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umalt posted:I've never cried because of a TV show, movie, or other media. I cried for days at a thing yet to happen so I guess we'll talk about it later.
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Nov 2, 2014 01:04
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These episodes are mad good, yo. For my money, the standout of Donna's time on the show.
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Nov 2, 2014 01:05
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umalt posted:I've never cried because of a TV show, movie, or other media. go watch six feet under
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Nov 2, 2014 01:06
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umalt posted:I've never cried because of a TV show, movie, or other media. I don't cry at things OR feel sad about it. I win, kind of!
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Nov 2, 2014 01:12
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Oxxidation posted:I don't cry at things OR feel sad about it. I win, kind of!  
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Nov 2, 2014 01:14
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Toxxupation posted:Well, I did it, I cried to an episode of Doctor fuckin who It's like a part of watching this show, one episode's gonna hit you right in the kisser. This is a good one to have it happen on.
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Nov 2, 2014 01:18
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Toxxupation posted:go watch six feet under I'll have to check if that's on Amazon Prime, I got free Prime right now.
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Nov 2, 2014 01:19
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Toxxupation posted:go watch six feet under But, like, ALL of it. fatherboxx posted:The only DW episode that made me cry was the bloody Richard Curtis one I'm not gonna lie, I rewatched that episode just this week and it still made me cry.
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Nov 2, 2014 01:25
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Lycus posted:I'll have to check if that's on Amazon Prime, I got free Prime right now. it is I feel like I should write a guide on how to watch SFU, it's a horribly inconsistent show that can enrage and engage within hours and often within episodes themselves The lows on SFU are pretty goddamn low, but the highs are so specifically high that I literally cannot express them because of how deeply they affected me emotionally it's actually a lot like DW, and if you're able to tolerate the specifically uneven quality of DW you should probs watch SFU because it's of a similar qualitative piece in a lot of ways to DW And I need to stress that if you watch it you have to watch all of it. Every single episode of every single season, because the last ten minutes of the season finale are specifically worth watching all of the rest of the show for by itself Like...I mentioned this in a previous review but I ended up crying-like sobbing, snot dribbling down my nose, emotional wreck sobbing- at the final ten minutes of the series finale of SFU it's that fuckin' good but yeah, SFU is a take-it-or-leave-it show, there's a lot of reasons not to watch it but if you do, watch all of it from beginning to end with no skips because of how incredible the finale is and how it only works if you completely understand the characters and how they work as characters also the pilot is REAL FUCKIN BAD, like amazingly horribly bad and not reflective of the show at all
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Nov 2, 2014 01:27
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Toxxupation posted:And I need to stress that if you watch it you have to watch all of it. Every single episode of every single season, because the last ten minutes of the season finale are specifically worth watching all of the rest of the show for by itself He's not joking. I would catch the rest of my family watching SFU over the years but I never got into it myself--not out of any sense of dislike it just wasn't connecting to me--and I managed to catch the final ten minutes of the series finale by coincidence and it just...... felt like the stupidest loving thing I had ever seen in my life. But my family was there sobbing like goddamn babies. So yeah, apparently it really does connect to you if you've suffered through all the years of development, but if you haven't it well it looks like a really bad car commercial.
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Nov 2, 2014 01:32
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Toxxupation posted:it is Reading this, it is irrevocably clear how well built you are for Doctor Who.
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Nov 2, 2014 01:37
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I just watched Miss Evangelista's death again and it made me cry all on its own. My goodness that's powerful. "Help her." "She's dead." "Yeah. Help her."
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Nov 2, 2014 02:29
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Toxxupation posted:Well, I did it, I cried to an episode of Doctor fuckin who I cried a single tear, stoically. I will not characterize the way in which I cried the rest of them.
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Nov 2, 2014 02:58
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Six Feet Under was amazing but sometimes it felt almost like the writers were being farcical playing with how miserable they could make their people. That loving horse.
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Nov 2, 2014 03:45
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Soothing Vapors posted:Wait, what? Who fans don't like River? How can anyone not like River How can anyone like River? She's one of the most obnoxious characters on any show ever. There are plenty of things I don't like but which I can see why other people do like them, but not River Song. I don't know who this character appeals to or why. And that stupid "spoilers" catch phrase is just the worst thing. It's stupid and grating the first time she says it and just gets worse with every repetition.
