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Zaggitz posted:FMA: Brotherhood, yes. og FMA is the RTD era of anime. It is a choice between anime Hitler and whiplashing slapstick. Can't bring myself to finish Brotherhood, because the middle has really bad pacing. Oh, got it.
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# ? Jul 8, 2015 07:54 |
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# ? May 17, 2024 01:48 |
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Toxxupation posted:black lagoon is if someone saw the christmas invasion swordfight and went "we should make a tv show of just that"
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# ? Jul 8, 2015 08:01 |
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Huh. The only anime I've ever seen is Robotech...
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# ? Jul 8, 2015 09:51 |
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Bown posted:idonotlikepeas, that synopsis is hilarious. if you wrote it yourself please tell me you're planning on doing them for the rest of the season. sorry these other fools are too busy arguing about anime to appreciate a good thing I take it all back. Bown is occasionally spot on.
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# ? Jul 8, 2015 10:37 |
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Joining the club (is there a badge?) that thought Deep Breath was utter, excruciatingly embarrassing poo poo until the restaurant scene, as if the first half of the episode had been directed by the same guy who did Rose and went to town with the burping wheelie bin and r-r-r-robot Mickey. Not since The End Of Time Part 1 have I been so glad that I wasn't watching it with a non-fan in the room, because they would have been completely justified with any mocking "You like this crap?" comments.
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# ? Jul 8, 2015 11:35 |
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Payndz posted:Joining the club (is there a badge?) that thought Deep Breath was utter, excruciatingly embarrassing poo poo until the restaurant scene, as if the first half of the episode had been directed by the same guy who did Rose and went to town with the burping wheelie bin and r-r-r-robot Mickey. Not since The End Of Time Part 1 have I been so glad that I wasn't watching it with a non-fan in the room, because they would have been completely justified with any mocking "You like this crap?" comments. This was the first episode of Doctor Who I have watched since my teens and I immediately regretted the decision. Thank god this thread came up to guide through the poo poo of the first three series. Shockingly, it is one of the few Who episodes directed by an actual acclaimed filmmaker. Watch Kill List and The Field in England, everyone.
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# ? Jul 8, 2015 11:45 |
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Yes Ben Wheatley is incredible and one of the biggest weaknesses of his DW episodes (he also did the next one) is that they don't at all take advantage of his unqiue talent and are just shot exactly the drat same as every other episode. Watch Kill List and A Field in England, everyone. Especially the former. They are very good indeed.
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# ? Jul 8, 2015 12:21 |
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Don't forget Sightseers!
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# ? Jul 8, 2015 12:41 |
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Kill List is amazing, try not to learn anything about it before you watch it though.
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# ? Jul 8, 2015 12:59 |
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I leave you people alone for a couple of days and this turns into an anime thread? (The Best Anime™ is actually Utena, though. ) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpBADDqMUs0 Bown posted:A Field in England I have been meaning to watching this forever, because the trailer is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRRvzjkzu2U I've also been putting it off forever, because there's no possible way the final product could live up to that.
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# ? Jul 8, 2015 13:17 |
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The best anime has already been posted months ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kt3qZYUPi2Y
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# ? Jul 8, 2015 14:19 |
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Sightseers should be perfect for Doctor Who fans actually: a young woman with a very limited perspective of the world is whisked away by a strange, magical man with a box (caravan). Together they have adventures in strange lands and meet exotic people. There's also running and shouting!
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# ? Jul 8, 2015 14:25 |
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mind the walrus posted:It also really depends on what type of anime you're looking at. The majority of stuff is designed for younger fans in Japan and that tends to feature the awful tropes/style even in really good works like FMA and Attack on Titan and even Berserk, but there are pockets of genuine adult/all-ages material that can go toe-to-toe with the best of live action cinema-- I'm thinking Satoshi Kon and Miyazaki's work-- and Kon's work in particular doesn't pull its punches when it comes to recognizing anime/fan culture for what it is. I totally forgot about Miyazaki, somehow. I've liked every film I have seen that he's made. Bown posted:idonotlikepeas, that synopsis is hilarious. if you wrote it yourself please tell me you're planning on doing them for the rest of the season. sorry these other fools are too busy arguing about anime to appreciate a good thing I assumed it was a copy/paste of the wikipedia article and scrolled past it. Whoops!
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# ? Jul 8, 2015 14:37 |
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An Ounce of Gold posted:The best anime has already been posted months ago: I can totally see The Master giving all the screens in his TARDIS a big 'M' monogram logo. Also it made me want a Cyberman gag where one of them is all WE ARE BEING ATTACKED BY CRUDE INCENDIARY WEAPONS INITIATE EVA- and then blows up before they can finish giving the counter-order because they talk so slowly
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# ? Jul 8, 2015 14:43 |
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I keep seeing all of these 'best animes' and all I can think is man, Fist of the North Star is great.
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# ? Jul 8, 2015 16:14 |
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I've still never seen any of Fist of the North Star, but way back when I was a small child my friend described it as "this guy punches a mountain and then it blows up." Is that an accurate summation?
