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The_Doctor posted:Oh god, the weird crystal fingers around the outside of the console go up and down at the same time as the time rotor, and it looks terrible. Yep. The new Tardis could look great if it was more brightly lit, didn't have the stupid cheap moving features and was a little less thrown together. The new art department head hasn't really impressed me at all. The little toy Tardis and the hour glass are awful features of the new console.
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Nov 19, 2018 11:49
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Rochallor posted:That moon should have been on loving fire by the end of the episode. It was. The entirety of Dispatch blew the gently caress up. Which incidentally was a better plan than 'blow up a bunch of people getting their deliveries', both by being more reliable and by striking them where it hurts. I agree that this episode wasn't the best, and it could've used a few more rewrites to make things clearer (and definitely a bit more of that revolutionary streak from season 10), but reading it as pro-Amazon and against workers' rights is a bit disingenuous. Basically every part of the episode was illustrating that Kerblam is a terrible place to work, and an extremely lovely and manipulative influence on the society it's in. That last bit isn't even a 180, it's still very openly admitting of how terrible it all is, it's just that the faces of the company we meet are all generally good people. I would only do two things differently about this episode, and they're not honestly major things: 1. Be clearer about what happens at the end. The Doctor turning the bombs in on Kerblam itself turns it into a display that only hurts Kerblam (and it does so massively), forcing them to restructure and listen to the concerns that were being placed in front of them; it's not gonna solve itself overnight, but it is a turning point. All of that is actually in the scene, but it's not really made all too clear. Basically, it could use the Oxygen ending. 2. Add a Space Jeff Bezos. Something that lightens the image of Kerblam perhaps more than it should is that every face we see of it is a friendly one; the Head of People, the warehouse manager, the actual workers, even the system itself, all genuinely good people we're supposed to like even if they're cogs in a machine we're supposed to hate. Even Charlie wasn't actually a bad person, it's clear there's sympathy for his aims if not his goals from earlier in the episode, the problem is that because he's the only one that ever stands in opposition he gets off even worse. Add a Space Jeff Bezos at the top, who's just mad at all this loss of profit with no regard for anything or anybody else, to stand in opposition to all of this and it starts to go down easier. He only needs one scene to establish himself--hell, he might not even need that, just some mentions in a few scenes would probably be enough.
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Nov 19, 2018 12:03
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Tired: Megacorp nonsense theatre Wired: Portal meets Doctor Who
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Nov 19, 2018 12:08
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The other thing is that compared to, like, actual Amazon, the supposed Dystopian Space Amazon is a loving paradise.
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Nov 19, 2018 12:10
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Those are pretty big things to miss out, though. The episode as written is a mess that, accidentally or not, implies terrible things. Chief among them being 'the system is good, the problem is a few bad actors' (literally the opposite of reality) and 'people need lovely dehumanising jobs' (automation is a good thing, people should not have to work to live). Edit this is in response to cleretic Barry Foster fucked around with this message at 12:13 on Nov 19, 2018 |
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Nov 19, 2018 12:11
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I got so excited when I thought this was turning out to be an episode about how the automated system had developed a conscience and was crying out for help because humans were abusing it to hurt people... 
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Nov 19, 2018 12:24
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It kinda was up until the point it decided that turning maverick was the best way to prove it's point to it's assailant.
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Nov 19, 2018 12:30
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Like, any episode of Who where the revolutionary figure is the bad guy is almost certainly going to go against the show's ethos. When the revolutionary bad guy's argument is 'more people should work at Space Amazon' then the message isn't just bad, it's bizarre
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Nov 19, 2018 12:31
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Can someone remind me what the deal with that tub of liquefied workers was?
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Nov 19, 2018 12:36
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Necrothatcher posted:Can someone remind me what the deal with that tub of liquefied workers was? Honestly, I don't think the writers kept track of it. If it was whatshisface then he was clearly sick in the head and the story should have made that clear, if it was the system then that's gotten to Sigma levels of needing to be retired.
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Nov 19, 2018 12:42
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Barry Foster posted:Chief among them being 'the system is good, the problem is a few bad actors' (literally the opposite of reality) and 'people need lovely dehumanising jobs' (automation is a good thing, people should not have to work to live). The issue with jobs wasn't that people needed them to be fulfilled, but more that people needed them to live despite technology advancing beyond them as a necessary part. It's the extreme of one of the ways automation can break depending on how we as a society adapt to it and legislate it; we keep demanding people work, but keep automating the jobs, suddenly we've got huge swathes of unemployed people we keep telling to go get work but no jobs for them to go do. Kerblam's human workers were clearly unhappy, even the Head of People knew that, they're not doing work because it makes them happy. It's clearly depicted as a horrible state of affairs. And honestly, most of the episode does support that the people in the system are good people. Everyone we meet is a good person in a bad place, if given the right information they're doing the right thing, it's just that the system is broken far beyond what they can reach (and I mean the societal system, not The System as a character). It's a nice approach to depicting a dystopic society, that we only ever see good people stuck in it rather than anybody who actually wants it, but this episode kind of messes it up by including Charlie without either giving him either a counterbalance or a thumbs-up.
