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“I’m such a comedian.”
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Nov 12, 2018 05:14
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Also, it once again made a really strong thematic double bill with Supergirl, which has been engrossed with similar themes this season.
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Nov 12, 2018 05:16
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Being the grandchild of migrants and a WW2 vet made that story really hit home for me. Definitely the best one of the season.
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Nov 12, 2018 05:36
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jivjov posted:Something I noticed in the TARDIS interior, the tops of the crystal spires seem to move in tandem with the time rotor So did I, and I hate this with the fury of 1000 suns.  CommonShore posted:I liked it a lot - great setting, great story which scales well to the time it has to tell it, and I really like the "fooled you it was a straight historical!" storytelling. Yeah, like Vincent and the Doctor this is probably the closest we'll ever get to a pure historical and I'm glad to see it. I felt like I was watching real history. I also appreciated the fact that they avoided the temptation to fall into the Clever Writing Trope of "...and then the brother had a change of heart (or had been in love with her secretly) and married her when his brother died and HE was her grandfather!"  I thought they were telegraphing that, so having him kill his brother and be unrepentant and Yaz's grandfather being some nobody she met later was a bold choice.
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Nov 12, 2018 07:31
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Graham remains my favorite companion, maybe ever. He just rules.
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Nov 12, 2018 08:18
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Graham and Yaz are getting all the companion points and Ryan is just kind of there. I’m hoping he gets an episode where he does more than just be the guy who needs stuff explained to him.
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Nov 12, 2018 08:54
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navyjack posted:Graham remains my favorite companion, maybe ever. He just rules. His ribbing "Yeah that's why I'm here, to be insulted" line is so perfectly delivered.
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Nov 12, 2018 08:59
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That was a pretty good episode, but the alien mystery bit felt like it was just tacked on to an interesting story because it's dr who and you've gotta have aliens. Also seconding the "misunderstood aliens" trope is getting really tired at this point, although the aliens in this episode could have been literally anything and it wouldn't have really mattered.
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Nov 12, 2018 09:07
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I was really down on the show after last week because, even though I basically liked the Tsuranga Conundrum, I had a real sinking feeling that that was basically the highest quality of episode that Chibnall could produce. Totally forgot that other writers exist. This was a really rather good episode, probably the best of the series so far. While I did like the partitioning being basically a background thing used to fuel a story, it could have done with a little more blame on the part of the British. It largely comes across as a "isn't sectarian violence bad" story while totally ignoring the root causes of that sectarian violence.
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Nov 12, 2018 09:28
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Rochallor posted:I was really down on the show after last week because, even though I basically liked the Tsuranga Conundrum, I had a real sinking feeling that that was basically the highest quality of episode that Chibnall could produce. Totally forgot that other writers exist. They said "I wouldn't say that too loudly after what you just did to our country" once or twice after they mention they are British. I like that this series is exploring more uncomfortable or lesser known historical periods.
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Nov 12, 2018 09:32
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qirex posted:Graham and Yaz are getting all the companion points and Ryan is just kind of there. I’m hoping he gets an episode where he does more than just be the guy who needs stuff explained to him. I agree Graham is getting the most in terms of character/writing/chances to shine in his acting, but I still feel like Yaz is getting the short end of the stick compared to Ryan. Ryan and Graham's connection means there is a lot the writers can get out of their history and their shared love of Ryan's nan, but Yaz is still somewhat lacking in the character department sadly. This latest episode was definitely a step in the right direction, but given that at the moment she also seems to be the Doctor's "favorite" I feel like she's still undercooked.
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Nov 12, 2018 10:13
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HardKase posted:
I felt like the aliens worked really well as a moral kick up the backside in that regard. Prem died unwitnessed not just because he was shot in a field all alone, but because we in England have completely washed our hands of any responsibility and barely acknowledge our role in what happened. I felt a great sense of shame at this episode. Shame at what the Empire did to India, and shame at how little I know about it.