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Nov 2, 2014 04:28
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River is rad because she's an extremely competent independent woman who is as strong or stronger than the main male character with her own political and personal agency. That's why she's rad. I like her almost as much as I like the first Moffat companion for the same reasons.
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Nov 2, 2014 04:38
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Edit: agreed w/ pinning riverchat
Soothing Vapors fucked around with this message at 04:48 on Nov 2, 2014 |
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Nov 2, 2014 04:45
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I can't really say what I think of River without spoiling future episodes. Let's just say that in her first appearance I really liked her. It's hard to judge this episode on its own merits, without thinking about the payoff to the various stories that start here. On its own, I think this is a very good two-parter, though probably not as good as The Empty Child. The rest of my feelings will have to wait for later.quote:River is rad because she's an extremely competent independent woman who is as strong or stronger than the main male character with her own political and personal agency. Right, that's why I like River in this episode- she's got her own agenda and isn't completely dependent on the Doctor. She basically puts him in the same position he usually puts other companions in, and it's fun to see things reversed. She's an archaeologist who is romantically involved with the Doctor, but that's not her main motive. The worst moments for Rose and Martha were when they seemed to ignore their own lives in favor of pining after the Doctor. Here, I like that we have a companion whose life intersects the Doctor but doesn't revolve entirely around him. She's not an archaeologist because of the Doctor, she just happens to meet up with him in the pursuit of her other goals. Jurgan fucked around with this message at 04:53 on Nov 2, 2014 |
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Nov 2, 2014 04:47
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Jurgan posted:I can't really say what I think of River without spoiling future episodes. Let's just say that in her first appearance I really liked her. It's hard to judge this episode on its own merits, without thinking about the payoff to the various stories that start here. On its own, I think this is a very good two-parter, though probably not as good as The Empty Child. The rest of my feelings will have to wait for later. Pretty much this. River-chat should really have a pin put in it.
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Nov 2, 2014 04:48
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Soothing Vapors posted:Anyone in this thread who says they didn't is a loving liar. Except maybe Oxx, he might actually be a robot. I can honestly say I didn't. But I wouldn't make fun of anyone who did.
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Nov 2, 2014 04:49
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It's kinda dependent on how you cope with loss, whether you'll emphatize with fictional characters enough for the ~feels~ to kick in or not. Me? i cry mostof tim
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Nov 2, 2014 09:12
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Doctor Who "Forest of the Dead" Series 4, Episode 9 Donna's extended subplot nestled with the extraordinary "Forest of the Dead" is, in my opinion, the single best tale that Doctor Who has ever told. What astounds the most is its level of restraint; it's a low-key, two-set story nestled within this larger, more immediately important meta-narrative, dealing mostly with what has happened to Donna after the events of "Silence in the Library". Donna's story starts with The Girl watching her on the television, before the episode shifts to Donna and her plotline. Here story progresses slowly, and as aforementioned almost non sequitur-ally; she's a patient at an undefined, but looks to be mental, hospital (watched over by, returning from the previous episode, Dr. Moon), who quickly falls in love with and marries a fellow patient, before having a couple of kids with him and, essentially, obtaining the life she always dreamed of. And then, of course, it all comes crashing down around her- it turns out that she was teleported into the memory banks of the computer that runs the Library, and everything that's happening to her is just a simulation. Her slow realization of the falseness of her defined reality, combined with her stringent denial of that fact even as it becomes clearer and clearer, forms a deft, incredibly sad emotional arc in an episode full of them. Her encounter with the veiled Miss Evangelista (who had her ghost uploaded to the computer's memory banks) as she explains to Donna the truth behind her beautiful lie is downright heartwrenching. It all builds to the moment in the climax as, The Doctor and River work together to pull out everyone who's been downloaded into the computer (which is what happened to everyone who tried to teleport out as the Vashta Nerada closed in- explaining how all 4200 souls were "saved"- they were literally saved to the data core's memory banks) and, even as it's ostensibly a heroic thing that The Doctor and River are doing...there's a remarkably dark edge to the proceeding events. Her husband bursts in, as the