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For some reason,"Beyonce LOVES Cardiff. Beyonce's FROM Cardiff!" strikes me as a very Doctor thing to say 
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May 2, 2024 21:58
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Random Stranger posted:The notable Unbound story is the Valeyard wins the trial and then becomes a dictator which is kind of blah. The Last Adventure gives the Valeyard a backstory that is kind of boring: he's a CIA weapon that could be any Time Lord. The Benny one's okay, but essentially makes the Valeyard a different version of the Beevers Master in that he's obsessed with extending his own existence lest he regenerate and become the Doctor again
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May 2, 2024 22:09
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I think I've just decided that David Tennant during the Time Lord Victorious stretch at the end there was the Valeyard and popped into a disguise for the trial.
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May 2, 2024 22:12
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Gridlock There's a bit of a theme in series 3 of "devolving to the level of beasts" isn't there. The Macra here, and kind of humanity in general, largely content to sit in a traffic jam in a closed system for decades. Lazarus a few episodes later, and then the Toclafane in the finale. This is one of the few episodes that doesn't have a villain, which I'm a fan of. The Doctor just helps with a hosed up situation. "You Are Not Alone" used to mean the Master, but post 2013, why not let's say it means the Time Lords. If the Face Of Boe knows about one it makes sense he'd know about the other, right? Daleks In Manhattan / Evolution Of The Daleks When the Doctor first encounters the pig slaves he says to his friends "basically... run!" Was one of Matt Smith's early iconic lines seriously a call back to this story?! I wonder if the humanoid Dalek was meant to resemble Scaroth from City Of Death. I guess a hosed up alien head can only have so many basic shapes. For all the faults with this episode, it's got some great ideas. I love one of the Daleks realising they need to change to survive ("life depends on change and renewal" as some fictional character whose name I can't place once said) and the change inevitably making them more reasonable, like how you'll get mutations of a pathogen like covid which spread easier but are less deadly. And of course the "pure" Daleks immediately deciding the plan is no good because it would compromise their purity and owning him. It's possible that from their perspective, he's devolved to the level of a beast, like the pig slaves Slightly odd for Lazlo to be cured offscreen, but it'd hardly be entertaining to watch David Tennant recite a bunch of technobabble while mixing beakers of coloured goo, the point is he has all he needs to do the job right here. Another bizarre ending where Lazlo gets to go live in Hooverville. Hooverville is a bad place! If this was an alien planet the Doctor would be finding out who was responsible for creating Hooverville and defeating them! The Lazarus Experiment For all the madcap action scenes, it's got a lovely downbeat ending. Got a laugh out of the misdirection at the end, though it's also frustrating that we're a full halfway through the series and the "just one more trip" schtick is only now done. Another one that doesn't really have a villain. Just a hosed up thing that happens. Of course, there is a real villain operating behind the scenes, bwa ha ha... 42 An event! The first Chris Chibnall episode! What they've done is, they've made a real-time episode which is basically a regular episode but occasionally it cuts to a countdown clock, and for the title they've taken the TV show 24, whose gimmick was also that it took place in real time, and reversed the digits to get a rough approximation of the length of the episode and a reference to Douglas Adams. That's it, that's the whole thing. I'm predisposed to be unkind to this episode after Chibnall didn't really acquit himself well as a lead writer, but it's by no means a total write-off. Looks very nice, for starters. I particularly like how when the Doctor gets infected by the sun he absolutely loses his poo poo, like he's being driven insane by a level of panic and fear he's never shown in the whole show so far.