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Nov 12, 2018 10:55
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Strom Cuzewon posted:I felt like the aliens worked really well as a moral kick up the backside in that regard. Prem died unwitnessed not just because he was shot in a field all alone, but because we in England have completely washed our hands of any responsibility and barely acknowledge our role in what happened. Certainly in the UK we could do with a lot more exposure to the reality of our colonial past since it's basically completely ignored in schools. Was nice to see them trying to take this on
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Nov 12, 2018 11:03
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"I never did this when I was a man!"  I really liked Prem. He was a great character, doomed by the timeline. He would have made a good companion. I admittedly knew nothing about Partition, and this was a heartbreaking episode.
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Nov 12, 2018 11:32
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Jerusalem posted:I agree Graham is getting the most in terms of character/writing/chances to shine in his acting, but I still feel like Yaz is getting the short end of the stick compared to Ryan. Ryan and Graham's connection means there is a lot the writers can get out of their history and their shared love of Ryan's nan, but Yaz is still somewhat lacking in the character department sadly. Graham is also a new sort of companion for the series, and his relationship with Ryan is a between companions dynamic we've never seen before. It feels like the writers are keen to flesh that out, wheras Yaz is basically Martha 2.0, a type we've already encounted, and so she's getting the short shift.
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Nov 12, 2018 11:37
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There were a few moments in that one where I just had to step back and take in how good this was. God drat.Gaz-L posted:If not for the historical setting making it basically a corner they'd been written into, I'd actually say the Doctor was a little out of character for letting them off the hook so easily. This kind of passive observation is the same thing she hates her own people for. I think the Doctor giving these guys a pass is actually perfectly in-character. She knows that these guys have time travel or future sight to some degree, and she knows--as do they--that they can't just mess with what they know will happen. Nor are they entirely passive observers either, we see them literally with the priest and the eldest brother; they keep the lonely dead company in their last moments. I can imagine some Doctors being singularly mad about instances of that (Ten in this episode would have been very shouty), but Thirteen isn't one of them, and I think all of them would be accepting of their overall mission.
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Nov 12, 2018 12:17
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High Warlord Zog posted:wheras Yaz is basically Martha 2.0, a type we've already encounted, and so she's getting the short shift. Yeah, with Yaz it's not so much that we don't know things about her, it's that the things we know about her have been true for the majority of companions in the revival. She's a contemporary young woman with a family she loves but finds frustrating, and who yearns for adventure rather than her (comparatively) mundane life. None of which is bad at all, there's a reason the show keeps going back to that well for companions. But, especially in kind of a crowded cast like this one, it's easy for her to fade into the background a little. Cleretic posted:I think the Doctor giving these guys a pass is actually perfectly in-character. She knows that these guys have time travel or future sight to some degree, and she knows--as do they--that they can't just mess with what they know will happen. Nor are they entirely passive observers either, we see them literally with the priest and the eldest brother; they keep the lonely dead company in their last moments. I can imagine some Doctors being singularly mad about instances of that (Ten in this episode would have been very shouty), but Thirteen isn't one of them, and I think all of them would be accepting of their overall mission. Yeah, I think there's a big difference between the (classic) Time Lord position of "never interfere, even when interfering would actually be useful or helpful" and what the aliens here were doing, which was as much about comforting the dying as it was about anything else. In particular, I think the difference here was that they were motivated by regret and compassion rather than a sense of superiority and moral cowardice, and that's the sort of difference that is (or should be) meaningful to the Doctor.
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Nov 12, 2018 12:34
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Best companion is Graham Fight me
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Nov 12, 2018 12:41
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That’s in debate?
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Nov 12, 2018 12:43
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I can't imagine any incarnation of the doctor being angry at a group trying to give comfort to the dying given that the alternative is for them to save everyone so that no one ever dies ever again, which seems like a bit of a big ask.