simulation is collapsing..."Donna! What's happening?", he asks. "I don't know, but it's not real. Nothing here is real. The whole world. Everything. None of it is real," she responds desperately, and hopelessly. Her husband then asks, "Am I real?" "Of course you're real. I know you're real. Oh God! Oh God! You were real! I'll find you! I'LL FIND YOU!" she cries. And I cried. Yeah, I cried at an episode of Doctor Who. Because even though everything that Donna experienced was by definition fake, it was real for her, and the overwhelming empathy and soul-crushing sadness I felt for the life Donna should've lived, deserved to live, that was snatched away from her through no fault of her own was tear-jerking to me. It's reinforced by earlier events in the episode- her children questioning their own existence, as Donna pointlessly insists that they're real, with the final note of the two children disappearing in their beds as Donna sobs futilely is perhaps the most sorrowful note this show has ever hit in its run -but Donna's sub-plot is a character study in what defines reality, and that no matter how manufactured the sequences one can still emotionally invest in and be affected by fiction. This is rather the point of the episode. In a Library full of books- of created experiences- as CAL (the data core who ended up being given the brain of a dying girl) can live eternally in her own dream land, free to experience everything she ever wanted, with a father and doctor to look after her, as she ends up watching the televised adventures of both The Doctor and Donna, as River sacrifices herself to save The Doctor in a supremely emotional climax to end her own defined narrative, it all coalesces into an hour of television that examines itself. Humans are distinct because we are empathetic creatures. We can feel pain and have emotions even in a medium that's fictional, that's composed of events that haven't happened. The fact that I cried in this episode proves the point that Moffat was making- that humans are able to experience fiction as if it were real, despite objectively knowing that it's not. The reason why Donna's sub-plot was so emotionally affecting to her was because she had "bought in" to the lie, so she truly did lose her children when they disappeared, even though they didn't exist and never had in the first place. And in being so emotionally affecting to her, it was emotionally affecting to me, enough to make me physically cry, despite the fact that Donna is just as real to me as her children were to her. Despite the fact that in my opinion the Donna sub-plot in "Forest of the Dead" is the most powerful and affecting one of the bunch, there's so much else that is incredible and powerful that singling Donna's story out for praise seems almost like a disservice to the episode as a whole. "Silence in the Library" worked so well as an episode of television because it was self-contained, because it contained a cohesion of focus and of tone that made it worked by itself. I remarked, half-jokingly, that after watching "Silence" I had no need to watch any Doctor Who ever again, because I had seen the very best the show had to offer. And that was despite "Silence" ending on a cliffhanger and my knowing that Moffat had specifically written a two-parter; it's such a tight and well-crafted hour of television on literally every level that I ended up narratively and emotionally fulfilled from the episode by itself. That's how good "Silence" is; it's part one of a two-parter, but works fine as a stand-alone piece. No part of it is out of place, every part is coherent and pulls together, as one, to its conclusion, interspersed with plot twists and reveals and emotional moments to ground the episode and keep audience interest. It's an episode that, for all intents and purposes, is perfect; it accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do and accomplishes its goals so qualitatively well it's an astounding episode of Who and of television in general. So how does one follow up a perfect hour of television? What does Moffat do? Oxxidation once mentioned, way back at the start of the reviews for this season, an excerpt of a Salman Rushdie novel wherein two characters approach the act of storytelling from different perspectives. One argues that stories, in the telling, are important things, reflective of life, and because they are reflective of reality they must be messy and complicated, the way life is. The other argues that stories are an escape, and because they are that way they must be well-constructed, in order to appeal. The interesting thing is, to me, the Library two-parter is about this central struggle, this dichotomy in fiction, in storytelling. "Silence" is all about the journey of the telling, and so everything present within it- from plot to theme to characters to dialog to pacing to camerawork to act structure to on and on and on -means to view stories as "just" stories. There's some supremely emotional moments within, but for the first part of this two-parter, my first reaction to it, the first word I thought of after viewing it, was "awe-inspiring". It inspired awe, because it was Moffat creating a world I got lost in, a scary and funny and sad and depressing and hopeful world, with a shouty alien and his no-nonsense friend, of his time-derailed older girlfriend, of the pretty young woman who suffered a horrible fate. Because the journey was in the journey, and the journey must be appealing. It then flowed into "Forest", an episode about