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# ? Jul 8, 2015 17:07 |
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This episode started out pretty bad but it got really good I thought. It also answered the question of could there be too much Paternoster Gang. Yes. There can, and this was the line for me. Still like Strax though. Also by the end Capaldi had jumped straight into the spot of my favourite Doctor.
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# ? Jul 8, 2015 17:19 |
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dirksteadfast posted:I've still never seen any of Fist of the North Star, but way back when I was a small child my friend described it as "this guy punches a mountain and then it blows up." Is that an accurate summation? That is indeed. Also other things. Like people's heads.
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# ? Jul 8, 2015 17:20 |
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Autonomous Monster posted:I have been meaning to watching this forever, because the trailer is This is distributed by Drafthouse Films in the US which is all the convincing I need. Usually if you see their logo on a movie you know you're in for a loving ride.
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# ? Jul 8, 2015 18:44 |
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A Field in England is very good, but Deep Breath is quite poor all things considered.
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# ? Jul 8, 2015 19:56 |
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^^^ can this be the new thread title please
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# ? Jul 8, 2015 22:48 |
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JoltSpree posted:I never got into anime [because] every time I see somebody ask about what they should watch first they get about fifty different responses from fifty different people.
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# ? Jul 8, 2015 23:24 |
Well that's because there's so much anime out there, tastes differ so wildly, and because there are so many different sources of anime that its possible for two people to both watch anime regularly and still never see the same shows! If person A is watching through Crunchyroll and B through Netflix, pretty much only through Sword Art Online will they ever overlap. In short, instead of asking "hey what's a good anime to watch?", what you should say is "hey, I'm horror fan, what anime could I watch?" ("Another") or "I like "Firefly", what's a good anime like it?" ("Cowboy Bebop"). "I like Doctor Who, what anime would be good for me?" ("Stein's Gate"), etc. etc. etc.
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# ? Jul 8, 2015 23:32 |
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legend of galactic heroes. get to it
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# ? Jul 8, 2015 23:49 |
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fatherboxx posted:Can't bring myself to finish Brotherhood, because the middle has really bad pacing. Did you get to Hoenheim's backstory? Cause drat. It really kicks the story up a notch. I watched FMA and Brotherhood for the first time back-to-back... so Brotherhood drove me crazy at first, it felt like they were rushing past all of the great dramatic beats from FMA just to get to the new stuff. Like, give the Nina story two episodes like FMA did, don't just gloss over it in one... ugh. But once it gets into the proper story... it's so good. I love both of them, though! I don't even mind Conqueror of Shamballa! Autonomous Monster posted:(The Best Anime is actually Utena, though. ) Have you ever watched Steven Universe? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ra4UWtNMUKk (Speaking of amazing shows) thexerox123 fucked around with this message at 00:10 on Jul 9, 2015 |
# ? Jul 8, 2015 23:57 |
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Fungah! posted:legend of galactic heroes. get to it
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# ? Jul 9, 2015 00:06 |
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Doctor Who "Deep Breath" Series 8, Episode 1 Oxxidation posted:A NEW DOCTOR APPROACHES: TWELVE ...Yeah. I don't much like Twelve. And not in the fun, intentional way that "Deep Breath" is going for either. In all honesty, the unequivocal best parts of "Deep Breath" are when Peter Capaldi as The Twelfth Doctor is at his most dislikeable, since there's a specific definition of who Twelve is that's not present within the rest of the episode. It sucks, because I'm predisposed to enjoy post-regeneration episodes. There's a legitimate argument to be made that "The Christmas Invasion" and "The Eleventh Hour" are among the best episodes of Ten and Eleven's runs, respectively; for my part, "Christmas Invasion" is still my favorite Ten episode and "Eleventh Hour" is my overall favorite episode of Who. I automatically like post-regeneration episodes more than typical episodes for a myriad number of reasons. Most obvious is the simple fact that post-regeneration episodes have a brand-new actor playing the main character, so they're inherently more interesting than the norm just from a sheer sense of curiosity over how the new guy is going to slot into the show's pre-existing dynamic. The Doctor's very base personality of being a brilliant cosmic do-gooder is just that; an extremely rough, vague foundation that every single actor who plays him interprets wildly differently. And that's where a lot of the fun in watching a post-regeneration episode comes from: seeing how the new guy is the same and different from those who came before him. On a purely surface level, noting the distinctions between Nine and Ten, and Ten and Eleven was part of why I enjoy "The Christmas Invasion" and "The Eleventh Hour" as much as I do. It's fun to see how the same character has changed due to the new actor playing him, fun to see how each version of The Doctor approaches everything from problem solving to simple social niceties. Post-regeneration episodes are also great because both of the ones prior to "Deep Breath" ended up encapsulating the very best qualities of the two showrunners that the Who revival has had. "Journey's End" and "Time of the Doctor" are the most honest to Davies and Moffat, for