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May 3, 2024 05:11
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Bicyclops posted:I think I've just decided that David Tennant during the Time Lord Victorious stretch at the end there was the Valeyard and popped into a disguise for the trial. Speaking of Tennant: considering that it's Moffat who rejigged the Doctor numbering and went out of his way to mention the Valeyard a couple of times in his run, it almost makes me think he had some Valeyard-related plans for the Meta-Crisis Doctor. The Valeyard is stated to have amalgamated "somewhere between [the Doctor's] twelfth and final incarnation", and counting the War Doctor and Ten's aborted regeneration in Journey's End as Moffat does, that's between 10-2 and 11, so the Meta-Crisis Doctor is an offshoot of their twelfth incarnation. The Valeyard is also stated to come from "the darker sides" of the Doctor's nature, and the Meta-Crisis Doctor is said to be "full of blood, anger and revenge" and even cordoned off from the universe by the Doctor for being too dangerous to be left to his own devices. Maybe thing's don't work out on Pete's World, and after he's grown old and bitter and Michael Jayston-y there he hops over back to the regular universe and sets up the Trial to reclaim the full status of the Doctor, including their remaining regenerations, which he as a half-human (on his mother's side) clone doesn't have. I remember that the comic The Forgotten kind of gestures at something like this, but I think turned out to be a fake-out of some kind and it's not a very good comic anyway (and it came out well before The Time of the Doctor confirmed that the Eleventh was actually the Doctor's thirteenth and "final" incarnation).
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May 3, 2024 05:43
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Whenever David Tennant isn't on screen playing yet another Doctor variant, everybody should be asking "Where is David Tennant, playing yet another Doctor variant?" (Meta-Crisis Doctor turning Evil + The Division being able to jump dimensions is an interesting concept tho)
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May 3, 2024 06:19
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Toclafane is such a good sci-fi word Rusty has an unerring talent for sci-fi words
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May 3, 2024 11:15
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Barry Foster posted:Toclafane is such a good sci-fi word Chibnall: Man, if Barry Foster loves the word Toclafane, wait till they get a load of what I can do!
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May 3, 2024 11:44
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So at pub trivia last night, there was a question of 'what televised actor was the tenth person to play The Doctor'. And I had a chuckle at the time because I could tell exactly why he added 'televised', because Peter Cushing throws off the count if you don't. But now I've gotten into the hole of remembering other exceptions. Scream of the Shalka had happened by then. And Unbound had happened by that point, so that adds I think another six. Technically if we're going by 'televised' it's not even right to say Tennant, because Curse of Fatal Death adds another five and technically the tenth televised Doctor is now Richard E. Grant... And now I'm just wondering, do we actually have a number at this point of how many people have played their version of the Doctor in any 'official' medium? Presume not including impersonators, or else Big Finish finding soundalikes throws us down a hole and Nick Briggs counts like eighteen times. Cleretic fucked around with this message at 12:03 on May 3, 2024 |
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May 3, 2024 11:52
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Cleretic posted:So at pub trivia last night, there was a question of 'what televised actor was the tenth person to play The Doctor'. And I had a chuckle at the time because I could tell exactly why he added 'televised', because Peter Cushing throws off the count if you don't. Don't forget Richard Hurndall and Michael Jayston.
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May 3, 2024 12:04
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It's pretty straightforward! #1. William Hartnell #2. Patrick Troughton #Fugitive. Jo Martin #3. Jon Pertwee #4. Tom Baker #5. Peter Davison #6. Colin Baker #7. Sylvester McCoy #8. Paul McGann #War. John Hurt #9. Christopher Eccleston #10. David Tennant #11. Matt Smith #12. Peter Capaldi #13. Jodie Whittaker #14. David Tennant #15. Ncuti Gatwa It's basic math!
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May 3, 2024 12:05
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Cleretic posted:So at pub trivia last night, there was a question of 'what televised actor was the tenth person to play The Doctor'. And I had a chuckle at the time because I could tell exactly why he added 'televised', because Peter Cushing throws off the count if you don't. I feel like the answer should be Paul McGann (because while it was a movie, it was a TV movie) as Shalka Doctor and the Valeyard, regardless of canonicity, are televised Doctors. I'm guessing the answer they were looking for was David Tennant though. edit: Forgot the Curse of Fatal Death, even though you mentioned it in your post.
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May 3, 2024 12:46
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What was the pub quiz’s answer?