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Nov 12, 2018 12:44
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Orv posted:There was one thing that really stuck out to me though and I think it's both the best and worst piece of storytelling in the entire season; The Doctor's long look at the wise man. As a long-term (revival) watcher ten seconds of her smiling and thinking said legions about both who the new Doctor is and who she's been, most importantly what she thinks about herself. I'm not going to air exactly what that look says to me because I think if you catch it it's almost meant, or at least can be, something unique to every fan. Yeah, it's a good moment, not a bad one at all. New viewers are still going to be aware of the past Doctors, it's impossible to be nowadays.
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Nov 12, 2018 12:55
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Jerusalem posted:I agree Graham is getting the most in terms of character/writing/chances to shine in his acting, but I still feel like Yaz is getting the short end of the stick compared to Ryan. Ryan and Graham's connection means there is a lot the writers can get out of their history and their shared love of Ryan's nan, but Yaz is still somewhat lacking in the character department sadly. This latest episode was definitely a step in the right direction, but given that at the moment she also seems to be the Doctor's "favorite" I feel like she's still undercooked. I'm no longer so sure about Yaz as undercooked, just that we're getting subtextual character traits instead of announced ones with her: We know she's chafing, both because of her job (which she's good at, especially investigating and averting/de-escalating a crisis, but where her bosses don't give her much to do because of her age/gender/race) and because of her home life (rivalry with her younger sister, who may still be in school as no profession has been attached to her, gran's favorite, dad is smart but quirky and a social crusader with more morals than sense, mom seems to be in an upper management track but her resignation upon being fired suggests she's also facing sexism/racism, doesn't share that with her family unless forced to, nags Yaz about relationships/children). She's observant, smart, a good investigator and a de-escalator as a companion, too, as well as the most action-oriented of the current cast (FPS gun incident aside). She's inquisitive, like many companions, but unlike pretty much all the others she'd stay put if the Doctor told her to. She keeps her sense of humor in a crisis. She's also socially alert, including picking up on the Doctor's disappointment when she thought they'd leave her, and she's emotionally supportive and loving, which looks to be the prime characteristics for this series. In addition to that, she's emotionally open with this group (more closed with her family, though not too much so) and seems to be following in that "wants to be the Doctor when she grows up" pattern while lacking all the negative characteristics of past companions (Rose and Clara, at least) who had that aspiration. Honestly, I don't care if we get a story about how she was scared of monsters under the bed when she was four, I just want her to have things to do in every episode.
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Nov 12, 2018 16:20
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Maxwell Lord posted:I fear I was not as enthusiastic about this episode as everyone else, but it’s less down to the episode itself as the fact that we’ve had this exact same mid-episode “but here are the real villains (it’s man)” twist not two episodes before, and of course the previous episode had a monster that was basically innocent, etc. And again it’s an episode where the real villains can’t be stopped. I really hate this idea, and it's been expressed a lot lately. People should be the villains about as often as the aliens are in Doctor Who, and there are as many different tracks to it as there are "The aliens are the bad guys." It's not even a "twist," really, it's just the Doctor assembling information. This season in particular has done a great job with it - the real villains have been a corporation in charge of a contest, a white supremacist, a billionaire and a corporation that disobeys simple environmental procedures, a chronic illness and some outrageous military bureaucracy, and religious bigotry as a result of British imperialism. The sci-fi stuff - a hostile planet with death rags and robots, time travel, giant spiders, a very hungry alien on a spaceship, and some former intergalactic assassins - are just setting. If something besides "the overtly hostile aliens are the bad guys" is all the same "beat," I think it's the reading that wrong, not the writing.
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Nov 12, 2018 19:57
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Basically, this season is doing exactly what Doctor Who should do every once in awhile, which is re-imagine what Doctor Who as a show can be, and to update it for today. Some of our major concerns throughout the world right now are people who aren't rising to be the best of humanity, to put it mildly. There's been some very ugly racism and nativism, and some very greedy corporate entities. "Science will save us" has proven a hollow refrain when the people in charge of the tech sector are doing things like playing the world's interpretation of The Trolley Problem with self-driving car programs. In fiction, a common complaint about long-running series is that a bunch of gatekeeping nerds want you to spend hours on Wikipedia figuring out what the heck is going on before you can enjoy it. It's a good time to have the villains be people who ally themselves with the ugly aspects of humanity, and to forego some of the classic Who villains and characters. They can come back to the Daleks and Cybermen next season if they want, and throw in the Draconians or something. For this season, I'm glad they're letting the aliens sit in the background.