better and for worse, but "The Christmas Invasion" and "The Eleventh Hour" are realistic in portraying the specific ways that each showrunner excelled as a writer. Part of that is due to the fact that Ten and Eleven ended up being Davies' and Moffat's Doctors, respectively. "Christmas" works as well as it does because it's Davies writing a Doctor to his specific strengths, and forming the episode around that perspective and insight that he thinks Ten has. So, yes, "Christmas" is an incredible episode in large part because it does what Davies, at his very best, does extremely well- utterly goofy moments that leave a smile on your face, intercut with scenes of David Tennant hamming it up onscreen. But it's also effective because it's an episode reflective of Davies' sensibilities and approach to storytelling on Who- there's a big crazy alien threat, shots of Earth in danger, lingering focus on the more "mundane" aspects of humanity, and a strong focus on the power of simple humanity triumphing over ultimate evil. "Christmas" is an episode just rotten with Davies' leitmotifs, and it's why it's such a strong singular example of all of his most positive qualities as a writer. In that same vein, so is "The Eleventh Hour" for Moffat. In direct contrast to the sort of ruckus, run-shouty gurny nonsense that is "The Christmas Invasion", Moffat approached his first-ever episode as showrunner with his first-ever Doctor and crafted a time-bending, relatively spare story centered around a personal examination of The Doctor. All of Moffat's recurring narrative themes come into play within its runtime; Moffat intentionally stripped out all of the gimmicks in "Eleventh" (in direct contrast to Davies overstuffing "Christmas" absolutely full of gimmicks kitchen-sink style) so The Doctor is forced to save the day with no TARDIS, no screwdriver, and no help outside of the angry Scottish stripper who aged twelve years in five minutes. The constant themes that Moffat examines (some would say overexamines) throughout his run on Who appear in this episode; abandonment, the concept of "wrong space", fairy tales, relationships being born from toxic need over positive reinforcement, and above all an examination of The Doctor in the mythic sense, viewing The Doctor not only as a literary character but as a legacy that's greater than himself. All the specific plot, narrative, and philosophical elements that both showrunners would spend the majority of their tenures meditating on show up in their first post-regeneration episodes. What's most impressive about "Christmas" and "Eleventh", looking back, is that they both have a complete understanding and command of what each Doctor's personality is like. A casual viewer could start both Doctor's runs with just those singular episodes and get a full accounting of not only who they are and how they act, but also what the specific issues that they encounter constantly throughout their runs are. Oxx and I have characterized Ten as "The Man Who Wasn't Sure", and that sort of desperate immaturity and inability to come to any sort of greater personal truth ends up dominating the end of Ten's run. But even within "Christmas" one can see the elements that would define Ten; he cavorts around, stunning everyone with a big-hearted speech as he pulls faces, covering up for the fact that he's a conflicted individual. He ends up casually destroying the life of someone he philosophically disagrees with, as an ugly note of foreshadowing for how Ten approaches problem solving. Ten ends his run as a tragic, flawed character, and the beginning of his run seeds those themes to the audience. Eleven, on the other hand, spends the majority of his first episode lying, whether it be by mere accident, by omission, or otherwise. He's a big awkward weirdo who keeps everything, especially his personal opinions, under strict lock and key. He spends the majority of "Eleventh" faffing about and keeping the pertinent info away from everyone else, then saves the day with a big monologue about how much of a genius he is as he reveals his big master plan. Then does it all over again mere minutes afterwards, calling forth the antagonists of "Eleventh" for a bit of glorified showboating as he leans heavily on how impressing his own legacy is. From the first moment to its last, "Eleventh" understands fundamentally who Eleven is, what his strengths and failures as a Doctor are, and spins those observations out throughout his three-season run. That's why both post-regeneration episodes are so good, they come from a place where the showrunner knew where each Doctor was coming from and where he was eventually going. Ten starts and ends insecure; Eleven starts and ends dealing with deception. So even beyond the fact that post-regeneration episodes are new, and inherently interesting, and novel, the reason why I love them so much is that it's an opening statement, a way for writer and actor to work as one in defining the central traits and themes of the title character. In my opinion, that's what post-regeneration episodes have to do. I mentioned this offhandedly in "The Eleventh Hour" review, but part of why I was so impressed with it as an episode of Who was because it had an excellent story in an episode that didn't need one. Of all episodes, post-regeneration ones should always place The Doctor front-and-center within them. In my opinion, these episodes get cut the greatest amount of slack when it comes to things that aren't answering the question "What's The Doctor like?", because that's the central question that needs to be answered in a post-regeneration episode. "Eleventh" is an accomplishment because it's able to be a character piece, a study of The Doctor while also pulling off a Moffat-brand puzzlebox narrative, and didn't at all need the latter to function. You could cut out all of the Prisoner Zero stuff from "Eleventh" and still have one of the best episodes of Doctor Who to ever air, because removed from the plot the episode establishes so well who The Eleventh Doctor (and Amy and Rory, as well) is. That's what post-regeneration episodes do. That's what they have to do. That's what they need to do. It's the central reason these episodes exist, and it's why "Deep Breath" is so fundamentally a failure, not just to the audience