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Nov 19, 2018 12:44
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ConanThe3rd posted:It kinda was up until the point it decided that turning maverick was the best way to prove it's point to it's assailant. Okay technically yes but I meant the way all the workers were being treated. All the deaths seemed super mean-spirited too. Maybe I'm just soft but the way this season keeps following up "hey these people have been disappearing" with "wow all those disappeared people are super dead" is depressing.
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Nov 19, 2018 12:45
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I should also say, I don't think this episode is necessarily worth defending; it's probably the worst of the season in my book, although it's landing there with an 'ehhhhh' more than an 'auuuuugh'. Not actively bad, just not doing anything all that good. I just think that it's there because of lazy writing instead of malicious writing, that it underutilized the pieces it put on the board. Doesn't mean they weren't on the board in the first place.
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Nov 19, 2018 12:49
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Necrothatcher posted:Can someone remind me what the deal with that tub of liquefied workers was? Another in the list of things that the writer seemed to forget about? Like, there's the line that the missing workers are still down on the system as being active, yet when we see their ASBO anklets, they're clearly powered off. So why is the System making it appear like they're still alive?
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Nov 19, 2018 12:52
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Flight Bisque posted:I like that the Doctor was supposed to be the one in maintenance until she soniced the job assignment chips. Presumably this was the system assigning the Doctor the job that would most closely get her to the problem (Charlie) and she screwed it up by changing her assignment. This episode was a loving mess.
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Nov 19, 2018 12:54
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I can't stop thinking about this lovely episode. As bad as the politics in this episode were, they resonate really worryingly with a lot of other stuff this season so far. The most outrageous of those being the Doctor's outrage that not-Trump shoots the spiders instead of letting them grow to death. Apparently it's wrong to give them a quick death if a quick death involves a firearm. And then this follows with the Doctor just letting him walk off. There's what's I assume is meant to be a comforting line in Rosa, when Yaz and Ryan are talking to each other about how lovely and racist 1950s Alabama is. There's even an acknowledgement that the time they're from isn't perfect (Yay!). But it's better, it's not as racist. There was a black President (and I assume that Yaz and all them are from 2015, or boy have I got some bad news for them). Progress has happened. Hooray. But that's the problem: it's all passive. Nobody does things to make progress happen. Things just get better. So you don't have to do anything. Just sit by and society will eventually marginally improve. We can leave this megacorporation as is because now they're going to treat their wage slaves more like wage indentured servants, and even hire more of them! What a triumph! Social progress is born from the bloodied bodies of protestors, strikers, and revolutionaries. Unless you're the Doctor. I hope desperately that the rumor that Chibnall is unhappy with being showrunner is true, because I want him gone as soon as loving possible.
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Nov 19, 2018 12:58
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Wait are we not doing the thing from the first tranche of episodes where we just assume that the obvious plot holes will be followed up on because of course they wouldn't write something so loose and lovely? Also let me now indulge in my contractual thread obligation to say that Jodie is great and the show is still super awesome despite almost every episode this season being a loving mess in one way or another.
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Nov 19, 2018 13:02
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I could go a long time without seeing Jodie's 'Expecto Patronum' pose every time she uses the sonic again
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Nov 19, 2018 13:03
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Cleretic posted:The issue with jobs wasn't that people needed them to be fulfilled, but more that people needed them to live despite technology advancing beyond them as a necessary part. It's the extreme of one of the ways automation can break depending on how we as a society adapt to it and legislate it; we keep demanding people work, but keep automating the jobs, suddenly we've got huge swathes of unemployed people we keep telling to go get work but no jobs for them to go do. Kerblam's human workers were clearly unhappy, even the Head of People knew that, they're not doing work because it makes them happy. It's clearly depicted as a horrible state of affairs. Re: your first paragraph - right, absolutely. Automation under capitalism is bad because of, well, the whole labour dynamic of capitalism, but the episode really doesn't draw attention to that. It's depicted as a horrible state of affairs, and then the solution is to expand the horrible state of affairs, rather than, y'know, burning it all down. Really once it introduced 'The System is sentient and well-meaning and good, what a twist (although it did murder this woman for no reason)' and More-Exploitation Revolutionary, it (quite literally) lost the plot. The focus should have been (in your formulation) on the system being terrible, and The System should have been an element of that, not a supposedly sympathetic character. I think the writer probably thought he was being clever and balanced, but the episode isn't subtle or balanced in its messaging, it's just confused and lovely. (I totally get you're not defending the episode, btw, just chattin')
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Nov 19, 2018 13:18
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As fine an actor as Jodie is, I just don't see how we got 13 from 12. Yes, fine, their personality changes with each regeneration, but I was sort of hoping 13 would remain an alien, not just essentially a really smart human with all the hope of a thousand miracles in her eyes every loving minute.