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May 3, 2024 12:56
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If it's bog standard pub trivia, it'll be David Tennant; unless they have a rule for 'bonus points for technicalities/proven corrections'
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May 3, 2024 12:58
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Strictly speaking televised should mean a primarily television production (like I'm sure the Cushing movies got aired on TV at some point, but they were released in theatres), so the TV movie should count, and Scream of the Shalka doesn't since it was never aired on TV AFAICT. Michael Jayston is slightly pushing it, but he is explicitly described as being between the Doctor's incarnations so I think he's fair game. The only other thing I could think of is whoever played the Watcher from Logopolis, but that's a much larger leap than Jayston IMO. But thanks to the Timeless Child, the Morbius Doctors are now officially incarnations so it's a moot point. 1. Hartnell 2. Troughton 3. Pertwee 4. T. Bakes 5. Christopher Barry 6. Robert Banks Stewart 7. Christopher Baker 8. Philip Hinchcliffe 9. Douglas Camfield 10. Graeme Harper 11. Robert Holmes 12. George Gallaccio 13. Davison 14. Richard Hurndall 15. C. Bakes 16. Michael Jayston 17. McCoy 18. Curse of Fatal Death, etc, I got bored 25ish. McGann
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May 3, 2024 13:07
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Rochallor posted:But thanks to the Timeless Child, the Morbius Doctors are now officially incarnations Yeah, the source on information on them, The Master, is famously known for telling the truth. And the place he got the data from is noted as being infallible* too! * Apart from every single time it has ever appeared in the show, where it has been co-opted and used to sell a lie instead.
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May 3, 2024 13:10
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SirSamVimes posted:I feel like the answer should be Paul McGann (because while it was a movie, it was a TV movie) as Shalka Doctor and the Valeyard, regardless of canonicity, are televised Doctors. Wasn't Shalka a webcast and therefore not actually broadcast on TV?
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May 3, 2024 13:48
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This is one of those questions that’s annoying in a pub quiz because it’s happened to me, and it turned out they included both Peter Cushing and Richard Hurndall.
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May 3, 2024 14:04
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Forktoss posted:Speaking of Tennant: considering that it's Moffat who rejigged the Doctor numbering and went out of his way to mention the Valeyard a couple of times in his run, it almost makes me think he had some Valeyard-related plans for the Meta-Crisis Doctor. The Valeyard is stated to have amalgamated "somewhere between [the Doctor's] twelfth and final incarnation", and counting the War Doctor and Ten's aborted regeneration in Journey's End as Moffat does, that's between 10-2 and 11, so the Meta-Crisis Doctor is an offshoot of their twelfth incarnation. The Valeyard is also stated to come from "the darker sides" of the Doctor's nature, and the Meta-Crisis Doctor is said to be "full of blood, anger and revenge" and even cordoned off from the universe by the Doctor for being too dangerous to be left to his own devices. Maybe thing's don't work out on Pete's World, and after he's grown old and bitter and Michael Jayston-y there he hops over back to the regular universe and sets up the Trial to reclaim the full status of the Doctor, including their remaining regenerations, which he as a half-human (on his mother's side) clone doesn't have. Moffat wanting to do this should be the weird part, but in fact the weird part is that he seemed to set something up and then didn't follow through. Maybe he expected Big Finish would step in? Now, with bigeneration, Davies has provided another retroactive mechanism for what happened: 10-2 now produced, not just the Hand-Doctor and the Doctor-Donna, but also the Valeyard, who gets to go in all sorts of unchecked "Timelord Victorious" kinds of ways. There's even some time-traveling Daleks around who might have thrown him into the past, and he'd have a reason to resent the Time Lords as their continued existence is an impediment to him. Jerusalem posted:Yeah, the source on information on them, The Master, is famously known for telling the truth. And the place he got the data from is noted as being infallible* too! And the whole thing feels like a metaphor that maybe suggests what we see on TV isn't always the truth! (Or maybe it's a metaphor for the BBC's archives and the erasure of past episodes is just echoing back into the show itself? I've lost track somewhere.)
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May 3, 2024 14:19
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Whoever called Richard Hurndell the Phurst Doctor nailed his numbering. Like even his name sounds like somebody was trying to remember "William Hartnell" and flubbed it.
