less forgiving of Moffat because he's done better, whereas you knew exactly where you stood with RTD, infuriatingly. Well, that's the thing; people were pretty hard on RTD from season two onwards and there was a general expectation that it'd be lots better when Moffat took over, on the strength of his episodes, and then he did, and it was. Leaving aside his demonstrated prickishness, which tends to make him a hard guy to defend even when he's doing well, the further he moves away from it, the more season five (and even his episodes under RTD) look like he just caught lightning in a bottle and he's been chasing the dragon ever since to diminishing returns (and I say this having enjoyed some episodes he's done that other people didn't like very much). There's no significant discrepancy in my own opinions of Davies and Moffat as writers and showrunners. I hold them in roughly equal regard, so perhaps I'm not well-placed to judge. I try to be even-handed about it. I don't know if there's necessarily been a full-on, wholesale revision of opinion; certainly, I think RTD is perceived more favourably now there's a point of comparison than he was when he was actually running the show, and a lot of the goodwill Moffat earned from his standalones and season five has dried up over the past three or four years, but maybe he'll be reviewed more charitably once he's gone and his successor, whoever that may be, is irretrievably ruining everything forever.  Neither's as good as, say, Letts, Dicks, Hulke, Holmes or Hinchcliffe, but I don't think either is as bad as JNT at his worst, Levine in general, Pip and Jane, or Eric Saward.
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Aug 24, 2014 14:57
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Jerusalem posted:Deep Breath gifs This was the ONE slapstick moment that made me literally laugh out loud.
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Aug 24, 2014 15:03
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I kind of hope Clara being twatted in the face by something is this series' arc, although that might be a bit harsh.
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Aug 24, 2014 15:05
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Psybro posted:I kind of hope Clara being twatted in the face by something is this series' arc, although that might be a bit harsh. No, it's 12 constantly calling her ugly and fat. But no really, it is.
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Aug 24, 2014 15:08
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So Clara has become Meg?
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Aug 24, 2014 15:32
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The best thing Strax ever did was hit Clara in the face with a newspaper.
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Aug 24, 2014 15:32
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Strax is bad and so are Jenny and vashtra, but Peter Capaldi is very very good
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Aug 24, 2014 15:37
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CobiWann posted:Normally, he's fine-to-middling for me, but tonight (I haven't seen the "post-episode" show yet), I just found him obnoxious. Gatiss was the best part of the post-show and I wish more time had been spent talking to him. Especially his story about inviting Capaldi to visit the set of Adventures in Space and Time before being cast as the Doctor.
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Aug 24, 2014 16:04
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howe_sam posted:Gatiss was the best part of the post-show and I wish more time had been spent talking to him. Especially his story about inviting Capaldi to visit the set of Adventures in Space and Time before being cast as the Doctor. Mark Gatiss is great and apparently he put his foot down and refused to even discuss a Sherlock/Doctor Who crossover episode like Moffat kinda wants. (To Moffat's credit (or not, as the case may be) he does realize such a thing would be... not good.)
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Aug 24, 2014 16:15
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Shugojin posted:Mark Gatiss is great and apparently he put his foot down and refused to even discuss a Sherlock/Doctor Who crossover episode like Moffat kinda wants. (To Moffat's credit (or not, as the case may be) he does realize such a thing would be... not good.) Its's funny because Moffat's Sherlock is so obviously the Doctor with a different name. Also this episode wasn't the best but y'all keep forgetting this is not a grown ups show, the goofy poo poo appeals to a lot of their audience. Kids love Strax!
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Aug 24, 2014 16:22
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Pwnstar posted:Its's funny because Moffat's Sherlock is so obviously the Doctor with a different name. Yeah he is, that's basically why Moffat admits it would suck. Not in those exact words but yeah. (I think Sherlock is better mostly because it's easier to do a tight story arc when you only make 3 episodes every 2 years)
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Aug 24, 2014 16:26
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Hey, J-Ru, would you mind if I used one of your gifs for an episode review?
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Aug 24, 2014 16:30
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PriorMarcus posted:Tennants first episode for my ratings comparison was New Earth and Smith's first episode aired in April. It's Autumn now, not summer. The middle of August is definitely summer, what are you on
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Aug 24, 2014 16:35
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Thoughts on strax: I thought Sontarans breathe via a hole in the back of their neck, and this would make "not breathing" as humans understand it very easy. I really had an emotional twinge at the moment when Strax realized he cant hold his breath anymore, and turns his blaster rifle to his own head to kill himself and save his friends. Really selfless behavior and well written considering a warrior clone would do so without a second thought to prevent a tactical defeat.