reveals. About endings. It built to specific scenes and confrontations, and shifted its focus to be an emotional piece, so the reveal of who CAL was could land with the audience as Mr. Lux reveals himself not to be a self-centered prick but a caring grandson. Or the reveal of the Vashta Nerada can still land and paint them in an empathetic light, where even though they're a murderous swarm there's something still understandable about how the forests where they reproduce all got cut down and turned into books for the Library, which is why they're here and so vengeful. Maybe- definitely it doesn't excuse their actions as antagonists, but there's a note of understanding that comes from their actions as merely displaced animals doing what they have to to survive. Or the reveal of what was happening to Donna, as I've gushed about before, being as incredible as it was. And finally but most importantly, the reveal that River realized that she was meant to die, as she sacrifices herself to save the denizens of the data core and save The Doctor's life- as he begs helplessly, "River, you know my name. You whispered my name in my ear. There's only one reason I would ever tell anyone my name. There's only one time I could." And that's when River dies, and Donna loses her husband and the life she earned, and that's when I cried. At the desperate, hopeless futility of it all, at the overwhelming sadness of loss for both women involved, at the strange proud heartswelling pride I felt for River's sacrifice, for The Doctor's misery at losing someone who was clearly very close to him, someone that he still didn't really know and could barely understand. This scene is what the episode was building to, because "Forest" is about endings. It's about the Vashta Nerada earning their forest back, it's about Donna having her dream life end, it's about River's literal life ending, it's about CAL completing her purpose, it's about The Doctor realizing how important River was to him. It's about closing time loops, by paradoxically beginning them. Endings, Moffat contends, are messy and emotional and full of pain. It's why he builds "Forest" to these specific scenes and sequences, in specific contrast to the perfectly constructed "Silence". There's a lot of "Forest" that's messy- chief among them my misunderstanding of what, specifically, River was doing in her sacrifice, but that's rather the point of it, I think. To speak to the human spirit, to be truly empathetic, to be truly human, you need those confused and confusing scenes and sequences meant solely to convey a greater emotional truth. The fact that it's not a perfectly constructed work strengthens its point; if it were it wouldn't be able to be as resonant as it is. Because those specific emotional scenes- and not just those, but nearly all of them, Anita's depressing little arc works incredibly well, as does Mr. Lux's reveal that he's trying to do honor to a family legacy. The standoff scene between the Vashta-controlled Anita and The Doctor works incredibly well in conveying the threatening nature of The Doctor when he's upset as well. The emotional swings in this episode are hard and all executed as well as they could possibly have been, which is why this episode works as well as it does. But again, this episode is about endings, and so with ten minutes left in the episode Moffat seems to have tied a neat bow on this two-parter as a whole, with River dead, Donna alive, and the teleported people saved. Which is why the final reveal- that The Doctor had set himself up to "save" River by gifting her his Screwdriver, so he could realize after her death that her consciousness was still implanted within it and thusly be able to upload her data ghost to the core -allowing her to live a great life with the rest of the expedition team -it's why it lands, it's why it's emotionally powerful over hacky. As he notes in voice-over- everyone lives, just this once. But we know that's not true- in the last two-parter Moffat wrote, in fact, everyone lived, just that once. But in "The Doctor Dances", where it came off to me as a bit forced and a little trite, in "Forest" it was this hugely affecting, perfectly fitting bow on the episode at large. Was it a bit too pat, having everyone make it out okay, in some form or another? Well, yes, but that's the point. Stories sometimes have to be messy and a little narratively easy, to expose an emotional truth that wouldn't otherwise surface. As the episode closes to River reading a bedtime story, it echoes the greater narrative lesson this episode is teaching; it's an episode that examines itself, and the stories humans tell, and why we are affected by them. And it works. Grade: A Random Thoughts:
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Nov 2, 2014 18:02
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbWagkXysi4
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Nov 2, 2014 18:09
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Reminds me a lot of this scene (well, any scene from this movie can be taken out of context and be hilarious. Actually, they're hilarious IN context too..) http://youtu.be/e6i2WRreARo?t=48s
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Nov 2, 2014 18:19
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The point when I cried (which I'm surprised Toxx didn't mention) was this exchange: The Doctor: I'm always alright. Donna: is 'alright' special time lord code for "not really alright at all"? The Doctor: why? Donna: Because I'm alright too.