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May 3, 2024 14:21
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The doctor getting another set of regenerations changes what "between his twelfth and final regeneration" even means anyway, we don't even need bigeneration or the metacrisis to explain where the Valeyard comes from any more.
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May 3, 2024 14:44
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Fil5000 posted:The doctor getting another set of regenerations changes what "between his twelfth and final regeneration" even means anyway, we don't even need bigeneration or the metacrisis to explain where the Valeyard comes from any more. And thanks to Chibnall we can wonder whether any pre-Hartnell regeneration counted, in which case, the Valeyard might have happened before the start of the series.
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May 3, 2024 14:54
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Honestly I'd rather we just left stuff from Eric Saward's tenure behind. I'm looking at you, inexplicable Lytton comic series.
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May 3, 2024 14:57
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Fil5000 posted:Wasn't Shalka a webcast and therefore not actually broadcast on TV? I have a feeling that it might have been broadcast on the BBC Red Button service, so technically televised but not broadcast in the traditional way? Anyway, surely any talk about people playing the Doctor needs to include the likes of Terry Walsh or whoever it was played the Doctor when he was walking on location in The Reign of Terror?
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May 3, 2024 15:23
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Another episode of Whose Doctor Is It Anyways where the numbering is made up and the regenerations don't matter
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May 3, 2024 15:37
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Harlock posted:Another episode of Whose Doctor Is It Anyways where the numbering is made up and the regenerations don't matter A Whose Line Doctor Who adventure where the Doctor is the fourth with Ryan Stiles, Colin Mochrie, and Wayne Brady and they have to do a better Harold than some alien species. This is me claiming the intellectual property for this idea, by the way, Harlock can be cut in at 10 percent.
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May 3, 2024 16:08
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Fair Bear Maiden posted:And thanks to Chibnall we can wonder whether any pre-Hartnell regeneration counted They don't because they never happened  Now you may counter that it is a television program and NONE of it actually happened, but to that I offer the well-researched rebuttal that "Doctor Who is real and one day they will show up and take me on adventures with them!  "
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May 3, 2024 22:35
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Jerusalem posted:They don't because they never happened Now I want an episode where Doctor Who is revealed to simply be a TV show in-universe. Fifteen goes on a joyous rant to Ruby about how he doesn’t actually exist and everything they did was just the universal barriers of reality and fiction breaking down, followed by the reveal that the two of them are just coworkers at a retail shop and that his name is actually Gary. The next episode carries on in the Tardis like nothing ever happened.
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May 3, 2024 22:41
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^ I feel like the two options in response to that idea is to either make a Community reference (Inspector Spacetime!) or say "I'm nothing without an audience." : p
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May 3, 2024 23:15
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Fair Bear Maiden posted:And thanks to Chibnall we can wonder whether any pre-Hartnell regeneration counted, in which case, the Valeyard might have happened before the start of the series. If you counted the Morbius Doctors, it made Peter Davison the last incarnation, which fans even speculated about at the time when he said "Feels different this time..." Dunno if that would make Colin himself the Valeyard, or what
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May 3, 2024 23:18
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HD DAD posted:Now I want an episode where Doctor Who is revealed to simply be a TV show in-universe. Fifteen goes on a joyous rant to Ruby about how he doesn’t actually exist and everything they did was just the universal barriers of reality and fiction breaking down, followed by the reveal that the two of them are just coworkers at a retail shop and that his name is actually Gary. I am very thankful that this will never happen.
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May 3, 2024 23:19
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HD DAD posted:Now I want an episode where Doctor Who is revealed to simply be a TV show in-universe. Fifteen goes on a joyous rant to Ruby about how he doesn’t actually exist and everything they did was just the universal barriers of reality and fiction breaking down, followed by the reveal that the two of them are just coworkers at a retail shop and that his name is actually Gary. So, Season One of Akibaranger?