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Aug 24, 2014 16:38
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Metal Loaf posted:Neither's as good as, say, Letts, Dicks, Hulke, Holmes or Hinchcliffe, but I don't think either is as bad as JNT at his worst, Levine in general, Pip and Jane, or Eric Saward. See, it can be tricky mix up writers and producers like that, and says a lot for the original separation of powers and the way different styles fit different eras. JNT oversaw some of the most ambitious eras of Doctor Who as well as some of the laziest (or failed to oversee, given the stories of him loving around at conventions in the US when there was work to be done). Season 21 (Saward/JNT) was a fascinating experiment: stories way, way beyond the show's limited capabilities. I hold a deep love for Season 22, in that Saward's paranoia and pessimism lets Davison's Doctor stand out as the one sane voice. His inability to write for a cynical Doctor, on the other hand, doomed Colin Baker's run from the outset. YMMV. I've got to go to work, so I won't start unpacking the Cartmel era (also JNT, and also much loved). But I guess the takeaway is that there are always going to be things that work and that things that don't, usually from the same teams. That's the nature of the beast, and the reason we'll have fun arguing about it until the heat death of the universe. Because it is fun. Really. That's why we're here.
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Aug 24, 2014 16:48
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Steve2911 posted:Not watched it since before Amy left ( I feel like this post could have been written by myself except I'll definitely keep watching for at least a little while. I was never a Smith fan (though he was infinitely better than the guy he replaced) so hopefully having a Doctor I like will make up for everything else.
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Aug 24, 2014 16:52
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), but thought I'd pop in for Capaldi and see how it is.
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Okay, caught the episode. It was pretty bad, but since regeneration stories are kind of a 50/50 anyway, I still have a positive outlook on the upcoming series. Some things that I thought were good: - Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman turned in really good performances. - The scene with the Doctor and Clara in the restaurant was really good. It was the first time Capaldi's Doctor was kind of allowed to be himself, instead of a post regeneration mess, and the actors seem to work great together. One might argue even better than the chemistry Jenna Coleman had with Matt Smith. - The scene where Capaldi's Doctor confronts and either talks the bad guy into suicide or kills him. I liked the tone of the scene, and the ambiguity. Also, the Doctor's entire speech about the bad guy mirroring his own experience. - Matt Smith's cameo was unexpected and great. However... - Matt Smith's cameo also was terrible, as well as Clara's whole initial reaction to the regeneration, because Clara is the one person who should know about and be okay with regeneration since she has seen every version of the Doctor that there is and knows that he doesn't always look young. The fact that this part of her character was totally forgotten just to conveniently reassure new fans of the show who haven't seen a Doctor with gray hair yet strikes me as fairly stupid. And since that is also Matt Smith's entire reason for being there, it kind of undercut his cameo. These things might have worked if the companion was almost anyone other than Clara. I also thought these things were bad: - Moffat reusing plot points again, at least he hung a lantern on it this time. Maybe he's starting to realize he needs new ideas. - Madame Vashta, Jenny, and Strax need to go away. At this point, they are the recurring characters that aggravate me most in Doctor Who, a title previously held by Sabalom Glitz and that stupid worm guy from Vengeance on Varos. - Excessive slapstick post regeneration. - A dinosaur in the Thames. - I'm not sure how I feel about yet another over-arching series long plot. We'll see if it turns out to be good. But I wish that we'd just have a series that wasn't burdened by it. A lot of the time, great stories have over-arching plot shoehorned into them at the last second, and when the over-arching plot isn't very good it really drags everything else down with it. In the days of RTD, this stuff was just limited to an innocuous (or not if you were paying attention for it) code word, but under Moffat, they've kind of become more noticeable, which can make them more forced.
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Aug 24, 2014 16:54
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Favorite part of this episode was when the Doctor loving abandoned Clara and took his sonic with him. "I might need it." Brutal.
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Aug 24, 2014 16:56
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At the end, the Doctor says something to Clara about the woman who wants them to be together- the newspaper clipping was one of the clues, and then he says something about the "computer..." Can someone refresh my memory as to what the computer reference is to?
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Aug 24, 2014 16:57
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Jsor posted:So it's plausible that this has something to do with The Rani. The Master was also involved in that story, so it could be him too (the noted Missy=Mistress=Master connection), or something weird like the Master and the Rani's kid or they got hybridized by timestream nonsense or whatever else. Either way, "the T-Rex was effected by the Rani's TARDIS" would be one explanation for why it's so huge. I have to admit, the Rani was the very first thing I thought of. If you watch, she puts her hands on her hips in a very much "gently caress you I'm sexy" pose, and:  Also, O'Mara really wanted to do a Big Finish episode before she passed. Maybe this is a way of honoring her memory? I dunno, it seems a lot more obvious than Moffat would do but maybe that's what he wants us to think 
Chokes McGee fucked around with this message at 17:06 on Aug 24, 2014 |
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Aug 24, 2014 17:04
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Are Vastra and Jenny supposed to be married?