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Nov 2, 2014 18:29
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Oh man I forgot about the Donna plotline. That got to me as well but it wasn't what I was referencing when I said this episode made me cry too, haha
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Nov 2, 2014 19:07
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Stairs posted:Donna: Because I'm alright too. The one I'm surprised wasn't mentioned: River: If you die here, it will mean I never met you! The Doctor: Time can be rewritten! River: Not those times. Not one line. Don't you dare. ...that's the one that got to me, her sacrifice to save the life she lived (that we haven't even seen yet) and the choice to end it there rather than undo any of it.
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Nov 2, 2014 19:15
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The Donna sub-plot did absolutely nothing for me. It was predictable and tedious, and I kept waiting for her to realize what was going on so we could get back to reality, where the plot was happening. Thankfully everything that happens in the Library is still brilliant, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't emotionally affected by River's death. And also that last bit, where Donna misses out on meeting her Matrix husband because there are no speech pathologists in the 51st century.
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Nov 2, 2014 20:05
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I like the library two parter and I even like River in it, but the "HEY, WHO TURNED OUT THE LIGHTS?" thing really started to grate on me and take me out of it toward the end of them repeating it. I think it's got a great monster and that the Moon concept takes advantage of a lot of sci fi tropes in a great way. I'm really shocked that you didn't notice that "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry" was a catchphrase long before this episode though. I'm pretty sure Ten says it more often than "Welllllll" of any of his other quirks, it's like his most repeated sentence.
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Nov 2, 2014 20:40
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Toxxupation posted:why it's emotionally powerful over hacky. Son of a biiiitch I had you basically nailed on this one but fumbled here. Thought for sure this would strike you as stupidly oer the top. Guess in the end I'm alright with this as it means I catch up with Weird Sandwich all the faster. 
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Nov 2, 2014 20:42
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Smello posted:The Doctor: Time can be rewritten! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPON2CJVU84&t=64s That bit gets referenced a lot.
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Nov 2, 2014 20:58
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Doctor Who "Forest of the Dead" Series 4, Episode 9 Stories about stories are, traditionally, the first refuge of people with nothing to say. Because stories, all works of art, draw from life in some way or another (though, dear God, not too directly - if I'd read one more glorified "here's what I did over summer vacation" essay disguised as fiction when I was in school I'd have taken three shits and died), plunging into "what, like, is the nature of a story, dude" as subject matter is completely insubstantial, because it has none of that realist bedrock with which to draw empathy from the audience. "Forest of the Dead" - which was originally penned under the much snappier title "River's Run" - manages to avoid this trap despite being a god drat metafiction festival, but that's partly because it works on established canon, and partly because Moffat himself is so godalmighty devoted to hammering the concept into every single aspect of the plot. Take Donna's subplot. In retrospect, Donna's excursion into CAL's slapdash mind-scape is totally tertiary to the events of the story itself; it serves as a nice peek into how all of those "saved" people are kept distracted in the database, but Donna herself accomplishes almost nothing besides freak out CAL enough to trigger the library's self-destruct (because of course a planet-sized complex needs a self-destruct mechanism, I think it's a union requirement) with Evangelista's aid. The real purpose of Donna's scenes are to give Moffat an excuse to take the piss out of cinematography and storytelling cliches: Donna is cognizant of the jarring jump-cuts and segues whisking her all across Dr. Moon's psychiatric complex; her relationship with Lee gets the editorial equivalent of a chainsaw, with every bit of development or character ruthlessly hacked out of it to skip ahead to the "interesting bits," the first date, the marriage, the kids; the children in her life are (in what was the episode's single most unsettling moment for me) exact copies of the same two children, running around doing generic child things for the sake of background scenery. As CAL starts to lose control and the simulation splits apart, the children become aware of the fact that they only exist as emotional devices for Donna to fawn over, and it's that moment of awareness that makes them blip out of existence - they were lies that believed themselves, and when their suspension of disbelief broke, they had no place in their own story. Donna's screaming grief over the kids is another fine bit of acting from Tate (once again, Donna has the chance for a husband and family of her own snatched away from her), but it also shows how, even though her "life story" up to this