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May 4, 2024 00:08
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Human Nature / The Family Of Blood While I wish streaming releases of TV shows would get rid of the "previously" and "next time" segments, it's rare that I wish two-parters would be cut together into one long episode. Heaven Sent and Hell Bent wouldn't be improved by that, for example. Or the upcoming Utopia/The Sound Of Drums/Last Of The Time Lords. This story would be though, I think. It's one continuous plot that flows nice and smooth from one episode to the next, which makes sense what with it being adapted from a novel and all. God Baines/Son Of Mine is entertaining. He seems like he's having enormous fun just talking. Pretty perfect that he gets the big ending monologue where he isn't having fun any more. With my snooty critic hat on I can't help but feel the ending setpiece where the Doctor is pretending to be John Smith and "accidentally" flips all the switches cuts to close-up shots of the switches each time making it a bit too obvious what he's doing. Then I remember I watched this episode live in 2007 and it wasn't obvious to me at all. Blink Hard to have anything to say about this, possibly the show's most famous episode. One thing that always bugged me was that the Doctor gets his Tardis back a short while after he meets the policeman in 1969, but the policeman can't get a return trip. I guess he needs to take the long way round to preserve the timeline. "Because Sally Sparrow wrote it in a book and now I have no choice". At least he got married and did well for himself in the entertainment industry. Still, I can't help but wonder how THAT conversation went. Utopia / The Sound Of Drums / Last Of The Time Lords It's fun to get dim memories of when I first watched these. Utopia being part one was a big shock twist, silly in retrospect because not much happens which obviously means it's doing setup. But I thought it was just a light breather episode like Boom Town. I did a double take at the name of the journalist who's onto the Master. Davies realised that some names are too good to waste on one-off minor characters, and nobody is gonna be mad at him for later bringing back the classic name Vivienne Rook. oh my god the Master wears a black jacket with a red inner lining. John Simm meeting up with Peter Capaldi was destiny. Flying Magic Jesus Doctor is exactly my poo poo. The "clap your hands if you believe in fairies" stuff, celebrating the power of stories and bringing the viewer into the narrative (I sure hope I'm not the only one who had an urge to chant Doctor along with all the characters) is something I can see Steven Moffat doing (indeed, three years later in The Big Bang, I did see Steven Moffat do basically this) but it's given a right-on anti-authority Davies flavour when the Doctor sums the whole plan up as "you can't stop them thinking". The four taps is the ultimate ear worm btw, I'm pretty confident I'm not the only one who finds himself tapping four at a time in quiet moments to this day. Voyage Of The Damned I remembered a bunch of characters dying but didn't remember until rewatching that they all died within one five minute scene in the middle. That's the problem with doing a disaster movie episode, actual disaster movies have the runtime and budget for more than one big special effects setpiece scene. Weird detail that with Max Capricorn dead the robots all immediately identified the Doctor as the highest authority figure. Don't they have a perfectly good midshipman right there? Series 4 coming up on the rewatch, all aboard the train to banger town 
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May 4, 2024 01:58
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2house2fly posted:Human Nature / The Family Of Blood The writer of the episode, Paul Cornell, would later release a 2 part epilogue - Shadow of Doubt + The Shadow in the Mirror https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSfOgnDhmRc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0U_QD568iw "The one with red hair, who thought they were the last"
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May 4, 2024 02:26
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Season 13 Episode 4: Village of the Angels Written by Chris Chibnall & Maxine Alderton, Directed by Jamie Magnus Stone Claire Brown posted:The Angel has the TARDIS! Here it is, the best episode of this season of Doctor Who. Also in what is surely an unrelated matter, the only episode not (entirely) written by Chris Chibnall. I have to admit that when this episode first aired, I wasn't as high on it as others were at the time. I'm not sure why, maybe I'd just hit a point of frustration or was in the wrong mindset the week it aired, but I nitpicked a lot of things, I didn't like some of the creative choices, and I thought it was overall a big mess. Re-watching it now, there are still little bits to nitpick - the Angels aren't free to move when ANYBODY blinks, the Doctor is looking right at an Angel that moves when Jericho blinks for God's sake! - but they're incredibly minor, and the bigger problems is more about the intrusion of Bel's story messing with the flow of the episode, because with only six