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Nov 12, 2018 20:08
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They seriously couldn't find three Indian women who can act?
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Nov 12, 2018 21:03
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I was thinking about the whole "the aliens are misunderstood" thing this morning, and if you actually break down the 6 episodes that have aired so far: The Girl Who Fell To Earth: A directly malevolent alien threat. Tim Shaw wasn't misunderstood (except briefly when the Doctor assumed there were two alien species at war). The Ghost Monument: Mostly an environmental threat (the hellworld) but with some openly hostile aliens/robots/whatever the bedsheet things were. (The racers were supporting cast, not villains, not even the one who was a selfish jerk). Rosa: A directly malevolent alien threat (if you allow time traveling humans from the far future as aliens which I think we must). Krasko wasn't the point of the episode at all, but his time-altering shenanigans were the impetus for the plot. Arachnids in the UK Our first actual instance of "misunderstood" monsters, in that the spiders were just spiders and the actual villain of the piece was Mr. Bigly. And even then, the spiders were hostile, they just weren't "evil". The Tsuranga Conundrum I'd call this an environmental hazard. The critter wasn't evil any more than termites are evil, but it was a direct threat to their survival just by virtue of its nature. Demons of the Punjab Finally, some completely non-evil misunderstood aliens, six episodes in. So sure, only two episodes have been A Space Monster Turns Up And We Have To Defeat The Space Monster, And Nothing Else Is Really Going On, but I don't actually believe it's that much of a departure from previous seasons except in tone. The really big difference I'm noticing is that the stakes are mostly lower and more personal, and that, I think, is a change for the better.
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Nov 12, 2018 21:18
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So i know absolutely nothing about the partition of India. But I'd like to learn more about it. Any recommended reading or watching? Fiction in that setting is fine. Non fiction is fine if it's not too much like a high school textbook.
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Nov 12, 2018 21:22
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Infinitum posted:Best companion is Graham if he sticks around more than a year I will have no choice but to concede that he is better than Clara, and that pains me spog posted:They seriously couldn't find three Indian women who can act?
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Nov 12, 2018 21:24
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Soothing Vapors posted:What do you mean? Her grandmother: both old and young versions and her great grandmother were pretty poo poo at acting. Kind of ruins the dramatic tension when the dialogue is being read off a card without emotion. Yet the actress who plays her mother is a really good one and she hardly gets any screen time at all.
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Nov 12, 2018 22:04
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Narsham posted:Honestly, I don't care if we get a story about how she was scared of monsters under the bed when she was four, I just want her to have things to do in every episode. That's exactly what I want too. I like the actor, I like the character, but she largely feels like she is filling the generic companion role at the moment and I'd really like her to have more to do than be the person who asks questions on behalf of the audience.
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Nov 12, 2018 22:51
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Jerusalem posted:That's exactly what I want too. I like the actor, I like the character, but she largely feels like she is filling the generic companion role at the moment and I'd really like her to have more to do than be the person who asks questions on behalf of the audience. The main problem is that the last companion who was there To Ask Questions was Bill Potts, and she asked interesting questions that the Doctor didn't expect. I particularly like "We were an eglitarian society, gender didn't matter since you never knew what you'd be next anyway..." "You were called the Time Lords though?" "Shut up..."
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Nov 12, 2018 22:54
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That was a fantastic episode. I teared up when the aliens showed up right before Prem got shot. Patel seemed to know what Chibnall was going for better than Chibnall himself, and also wrote really well for the Doctor. Also, hey, this is the first time the Doctor's gender has been remotely relevant. It really seems like Yaz doesn't believe the Doctor is serious about having previously been a man. The Doctor babbles so much silly nonsense, it would make sense if Yaz thought it was just the Doctor being a weirdo. 