but to both Peter Capaldi and The Twelfth Doctor. I don't like Twelve. And I don't like Twelve because "Deep Breath" has very little faith in who he is as a character. Oxxidation mentioned that he considers Twelve to be "his" Doctor, and his reasons why make perfect sense: he's a Doctor that's compelling to him because he's crucially, fatally flawed over a happy dude with lying/anger/depression issues. But, with respect, I think he's approaching his view of Twelve from the knowledge of having seen his entire initial season. Which is exactly how Oxx should be approaching him, but to me I don't get any real sense of the Twelve that he likes outside of very few, mostly disconnected scenes within "Deep Breath". To me, Twelve's initial episode establishes him as...well, nothing, really. From his initial episode, I regard Twelve as merely a collection of quirks over an actual living inhabitant of the world of Doctor Who. In most of "Deep Breath"'s run, Twelve is a loose collection of confusing and tonally incoherent bits. It's weird, because everything that Oxx argues is central to Twelve's character- his weirdness, his capacity for cruelty, his inability to filter his own thoughts from leaving his mouth - don't show up until the episode's second half and even then only barely. Twelve's first scene of "Deep Breath" is him interacting with the Paternoster gang, and it feels like some sort of cutting room floor Eleven scene - Twelve goes on about being able to speak to dinosaurs and disregards Clara telling him his name with "Might be Clara, might not be," which has the feel and Alice in Wonderland-esque (il)logic that is identified most strongly with Matt Smith's run. And that feeling continues as there's scenes of ridiculously awful slapstick that don't fit Twelve at all. Vastra putting Twelve to sleep with a cartoonish anvil sound effect is something straight out of the RTD years, something that only Ten could sell because he's so inherently buffoonish. With Twelve it just comes off as discomfiting and dissonant, and there's other Ten stuff that Moffat has Twelve do that doesn't seem appropriate at all. Capaldi and Twelve work best in an understated, imperious or disinterested role, so having stuff about him ranting and raving about the "monster in the mirror" or how everyone's accents are "so...English" come across as broad in a way that brings to mind Tennant. It's material that Capaldi can't sell because it doesn't seem written for him; it's this weird bad bit that he has to play. Early going Twelve is all broad smiles and forced whimsy, and Capaldi sells none of it. There's a distinctly horrid bit of physical comedy where Twelve has to jump on a horse that would've worked perfectly with Matt Smith. When Capaldi tries to land the scene, it comes across as what it is- Moffat forcing some dude who's old as gently caress to cavort around like a moron. None of this dimensionalizes Twelve. None of this is true or honest to who Twelve is. It's this bizarre waste of time that makes "Deep Breath" feel like a bad SNL sketch at points. Even scenes that should work to further impress upon the audience who Twelve is don't because of a lack of perspective on the show's part. There's a scene early on in the episode where Twelve takes a coat from an old homeless man simply because he's cold, which should have served as a strong opening statement for what Twelve's personality is like. As Oxx said above, Twelve's a prick, and the scene where he's trying to steal the coat could've spelled that personality quirk out for the audience. At the same time, though, Eleven could have had that same exact scene during his run, as well - it all comes down to how the writers would've written how Eleven and Twelve would've approached trying to steal the man's coat and how the framing of the scene, from shot direction to background music to editing, would've portrayed the morality of their actions. Eleven taking the coat would've been a scene where Matt Smith is his usual quirky, mad scientist self, and the scene would've sold it as such - Eleven being a total weirdo, a storybook character with whimsical and at times incoherent demands. From what I've seen of Twelve, that scene should've been sold as Twelve being a total loving rear end in a top hat - a self-important, completely uncaring shmuck who would rob a coat from a homeless man simply because he could. If the scene had portrayed Twelve's actions as clearly wrong and clearly unnecessary, the scene would have worked. It was a scene that needed to embrace Twelve's dislikability and portray him as flatly that over the quirky, Portlandia, "I will pay for your hat in ukulele music" Eleven. Instead, the scene does neither - it leans into the comic sensibilities and inherent absurdity while also trying to portray Twelve as a douchebag, and the dialog pulls in both directions at once, so what could've been a strong character-defining moment for Twelve ends up being a knockoff Eleven scene with a much less pleasant person playing him. It's neither fish nor fowl. Every smile that Twelve has in this episode seems pasted on, every scene where he's high-strung and whacky feels forced. It's like Moffat wanted to run away from the darker, nastier, more morally conflicted edges of his character so injected levity into everything. "Deep Breath" comes out a tonally discordant mess that gives no structure for Capaldi to act in, and thus everything he does comes across as aimless and a mere ripping off of something Tennant or Smith did before, and better. This sort of inability to write Twelve well is "Deep"'s biggest problem, which is compounded further by its other failings. Firstly, "Deep Breath" is loving long - far too long, to be honest. It's a seventy-five loving minute marathon that could've easily been made into a typical forty-five minute premiere, which would've cut out nearly all of its first half (its worst part). "Deep"'s length exacerbates all of its issues, because what is a bad initial showing for Twelve is calcified into this bizarre exercise where Moffat seems completely unable to figure out who Twelve is or supposed to be despite so much screentime focused on Peter Capaldi alternately mugging for and glaring at the camera. The Paternoster Gang show up again, and they've finally hit the