episodes there was nowhere else to jam it in. But it is a very atmospheric story, it includes some fantastic visuals like the Angel hands emerging through the walls of the tunnels, and it develops and ties all its subplots (outside of Bel/Vinder) together very efficiently, with a very strong cliffhanger that shouldn't be discounted just because it's so quickly discarded in the next episode. I don't like that the Angels are working for Division (because Division is loving lame, only topped in the lameness stakes by Big Finish's The Forge) but I do like that they're actually chasing a rogue Angel, and the way those two come together out of a shared cruelty. Angel stories are a mixed bag in that every episode after their first somewhat dilutes just how perfect a standalone original episode they had, but each that has followed has included some very strong elements too and this is no different. The "kindness" of the Angels has long been replaced by a cold, cruel mockery, and the inclusion of new "rules" sometimes appears to contradict other things we've learned: if being touched by an Angel a second time outright kills you, then surely it negates the initial "meal" of the lost potential future of their victims? But at their heart, the strength of each Angel story is in the creepy imagery and the way their "rules" have to be adapted to by victims trying desperately to survive a seemingly untouchable and inescapable foe. This episode features all of that in spades, and I only wish it could have been a standalone like Blink rather than having to be tied in to the overall Division/Timeless Child nonsense dragging it down. Even then it could have worked if they'd just tied it into the Flux itself, perhaps my biggest regret is that their Quantum Extraction wasn't about carving out a little piece of time/space for themselves to wait out the Flux, but just their way of capturing a target. https://i.imgur.com/TbIgR3T.mp4 The episode starts with a lovely filmed sequence of Professor Eustacius Jericho (played by Kevin McNally, best known from Pirates of the Caribbean) recording a psychic experiment with local woman Claire Brown during the 1960s. Except, of course, we know from the first episode that Claire Brown comes from the 21st Century, and she nervously realizes Jericho has recorded her admitting she was born in 1987 and that it was recorded by his lie detector as the truth, even if he has initially accepted her insistence he simply misheard her. Claire is "assisting" Jericho but clearly also hoping to get answers to her own questions about the visions she suffers, including of the Angel that sent her back to the 1960s in the first place. I actually like that this ends up not being an issue or leading to any particular resolution, because as a character moment it works in the context that of course this would be Claire's biggest concern until suddenly the Doctor bursts into the basement and everybody gets sidelined by much more important issues. The Doctor, having taken a gamble to blast the Angel out of the TARDIS, leaves Dan and Yaz to help an elderly couple search for their granddaughter while she investigates strange readings on her Sonic. This brings her to Jericho's house and into his basement, where she and Claire immediately recognize each other, and we get a classic bit of Doctor dialogue. Jericho: How did you get in here? Doctor: Your door was open. Jericho: It most certainly was not! Doctor: Well, it was once I opened it but let's not get bogged down in the order of things. As mentioned above, the story does a good job of first separating and then bringing together the main character subplots to a very effective cliffhanger finish, as well as effective use of the period setting. While the Doctor is in the basement dealing with the Angel siege on Jericho's home, Dan and Yaz attempt to aid an elderly couple search for their Granddaughter. Here we have a return to Yaz's often understated role of using her police training to try and both put people at ease but also collect information, and she slams headfirst into a very different mindset to that she is used to. Firstly, the grandfather assumes that Dan is in charge. The grandparents, while concerned enough to be searching and to have organized other people in the village to help them, are perplexed when Yaz asks them to give her more information about the girl, Peggy, saying that at 10 years old she can't have any particular personality to speak of outside of "she's usually reliable". They discount Yaz's efforts to conduct a far more efficient and structured grid pattern in their search, insisting that Peggy should be easy enough to find, it's just a matter of spreading people wide enough to find where she is. Dan grumpily ponders whether Peggy ran away purely to get away from her grandparents, and their eventual fate and Peggy's reaction indicates she had little love for them, but they also don't strike me as (knowingly) abusive. It was a different time, they clearly felt enough for her to organize the search, but they're not open or expressive of their emotions. They don't really think of her as a real person, not out of any disdain or malice towards her, but simply because she's a child and she isn't "finished" yet, not somebody to be taken seriously