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Aug 24, 2014 17:16
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MattD1zzl3 posted:I thought Sontarans breathe via a hole in the back of their neck, and this would make "not breathing" as humans understand it very easy. I think they eat and reproduce through that. After The War posted:See, it can be tricky mix up writers and producers like that, and says a lot for the original separation of powers and the way different styles fit different eras. JNT oversaw some of the most ambitious eras of Doctor Who as well as some of the laziest (or failed to oversee, given the stories of him loving around at conventions in the US when there was work to be done). Season 21 (Saward/JNT) was a fascinating experiment: stories way, way beyond the show's limited capabilities. I hold a deep love for Season 22, in that Saward's paranoia and pessimism lets Davison's Doctor stand out as the one sane voice. His inability to write for a cynical Doctor, on the other hand, doomed Colin Baker's run from the outset. YMMV. All fair points. I have to admit, I've very mixed feelings about the JNT/Saward era. Some of those stories were my absolute favourites when I was 11 or 12 (ten years ago, if somebody had asked me what my favourite story was, it would've been "Earthshock") and getting into the series through the BBC DVDs, but I think I've probably experienced a personal backlash against a lot of them in the interim. I suppose it's prejudiced me. Wheat Loaf fucked around with this message at 17:21 on Aug 24, 2014 |
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Aug 24, 2014 17:18
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Irish Joe posted:Are Vastra and Jenny supposed to be married? I think you just might be on to something! 
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Aug 24, 2014 17:19
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Irish Joe posted:Are Vastra and Jenny supposed to be married? They are a lesbian couple. And one of them is a green alien! The Doctor Who revival show has actually been very progressive from the start.
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Aug 24, 2014 17:21
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Leelee posted:At the end, the Doctor says something to Clara about the woman who wants them to be together- the newspaper clipping was one of the clues, and then he says something about the "computer..." The Bells of St John: quote:The Doctor (Matt Smith) has retreated to a monastery in Cumbria in the year 1207 to contemplate the mystery of Clara Oswin Oswald (Jenna-Louise Coleman), a woman he has met twice previously but who died both times. The monks disturb him one day to tell him that "the bells of Saint John" are ringing. The Doctor goes to his TARDIS and finds its exterior phone ringing. On the other end is Clara, whom the Doctor initially does not recognise. She is calling for help with her computer, as she cannot connect to the Internet. When Clara uses the phrase "Run, you clever boy, and remember" as a mnemonic for her password, the Doctor realises who she is. He sets off to meet her in person.
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Aug 24, 2014 17:21
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You know who I'm developing a seething hatred for? Murray goddamn Gold. I'm one of those who watched the workprints with the temp music, and the choices there usually spot on, especially during the phone call to Eleven. The whole scene was played very somber, even when Clara finally comes around to Twelve. It worked really, really well. ...Cue Murray making GBS threads it up with happy hopeful crap with wacky chromatic melodies. I'm watching the Listen workprint now, and I'm already imagining the ways the opening scene is going to be stripped of any mood when he gets his hands on it. I have strong emotions about music.
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Aug 24, 2014 17:24
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MrL_JaKiri posted:The Bells of St John: She also later said that she got the number from "a woman in a shop", who was presumably the same one who placed the ad, who I would assume is Missy.
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Aug 24, 2014 17:25
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PriorMarcus posted:Tennants first episode for my ratings comparison was New Earth and Smith's first episode aired in April. It's Autumn now, not summer. I don't know what crazy world you live in, but autumn doesn't start til September 23rd. It's currently 91 degrees F where I live, it's still very much summer. chaosbreather posted:Rambling babble Source your quotes please.
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Aug 24, 2014 17:56
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Cojawfee posted:I don't know what crazy world you live in, but autumn doesn't start til September 23rd. It's currently 91 degrees F where I live, it's still very much summer. Stop sperging about dates. Kids go back to school tomorrow and Labor Day is a week away. Summer is, for all intents and purposes, over.
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Aug 24, 2014 18:03
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Irish Joe posted:Stop sperging about dates. Kids go back to school tomorrow and Labor Day is a week away. Summer is, for all intents and purposes, over. Another week here, in England, where Doctor Who is transmitted for the ratings we're talking about. We also don't have Labo
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Aug 24, 2014 18:09
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MrL_JaKiri posted:Another week here, in England, where Doctor Who is transmitted for the ratings we're talking about. We also don't have Labo Also in the half of American schools that aren't barbarians, school doesn't start until the day after Labor Day anyway 
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Aug 24, 2014 18:11
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