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Nov 12, 2018 22:55
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BioEnchanted posted:The main problem is that the last companion who was there To Ask Questions was Bill Potts, and she asked interesting questions that the Doctor didn't expect. I particularly like "We were an eglitarian society, gender didn't matter since you never knew what you'd be next anyway..." "You were called the Time Lords though?" "Shut up..." God I miss Bill. Though in many ways it's perfect she only got a season, since now she'll always be remembered (by me) as a great companion, without any qualifiers of,"If only she hadn't come back for that unnecessary extra half season" or "I wish she'd left in Episode <x> instead of Episode <y>"
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Nov 12, 2018 22:58
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Jerusalem posted:God I miss Bill. Though in many ways it's perfect she only got a season, since now she'll always be remembered (by me) as a great companion, without any qualifiers of,"If only she hadn't come back for that unnecessary extra half season" or "I wish she'd left in Episode <x> instead of Episode <y>" Also her exit was really good due to managing to keep her head while being Cybered, it gave her an interesting dynamic before the inevitable happened. Missy's exit was great as well, especially for "I will never stand with The Doctor!" "Sorry honey, but... you will." Then her delirious laughter after her and Simm killed each other. BioEnchanted fucked around with this message at 23:09 on Nov 12, 2018 |
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Nov 12, 2018 23:07
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The master will inevitably come back someday, but dang that was an awesome end to the character. It made perfect sense and yet it never occurred to me that it could happen beforehand. So far I haven't been blown away by this season. Jodie's awesome, but the episodes around her haven't really sucked me in. I was a complete fan of 11, Amy, and Rory with all the convoluted multi-episode storylines and River Songing and all of it, so I guess I'm missing that dynamic. Or to put it in 12's terms nobody is saying Hybrid every episode. It's also still early and they basically have to feature this in the season finale, but the Doctor hasn't done full-on crazy Doctor stuff yet and I miss that, but on the other hand you can't exactly start with "Doctor punches a diamond wall for a billion years." or "Doctor reboots the entire universe."
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Nov 12, 2018 23:21
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JustinMorgan posted:So i know absolutely nothing about the partition of India. But I'd like to learn more about it. Any recommended reading or watching? Fiction in that setting is fine. Non fiction is fine if it's not too much like a high school textbook. Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children is not exactly about the partition, though it looms large in the post-colonial story. It's also one of the most unbelievably wonderful books ever written and I can't recommend it enough. Several of Rohinton Mistry's novels address it (or related tensions in India) as well.
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Nov 12, 2018 23:22
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NowonSA posted:So far I haven't been blown away by this season. Jodie's awesome, but the episodes around her haven't really sucked me in. I was a complete fan of 11, Amy, and Rory with all the convoluted multi-episode storylines and River Songing and all of it, so I guess I'm missing that dynamic. Or to put it in 12's terms nobody is saying Hybrid every episode. Look Steven you chose to step down let Chris run it his way
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Nov 12, 2018 23:42
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MrL_JaKiri posted:Look Steven you chose to step down let Chris run it his way No you don't understand River can meet a female doctor and they can fight the Silence and
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Nov 12, 2018 23:51
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Bicyclops posted:I really hate this idea, and it's been expressed a lot lately. People should be the villains about as often as the aliens are in Doctor Who, and there are as many different tracks to it as there are "The aliens are the bad guys." But it's specifically setting up one thing to look like the bad guys, then saying "Wait, no, here are the real villains". And those real villains are all pretty similar aren't they? You can't say there's no repetition in this at all and I think you're being unfairly dismissive. I just want a full on monster story in one episode, you know?
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Nov 13, 2018 00:16
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I actually really loved the the aliens this week. Just the whole concept of a race of feared assassins losing almost everything and becoming really empathic about it to the point they just want to bring a little more light and comfort to the universe is really charming.
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Nov 13, 2018 01:30
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