breaking point of diminishing returns that all of them (sans Strax) are actively unpleasant to watch onscreen. Vastra, especially, is goddamn insufferable as the smug, holier-than-thou mentor character who seeks to haughtily correct Clara. Vastra in "Deep Breath" is just...just the loving worst, where she comes across as an anthropomorphic fortune cookie over a real human (lizard) being. Jenny, too, gets all of her initial flavor scrubbed out to the point where she's now just a simpering maid who is inexplicably also a ninja. Oh, and as an aside? Jesus christ the loving lesbianism in "Deep Breath". It's the worst, most forced and over-the-top "We're so progressive!" back-patting horseshit that Moffat does here. I swear to god, there isn't a single loving scene in "Deep Breath" where either Vastra or Jenny, usually both, have to remind someone else that: one, they're lesbians; two, they're in love with each other; three, they're married; and four, that they have lesbian sex with each other. It's constant. It seems like Moffat just padded the script to reach 75 minutes by writing code:
Outside of the length, Twelve failings, and supporting cast failings, the episode is...competent, I guess, with one extremely bright spot. The villains of The Half-Face Man (Peter Ferdinando) and his bevy of robots are fairly effective. The face makeup/CGI, whichever it is, of the Half-Face Man in particular is extremely well-done. I think they smack a bit too much of retread - as even Twelve notes, and numerous times throughout the episode, they're basically the Clockwork Men from "Girl in the Fireplace" Mark II, but they work, I guess. I read someone argue that this should've been a Cybermen episode, and I agree, if only to have an episode where they're an antagonist and aren't complete and utter embarrassments as enemies. I think the thematic similarity of having an enemy that constantly changes its appearance dovetails nicely with the greater theme of "Deep Breath" with The Doctor struggling with understanding who he is now. When the episode has a decent handle of who Twelve is, there's a constant refrain of how he's the anti-Eleven - Eleven was the "true" last regeneration, remember, so Twelve is, thematically speaking, closer to One/Zero. He's a child in an old man's body, over Eleven's old man in a child's. (No, not like that you loving sickos.) It's the sort of hints of an inability at finding a personality that Ten had, but made deeper and more dominating. Ten's personality flaws were like a boy going through puberty, with the attendant mood swings and existential crises that adolescence brings. Twelve's confusion seems more akin to the struggles a newborn babe has with object permanence - it's a more fundamental problem rooted in how he's the "first" of his generation cycle, and thus has no idea how to behave at even a base level. It's why scenes like the "broom" scene are so illuminating as to the specific perspective that Twelve has, in addition to illustrating how much of an imperious dick Twelve is that he solves a huge philosophical thought experiment that's been a source of contention for literal millenia with one word: "No!" Twelve considers himself irrevocably different than those who came before, he's not the same broom, but he has no idea what type of broom he is. It just sucks that for all intents and purposes, Moffat seems to have no idea what type of broom Twelve is. Speaking of characters Moffat has no idea how to characterize, Clara's here! And she's excellent. What's funny about "Deep Breath" is that, while Moffat has no idea what personality to give Twelve, he ends up finding one for Clara half a season too late. All of the Clara stuff in "Deep Breath" is top-to-bottom excellent. Coleman ends up stealing the show out from under Capaldi's nose, so Clara finally gets an episode where she's written compellingly from beginning to end. I thought I'd prefer a no-nonsense Companion in the Martha vein, a vaguely humorless Clara who's Quietly Competent but it turned out that writing her that way in Series Seven Part Two made her a barely-existent bore. The version of Clara we get here that's constantly angry, barely controlled, and in far over her head is much, much more interesting than pretty much anything she did in the eleven episodes before this one. Clara works best when she's at the very edge of her limits or patience, because the dichotomy between Clara trying to stay her normal, level-headed self as everything is falling apart around her is what gives Coleman the most freedom to work in. It's not like Gillan, who worked best at extremes of emotion; the ways in which Jenna is the most compelling, and Clara by extension is the most compelling, is when there's a sense that Clara could fall apart at basically any moment and is only able to keep it together by the grace of God. When that facade slips - for instance, when she unleashes verbal roasting on Vastra that's so heated Jenny starts applauding - produces Clara's best moments, because they're so unusual. In that same vein Clara's new dynamic with Twelve is the best part of Twelve so far. I have to give Moffat credit where it's due - he may have utterly hosed up the implementation of Clara in Series Seven, as Companion and as character, but it needed to have happened because Clara needed time with Eleven to make her inherent distrust and dislike of Twelve land. Clara's reaction to Twelve - confusion that turns into annoyance as Twelve reveals himself to be a self-obsessed wanker - comes across as earned because she, rightly, feels like the person who used to be her spacey alien friend has now turned into this petulant boy in an old-man suit, a screaming toddler who's simultaneously more brilliant than she will ever, ever be. The fact clearly grates on her, and Clara and Twelve's inherently conflicting personalities creates a really interesting dynamic moving forward. I especially liked that Clara boarded the TARDIS with Twelve not out of affection but out of a sense of obligation, being a former nanny and all. There's a real sense that she's The Doctor's Companion not because she wants to be, but because she knows that if she isn't then The Doctor will end up exploding the universe or something. It's a novel approach to the Doctor-Companion relationship. But