point was blatantly artificial, she herself was still invested enough to be wrenched by its ending. IT'S A METAPHOR DO YOU GET IT Moffat saves his most pat analogies for Donna, but the metafictional aspect of "Forest of the Dead" bleeds into the happenings of the Library, as well - it is a Library, after all, and God knows there have also been plenty of stories which depict libraries as places where the sheer psychic weight of the books stored there can distort events. The Doctor finds himself playing catch-up with the story of his own life, as River Song is basically a refugee from a later "chapter" who, for the most part, is forced to stay tight-lipped about everything that happened before. The stories archived within the Library are what saves the Doctor during his brief, tense stare-down with the Vashta Nerada themselves, as they take a moment to collectively peruse the books, presumably find a few excerpts of what the Doctor does to anyone who makes him upset ("In the early 1900's, the Doctor trapped a little girl in every mirror everywhere, forever, because he had a bad night. See also: Blood, Family Of; Racism, Casual; Sangster, Timothy [Bad Actors, vol. CVII]"), and call a cease-fire out of fear of becoming one more footnote in the Doctor's own plot. River chooses to sacrifice herself not just because she doesn't want the Doctor to kill himself, again, but because his death would make irrevocable "edits" to the story of their own relationship, which she even states in those exact terms ("Not those times! Not one line. Don't you dare!"). The entire two-parter is eventually revealed to have been repackaged and told as a bedtime story by the uploaded River, who looks directly into the camera and says "Goodnight, everyone," as she turns the lights out on the children. Moffat himself has a fondness for the fairy-tale aspect of Who - appropriate, because fairy tales are for children and Doctor Who is, say it with me, a show for children - where horrors come from your own head as much as the moon of Slitheen or whatever, the Doctor and his associates are often treated as almost mythic characters, and everything ties up in a neat little bow at the end. Despite what Occ said about the implied "messiness of endings" commentary here, "Forest of the Dead" is absolutely a typical Moffat episode in its structure - every plot point has a purpose, every loop feeds back into himself, and the end has a whole platoon of Chekhov's Guns firing off in succession. As ever, it's the puzzle, the game Moffat's playing that he cares about most. The emotional beats land, but they're in place because it would be appropriate for the story to have emotional beats - they're as clacking and mechanical as everything else about this two-parter's construction, but they're at least a convincing facsimile of the real thing. I'd might as well take some time to yap about River's farewell to the Doctor amidst all this structure-talk. Obviously I didn't tear up or anything during the scene, it was late and I'd had a long night hunting John Connor for the glory of SKYNET, but the sheer fact of it was a tremendously ambitious move on Moffat's part that I have to admire regardless of how it was executed. River inadvertently became both the origin and terminus of her relationship with the Doctor, and as she said, this means that the Doctor needs to spend every moment with her knowing that she's going to die and unable to tell anyone; for all of River's competent, superior swagger around him, the Doctor will always have one over on her, the foreknowledge of her death. He's always forced to hold back that one haunting secret, which also makes him feel obligated to continue their relationship in the first place, so as to fulfill River's last wish not to "rewrite" their lives. It's heartfelt and more than just a little hosed-up, and all these implications are loaded into a thirty-second conversation. The Doctor's first meeting with River is River's last meeting with him, and the end is literally never the end. The fact that we get another "everybody lives" moment is almost perfunctory after all of this, one last Chekhov's Gun popping off after a whole fusillade of them, but it ties off the fairy-tale aspect of the story nicely and makes the overall tone of the plot less ungodly depressing. Children's stories can contain more twisted poo poo than a lot of people give them credit for, so long as you give them a happy ending, of sorts. And children's stories don't concern themselves overmuch with minutiae: how exactly did the Vashta Nerada live for 100 years without food? How long was Anita a skeleton in a suit, and why did the Vashta Nerada see fit to flawlessly impersonate her for so long? What does the existence of the data-ghosts and brain-uploads say about the nature of the soul? Who in their right mind builds an antivirus program terminal in the shape of an actual synthetic moon? Why were all the Library survivors dressed like a German improv troupe? Who, I ask who, turned out the lights? Viewers can agonize over headcanon answers to these questions and more, but they're ultimately unimportant to the story being told - the story about stories, the story that the Doctor refuses to end, and way these characters are forced to live as the world writes them. Oh, and I turned out the lights. It was me. IT WAS ME ALL ALONG Oxxidation fucked around with this message at 04:30 on Nov 3, 2014 |
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Nov 2, 2014 21:13
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Oxxidation posted:Oh, and I turned out the lights. It was me. IT WAS ME ALL ALONG Aw, son of a bitch!