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Nov 19, 2018 13:19
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Stabbatical posted:I never got the vibe that the Kerblam company was okay and hunky-dory or that the show was fully on board with it. It's obvious that the society that the company comes from is basically in the poo poo and the warehouse is a clearly overbearing, jargon-filled hell, with under-resourced managers/caretakers, which takes advantage of the luckiest of the desperate who have to work for a living. Agreed. Lots of FULL COMMUNISM NOW people ITT getting pissed off that Doctor Who isn't slavishly advancing their agenda. But you all never use Amazon or Google or Apple, right? Not everyone who is "For The Workers" is a good guy and yeah, they can use unconscionable methods. The Corporation wasn't evil here because it was 2 humans and a computer. The computer wasn't evil and the Doctor was very consistent in her belief that robots and AIs are people too and assuming they are always out to KILL ALL HUMANS is wrong. The HR lady was literally what she said she was--a nice person who believed in people who didn't know what was going on. The manager was a small time jerk who did the right thing when it came down to it and seemed to take the Doctor's admonitions to be better to heart. I think the misdirection that for once it wasn't an evil computer, an evil faceless corporation, or evil human bosses was clever and teaches a good lesson about not always assuming things. Like in the hospital ship episode, this is yet another time where the Doctor has jumped to a wrong conclusion based on past experiences but quickly realizes she is wrong and adapts--a positive character trait.
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Nov 19, 2018 13:23
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Astroman posted:Agreed. Lots of FULL COMMUNISM NOW people ITT getting pissed off that Doctor Who isn't slavishly advancing their agenda. But you all never use Amazon or Google or Apple, right? Not everyone who is "For The Workers" is a good guy and yeah, they can use unconscionable methods.  Also, I can't help but think you're missing the forest for the trees in general
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Nov 19, 2018 13:34
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The_Doctor posted:I could go a long time without seeing Jodie's 'Expecto Patronum' pose every time she uses the sonic again I will have to go a long time, because Sunday is so far away.
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Nov 19, 2018 13:40
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Astroman posted:Agreed. Lots of FULL COMMUNISM NOW people ITT getting pissed off that Doctor Who isn't slavishly advancing their agenda. But you all never use Amazon or Google or Apple, right? Not everyone who is "For The Workers" is a good guy and yeah, they can use unconscionable methods. But the corporation and the computer were shown to be evil, even if only in the most banal ways (besides literally killing one person in cold blood). Not every episode of Doctor Who has to advance a fully revolutionary "agenda", but episodes like this fail on every conceptual level because their political commentary is so deeply, unwittingly half-formed. Besides, the questions isn't about whether, in the context of the episode, certain people are "good" or "bad". It's about why an Amazon workers allegory in the first place chooses these particular characters as its representatives. How does that work to better service the impossible-to-ignore subtext? (It doesn't) The solution isn't even to have all revolutionaries as "good" and all managers and CEOs as "bad", but to be able to see past the "human face" of good, nice representatives in order to get at how a system actually functions. The system is what produces murderous activists and corrupt CEOs, not vice versa. In a story about a system where individuals are to blame, the only reading that actually works is a total endorsement of the system.
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Nov 19, 2018 14:01
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Astroman posted:I think the misdirection that for once it wasn't an evil computer The computer murdered a completely innocent woman
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Nov 19, 2018 14:05
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I’m not sure what people expected the Doctor to do about this situation. Past episodes have made it clear that, while s/he will gladly protect Earth from whatever immediate crisis it’s facing this week, s/he isn’t humanity’s full-time babysitter and isn’t going to stick around to save us from all of our societal problems. And this problem is clearly a very complex one that can’t be fixed just by shutting down this one company.Astroman posted:I think the misdirection that for once it wasn't an evil computer, an evil faceless corporation, or evil human bosses was clever and teaches a good lesson about not always assuming things. Like in the hospital ship episode, this is yet another time where the Doctor has jumped to a wrong conclusion based on past experiences but quickly realizes she is wrong and adapts--a positive character trait. That was my reaction too. Having the corporation or the computer be the antagonist would have been the boring choice because those are such cliches, so instead they did something else. Although on reflection I think killing Kira was the low point of the episode because it prevents the computer from being considered a completely good "character"; as others have said, it would have been far better if her death turned out to have been faked.