it says something when the best implemented part of a post-regeneration episode is the way in which that episode wrote the Companion. Especially when that Companion was written so badly in the half-season prior. Finally, though, let's address the elephant in the room, what kills this episode. The Eleven phone call. Ironically, this was and still is my favorite scene of "Deep Breath". Thinking on it in the intervening days, though, and watching the episode again, it's the worst part of this episode, by-far. You know how I said post-regeneration episodes are important because they're strong opening statements for whatever version of The Doctor now exists? They only work because there's a sense of finality, a cleaving of the old and focus on the new. "Christmas Invasion" and "Eleventh Hour" work as well as they do because there's no sense of either Eccleston or Tennant within their runtimes. They're written to each Doctor's inherent personality quirks, and don't feel like there's any residue of the previous incarnation within their scripts. I can forgive Moffat for writing, at times, what feels like a knockoff Eleven and even Ten script for Capaldi's Twelve. It's just incoherent, unfocused writing, the intention was on entertaining and doing right by Twelve in his initial outing, he just didn't. Every writer has a bad day, nobody's perfect. That I can forgive. What I can't forgive is Moffat writing in a scene where Eleven assures Clara, and the audience by extension, that Capaldi is the new Doctor. It's my favorite scene in the episode, but it's a terrible scene that completely sells out both Twelve as a character and Capaldi as an actor by having the previous version of The Doctor literally tell the viewing audience, in an overt case of authorial interference, to accept him. In a narrative sense, Eleven's phone call makes perfect sense. It's yet another closed time loop from Moffat, the guy who raised closed time loops to an art form. And it's perfectly in keeping that Eleven - the inherently good-hearted if fundamentally deceptive wunderkind - would do something like that to ensure that his regeneration would be a success. From a purely empirical standpoint, the Eleven phone call was 100% the right move to make as a scene. But on a personal level, it's a terrible loving scene. It's, in all honesty, the worst scene Moffat's ever written - he exerted undue authorial interference to impress a point in a really hacky way, by making The Doctor into a mouthpiece for his opinions. It's also a scene that misunderstands the point of the episode that he was writing; regeneration episodes need to be the new actor playing the new Doctor standing on his own two feet and telling the world "Here I am." They need to represent a clean break from what came before, and the Eleven phone call is the worst example of Moffat's trend throughout the rest of "Deep Breath" of being unable to let the past remain in the past. It's a move that stems from a belief, whether justified or not, that the audience of Who wouldn't accept Capaldi on his own merits, so Moffat went and overtly had Smith look into a camera and tell them that everything would be fine. But Moffat's a writer, he should have realized that his job as a writer, as a storyteller, was to make the audience accept Capaldi and Twelve. It's his gently caress-up if they don't, and Moffat having Smith parrot his opinions just to avoid potential conflict is illustrative of his inherent lack of faith in both Twelve and Capaldi, the former in being compelling on his own and the latter in making the former compelling via his acting. It also calcifies how deeply Moffat hosed up introducing Twelve to the world that he felt it necessary to have Eleven swing by and go "Everything's going to be fine." That scene should never have been necessary. A well-written "Deep Breath" would've never needed it. Compare it to "Eleventh Hour", imagine how weird and superfluous if right after "Basically, run." Tennant popped in and said to Amy something like "Trust that guy, he knows what he's doing! Allons-y!" It's mind-blowing how disrespectful of a move it was on Moffat's part, to the audience in the assumption that they wouldn't like Twelve if it wasn't spelled out for them, to Capaldi and The Doctor in the assumption that neither would be compelling enough to make the audience like them, and finally to Moffat's own writing abilities in the assumption that he could never land an initial characterization without a cameo from the old guy. To me, this is what the Moffat haters should use as their tentpole for why he's a terrible writer, because it's an objectively awful narrative move on his part. One that cripples Capaldi and Twelve coming out of the gate for a reason that was completely avoidable if Moffat simply wrote The Doctor's character better. Ignore the River poo poo or the Melody poo poo or claims of sexism or how Moffat's overly "logical" or whatever. People who hate Moffat should point to the fact that he thought the title character of the show wasn't interesting enough to work without outside assistance. Even RTD didn't pull this poo poo, and that's saying loving something. And the maddening part is, even knowing that, even knowing that objectively it's a terrible move and, to me, the worst writing offense that Moffat has committed in his time showrunning Who, the Eleven phone call was my by-far favorite part of "Deep Breath". Because it was a scene where The Doctor was fully realized and the script and actor completely understood who he was supposed to be, which threw into ever starker contrast the utter confusion that hounded Twelve's initial portrayal this episode. In summation, the best part of an episode that's ostensibly all about Peter Capaldi is, in fact, Matt Smith. That's how badly "Deep Breath" hosed it up: Matt Smith is the best part of it. What the gently caress were you thinking, Moffat. Grade: D Random Thoughts:
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# ? Jul 9, 2015 02:48 |
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Most of us figured out that it was the Master pretty much instantly. Just Moffat threw some red herrings up with intentionally fake leaks, so there was some confusion. Also this was the right grade. HOLY poo poo dude you broke the tables though.