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Nov 2, 2014 21:22
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Toxxupation posted:[*] What's the background theme that plays at 14:34 in the episode? It's really, really good. One of many pieces of Murray Gold music that sadly never made its way to the official soundtracks
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Nov 2, 2014 21:56
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Oxxidation posted:I'd might as well take some time to yap about River's farewell to the Doctor amidst all this structure-talk. Obviously I didn't tear up or anything during the scene, it was late and I'd had a long night hunting John Connor for the glory of SKYNET, but the sheer fact of it was a tremendously ambitious move on Moffat's part that I have to admire regardless of how it was executed. River inadvertently became both the origin and terminus of her relationship with the Doctor, and as she said, this means that the Doctor needs to spend every moment with her knowing that she's going to die and unable to tell anyone; for all of River's competent, superior swagger around him, the Doctor will always have one over on her, the foreknowledge of her death. He's always forced to hold back that one haunting secret, which also makes him feel obligated to continue their relationship in the first place, so as to fulfill River's last wish not to "rewrite" their lives. It's heartfelt and more than just a little hosed-up, and all these implications are loaded into a thirty-second conversation. The Doctor's first meeting with River is River's last meeting with him, and the end is literally never the end. Yeah in an episode full of incredible moments, it's that moment where River goes,"This means you knew.... you've always known..." is perhaps the greatest. That dawning realization that on the Doctor's end their long-standing relationship that only she is privy to was forever colored and, yes, haunted by his knowledge that she was destined to die saving him. In the end he puts a data ghost into the library's mainframe so that some part of River will continue to live, but for him every meeting with her that will follow will be like talking to a ghost anyway. She'll laugh and enjoy their adventures and see and do incredible things and it'll be the time of her life, and the entire time the Doctor will be looking at a dead woman.
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Nov 2, 2014 22:14
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The Forest of the Dead This is a popular episode and I'm not sure if its that everyone agreed or that everyone at least figured that it'd be reviewed well but this is the most tightly grouped episode, with only two different guesses. We have A BSam jng2058 adhuin idonotlikepeas Jsor Soothing Vapors Senerio Xenoborg M_Gargantua Zaggitz Weird Sandwich Evil Sagan Fucknag Andwhatiseeisme Regy Rusty thexerox123 Ohtsam Overmayor Sighence Adder Moray B Random Stranger FreezingInferno legoman727 One Swell Foop Go RV! Rarity NeuroticLich so our totals now are Adhuin 7 ohtsam 7 Adder Moray 7 jng2058 8 Fucknag 8 Random Stranger 9 Zaggitz 9 one Swell Foop 9 thexerox123 9 overmayor 9 Soothing Vapors 10 Senerio 10 M_Gargantua 10 Evil Sagan 10 FreezingInferno 10 Legoman727 10 Andwhatiseeisme 10 Go RV 10 Rarity 10 BSam 11 Xenoborg 11 Regy Rusty 11 Jsor 11 idonotlikepeas 12 NeuroticLich 12 Sighence 14 Weird Sandwich 16
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Nov 3, 2014 00:37
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Sighence posted:Son of a biiiitch I had you basically nailed on this one but fumbled here. Thought for sure this would strike you as stupidly oer the top. This made me go back and double check everything I've got because you scored this one an A dude
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Nov 3, 2014 00:38
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I'm still sitting on a ticking time bomb for being last. There an episode I gave a boggling prediction to, and I can only hope Occ is replaced by the body snatchers for it or RIP me.
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Nov 3, 2014 00:43
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Jerusalem posted:She'll laugh and enjoy their adventures and see and do incredible things and it'll be the time of her life, and the entire time the Doctor will be looking at a dead woman. This is a great image. It's a slightly nastier variation on the Doctor's whole Last Time Lord schtick: he's *always* talking to people he knows he'll outlive; it's just that he doesn't normally do so after (relative to his timeline) he's actually seen them die because timey-wimey.
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Nov 3, 2014 01:08
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| # ? May 8, 2024 13:58 |
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I'll come out and say it... I think Forrest of the Dead/Silence in the Library is not very good. I find it a bit boring and disjointed and the whole who turned out the lights thing is irritating.
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Nov 3, 2014 04:17
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