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Nov 19, 2018 14:06
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How come Charlie didn’t test his bubble wrap bombs BEFORE sneaking into the fulfilment center? He says he infiltrated the place by lying on his resume, so it’s not like he was just a disgruntled worker. Seems kind of over complicated since it means he has to also hack into the robots to control their actions and cover up the deaths of 6-7 people, in addition to the bomb making stuff, all so that he could get the Bombs just right. Of course he got caught. Also glossing over the system killing an innocent person to make a point.
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Nov 19, 2018 14:10
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seizure later posted:As fine an actor as Jodie is, I just don't see how we got 13 from 12. Yes, fine, their personality changes with each regeneration, but I was sort of hoping 13 would remain an alien, not just essentially a really smart human with all the hope of a thousand miracles in her eyes every loving minute. Thirteen feels like one of the Doctors that is fundamentally 'human', but unlike many of those, isn't very good at it. She's clearly pretty socially awkward, and not the best at social cues unless there's tangible things like gestures for her to latch onto. I could see that being the sort of personality that Twelve would try to guide his regeneration towards, or at least would approve of; Twelve was definitely an alien, and had absolutely no grasp of how to deal with humans, but definitely had an immense respect for them that could channel into a much more genuine affection in regeneration. He doesn't quite have a whole picture of how to be a kind person, so the result is a bit shaky, but entirely well-meaning. Plus, the Doctor who didn't know if he was a good man, but certainly tried to be, would probably quite like his next life to be that of an unwavering optimist. So yeah, I can see Thirteen being a reaction to Twelve (and perhaps even his own), rather than a continuation. Also, as an aside: Readings of various incarnations of the Doctor as some degree of neurodivergent have always felt a little 'off' to me, but Thirteen reads very well as someone with Aspergers', which I really like. The way they depict a lot of her slight social slip-ups has this comforting familiarity to it, she feels like she's making the same mistakes I do sometimes.
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Nov 19, 2018 14:19
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 "Are you two seeing each other?" “I don’t think so... Are we?”
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Nov 19, 2018 14:27
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Astroman posted:Agreed. Lots of FULL COMMUNISM NOW people ITT getting pissed off that Doctor Who isn't slavishly advancing their agenda. But you all never use Amazon or Google or Apple, right? Not everyone who is "For The Workers" is a good guy and yeah, they can use unconscionable methods. But like, why on earth would you tell this story now, in this economic climate?
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Nov 19, 2018 14:37
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The more I mull on this episode, the more I dislike it immensely. The "two weeks PTO during a month of downtime" thing, the lovely boss thing, the "rah-rahing" of a huge faceless inhuman megacorp, all of it felt real hosed up to be broadcasting in TYOOL 2018.
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Nov 19, 2018 14:42
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Astroman posted:Agreed. Lots of FULL COMMUNISM NOW people ITT getting pissed off that Doctor Who isn't slavishly advancing their agenda. But you all never use Amazon or Google or Apple, right? 
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Nov 19, 2018 14:59
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The stories that are the most frustrating to me are the ones that nearly accomplish something amazing but didn't quite make it. This was a very frustrating story.
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Nov 19, 2018 15:00
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Orv posted:They did yeah. Giant abusive corporations didn't only begin to exist in the last few months dude
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Nov 19, 2018 15:24
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gently caress that loving episode Jesus Christ
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Nov 19, 2018 15:38
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Oops looks like I walked into a Facebook Doctor Who discussion instead of a dead gay internet forums thread.
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Nov 19, 2018 16:00
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Teek posted:Correct me if I'm wrong, but the show has never truly resolved/stopped one of its capitalistic hell futures has it? It's always, "well this is resolved + a move/promise is made by those left behind to change things". The Doctor always leaves and then we revisit capitalism's shittyness again in an future season. Capitalism ended after the events of Oxygen.
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Nov 19, 2018 16:17
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That was a neat episode. I guessed it would be a robot who sent the message but the system was a bit more surprising. Bit heavy handed, but it is exactly the poo poo these companies are apparently up to. Maybe a bit weird for Doctor Who. Explosive bubble wrap is evil tho. And I liked Spinny Also watched a bit of Holby City last night and McGann does a good evil Doctor Bastard
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Nov 19, 2018 16:22
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The fact that the capitalist evil BBC station in series 1 didn't go away was actually a twist because the Doctor (and audience) thought he'd completely destroyed it, remember
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Nov 19, 2018 16:23
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corn in the bible posted:The fact that the capitalist evil BBC station in series 1 didn't go away was actually a twist because the Doctor (and audience) thought he'd completely destroyed it, remember I said something about "Station 13" was that not the right name for it?
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Nov 19, 2018 16:29
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