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# ? Jul 9, 2015 02:58 |
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Yeah, that's about the reaction many had going in as well. I was absurdly stoked watching the Capaldi announcement live, even though most sites had been carrying it as a sure thing for about a week at that point, and watching Deep Breath I was stunned. It was like Doctor Who had broken. Not in the "oh god I liked the previous Doctor how will I ever love this one" woes that always gets bitched about, but everything about the episode just felt fundamentally wrong. The last half felt stronger, but I wasn't left with a strong feeling of good. Thankfully Twelve is now my second favorite Doctor after Eight. Also, that new CG TARDIS in intro is clearly the worst part of the new season and my god I can't not bitch about it every time I see it. Have to agree there.
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# ? Jul 9, 2015 03:12 |
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I sincerely disagree that Capaldi's unable to sell that alley scene or any of the later stuff. There's certainly a deliberate, traditional element of 'the new Doctor acts a bit like his predecessors before finding his voice' but Peter C is remarkably self-assured from that point on, and is pretty much the Twelfth Doctor from the mid-point of the episode on. And I think the phone call scene is carried impressively well by him, maybe more so than Jenna or Matt. Just that anguish of begging Clara to "...just see me.", which I found very moving, and very smart of Moffat. It's explicitly the opposite approach from Ten to Eleven, where Tennant describes it as a different person wearing his face. Twelve is very much adamant that he's the same man Clara knew, and it crushes him that she doesn't feel the same. EDIT: And yeah, most of us at least had the Master on the short list for Missy's identity. At the very least it was pretty clear she's Gallifreyan. Notably, the garden from that stinger looks an awful lot like the cloister in the Doctor's TARDIS from the classic run.
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# ? Jul 9, 2015 03:25 |
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Are you.... posting Oxx's reviews for him because he's invested enough to write reviews but doesn't just want to swallow his pride and come back or something? Anyway, as for your review I agree with you so much, I'm actually inclined to change the way that I talk about this episode. It's weird, because I feel like it probably benefits a little more from a rewatch after the season, but you're right about almost each and every one of its flaws. It fails to establish a character for Twelve, by virtue of a bunch of forced levity as if to cushion us from darker nature of his character, to ensure us that Matt Smith is still inside somewhere, just a phone call away. It is an enormous failure, because it has to do that, as you say. If we start on the wrong note with a Doctor, it's very difficult for the rhythm to recover. Clara does, all of a sudden, have a character. I don't know if it was the rushed nature of 7.5 or the emphasis on The Impossible Girl part, but this is the episode where Clara is firmly cemented as having actually human characteristics. I think my minor disagreements come with regard to the villains. Despite the retread nature of them, I feel the moments that they interact with Capaldi are the some of the few times we do get a sense of who he is. The conversation they have in the restaurant, which I regrettably don't recall well enough to quote, does set the stage for some of the questions he will have to answer about himself, and he sort of begins to answer them here. Still, there are so few of the scenes, and so much of a focus on the Paternoster gang et alia even in the second half, that it's a much smaller part of the story than I remember it being. Also, there's this: quote:He's a child in an old man's body, over Eleven's old man in a child's. One of the major ways you can tell this episode failed is that it gave you this impression. I do not see Twelve as a child in an old man's body, nor do I think the story intends for a new regeneration cycle to work that way. Twelve is a very old man, older than most Time Lords live, I think, who is showing his relatively older face, comparative to previous Doctors, because he has ceased to care how humanity sees him. I think it's something Lizard Woman actually says, but this episode does fail to show us that, completely. It has to tell us directly, because it is too busy showing us that Matt Smith is in there somewhere, in the environment, in the big dinosaur, in his previous hangout with his previous companions. This is another goodbye episode for Eleven after he has already left, and it does a disservice to Twelve.
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# ? Jul 9, 2015 03:37 |
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_the_Dalek In which Clara Oswald keeps her pimp hand strong.
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# ? Jul 9, 2015 03:44 |
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Bicyclops posted:Are you.... posting Oxx's reviews for him because he's invested enough to write reviews but doesn't just want to swallow his pride and come back or something? no, i personally asked him to do me a solid and do BLAH BLAH BLAH APPROACHES whenever a new companion or doctor is introduced he did that with clara too
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# ? Jul 9, 2015 03:47 |
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Mortanis posted:Also, that new CG TARDIS in intro is clearly the worst part of the new season and my god I can't not bitch about it every time I see it. Have to agree there. At least we got to keep the face.
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# ? Jul 9, 2015 04:58 |
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Wait, so that means that Twelve sucks now? NOOOO THAT WASN'T PART OF THE DEEEEEEAAAA-
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# ? Jul 9, 2015 05:15 |
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It was nice to get the obligatory bad Dalek episode out of the way.
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# ? Jul 9, 2015 05:17 |
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Deep Breath And away we go! A Bicyclops BSam egon_beeblebrox ewe2 Grouchio B 2house2fly And More AndwhatIseeisme Attitude Indicator Barometz Bown cargohills Colonel Cool death .cab for qt DetoxP DoctorWhat Gandalf21 Howe_sam jng2058 JoltSpree Jsor LabyaMynora MikeJF Ohtsam onetruepurple Paul.Power Rat Flavoured Rats Senerio thexerox123 Xenoborg C Alkarl blasmeister fatherboxx Lipset and Rock On Organza Quiz Sinestro Weird Sandwich D Labratio F Andrew_1985 Overall Average Guess: C+. Definitely could have gotten off to a stronger start, this season. Current rankings: Labratio: 0 Alkarl: 1 Andrew_1985: 1 blasmeister: 1 fatherboxx: 1 Lipset and Rock On: 1 Organza Quiz: 1 Sinestro: 1 Weird Sandwich: 1 2house2fly: 2 And More: 2 AndwhatIseeisme: 2 Attitude Indicator: 2 Barometz: 2 Bown: 2 cargohills: 2 Colonel Cool: 2 death .cab for qt: 2 DetoxP: 2 DoctorWhat: 2 Gandalf21: 2 Howe_sam: 2 jng2058: 2 JoltSpree: 2 Jsor: 2 LabyaMynora: 2 MikeJF: 2 Ohtsam: 2 onetruepurple: 2 Paul.Power: 2 Rat Flavoured Rats: 2 Senerio: 2 thexerox123: 2 Xenoborg: 2 Bicyclops: 3 BSam: 3 egon_beeblebrox: 3 ewe2: 3 Grouchio: 3 Can't draw any conclusions just yet; it's anyone's game for a long ways yet. idonotlikepeas fucked around with this message at 19:09 on Jul 9, 2015 |
# ? Jul 9, 2015 05:19 |
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I feel too embarrassed to show my face here again. And blindsided. Series 9 is really gonna suck, isn't it? Grouchio fucked around with this message at 05:44 on Jul 9, 2015 |
# ? Jul 9, 2015 05:33 |
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Twelve is not a child in an old man's body... think about what the War Doctor said to 10 and 11. Asking why they're young, and afraid to grow up and own up to responsibility. That's what I took 12's character to be- he grew up. The first half of this episode is a smouldering wreck. It's not until the restaurant that it clicks, and then you realize how much chemistry the Doctor and Clara have- both as characters and the actors. Clara actually becomes a Real Character(tm) this season, and quite enjoyable. I like Twelve too, I just wouldn't use this episode as a guide to his full character. (I handwave it away as being part of Regeneration Madness, which is kinda a thing, where the Doc is not quite himself yet). This is the only one where he's so weird, he settles in pretty quickly in the next few eps. I agree that wacky is not Capaldi's forte, and I don't remember it resurfacing quite like it did in this episode. Personally I love his crankiness and insults. It's so different from the previous three and more like an old-school Doctor. I agree the new opening titles are not good. Heck, I still want the psychadelics and moog synthesizers back. Oh, and I also agree about the phone call scene. I understand *why* he put it there, but like you said it just cuts the rug out from under 12. I felt a little bit of the same when Amy showed up right before the regeneration while Clara is *right there* serving no purpose, but at least that was short and had a bittersweet feeling to it.
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# ? Jul 9, 2015 05:33 |
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# ? May 17, 2024 01:48 |
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I still like the Matt Smith scene because it shows Clara is sort of hanging around out of obligation, because "her" Doctor asked her to. She was all ready to call it quits (and didn't Capaldi look torn up about that?) before the call, and pretty much was convinced to stay by the new Doctor insisting that he's the same person. Except he isn't. I didn't call Missy as the Master because I was used to Moffat bringing in new villains for the finales. Matt Smith's first two were all about the Silence, then they brought in the Great Intelligence who was a villain from decades ago, while the Daleks and Cybermen heckle from the sidelines. Speaking of which, I don't really care to rewatch Into The Dalek, but I do remember that the reuse of "you are a good Dalek" combined with Deep Breath's reuse of the clockwork robots made me wonder if there was going to be some kind of plot point about history repeating or something.
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# ? Jul 9, 2015 05:55 |