or to consider their thoughts or feelings as having any real impact. It's infuriating, it's old-fashioned, and young Peggy not particularly feeling strongly about their deaths is understandable while still by itself not standing out as something being lacking in her own moral character. After all, we see her as an old woman, and we know that she spent the bulk of the episode trying to warn people, to save them, and she spoke to her own younger self as a person in her own right. Peggy is left behind purely because the Angels enjoy leaving a witness not as a mercy but to further rub their victim's nose in their powerlessness and to leave just enough information to make people fear the Angels. That she takes that trauma and chooses to remain in the village and openly try to help people speaks well to her as a person. https://i.imgur.com/HivZKfN.mp4 As Dan and Yaz search the deserted 1901 version of the village, the Doctor has discovered from Claire that the town will be found abandoned after tonight in 1967 and that it happened before in 1901. It takes her until her late episode "reunion" with Yaz and Dan to figure out that the Angels have struck this same village twice in order to create a "quantum extraction" that pulls their target out of time and space. She's right initially to assume this was in order to trap the rogue Angel and keep it from running, but learns too late that their target has shifted to her as a bigger prize. The Angels effectively replace the Judoon as hunters of the Doctor for Division, an idea I have issues with but works fine enough within the context of the episode itself. As a tangent though, if the Judoon were hunting the Fugitive Doctor on order from Division, when they eventually capture the wrong version of the Doctor and dump her in space prison at the end of the previous season... whose space prison was it? Was it Division's? Were they happy enough to just leave her locked away in there? If it was Division, and if Division are so incredibly secretive and unknown, how did Captain Jack know about the prison and enough to get arrested and sent there? I still feel like a lot of this was thrown together with not a lot of thought, or rather that a lot of thought went into the wrong things (like "fixing" the "problem" of the Morbius faces). But the important thing in regards to this episode is how we end up at the cliffhanger, and the Doctor's barricading of them in the basement and their eventual escape through the tunnels works very well, making good use of the existing framework of "rules" we have for the Angels outside of a few already mentioned annoying moments. The Doctor tears up the drawing of an Angel to avoid one manifesting through the image, but doesn't think to destroy those pieces which allow them to reassemble until she sets it on fire and thus the image of the Angel as well. She plays with fire metaphorically too, admitting the risk when she sets up a rudimentary CCTV with Jericho's television set so they can keep any Angels who break in quantum locked by observing them... but knowing that this also gives them a potential direct entry into the basement via the television if they don't keep it constantly observed. She talks with Claire and grasps that like Amy Pond she has been "infected" with an Angel, that her visions of the future meant that she saw the Angel that was coming for her, which allowed the Angel to take up residence in her head and travel back in time with her. Able to come and go from Claire at will and thus effectively bounce between 1967 and the present (where it slid into the TARDIS through Yaz's phone), it orchestrates events to threaten the Doctor to help her to escape the other Angels or it will kill Claire. This is clever by the Angel, because while the threat is guaranteed to get the Doctor to work to save Claire but ALSO defeat the Angel, the Angel relies on both her smarts and her low opinion of the Angel itself to trick her into not grasping the Angel is actually using the same bait trick twice in order to trade its freedom from the other Angels by offering it the Doctor as a tastier prize. What does the Angel know? Everything. It worked for Division and was privy to all their dirty little secrets, and it dangles that as a further incentive to the Doctor, knowing she'll be intrigued but also distrustful, that she'll assume the Angel is just using the knowledge to force her assistance, a further distraction from its true plan. All this is good! It's effectively written, subtle in parts without being overly so, but also plain enough in others to make the overall plot completely understandable to anybody just jumping in: The Angels are cruel and inhuman sadists, but also smart ones. Those who have seen the other Angel stories know that there is some inconsistency there, but even that works in showing that the initial "kindness" the 10th Doctor mentioned was its own form of sadistic cruelty. https://i.imgur.com/FMgM9vS.mp4 Yes the Doctor gets fooled, but also the episode makes it very clear the Doctor isn't an idiot. This is one of the sadly too rare episodes where the Doctor is a mostly proactive force who directs the action. She takes easy control of the scene at Jericho's house and quickly overwhelms his own objections. She explains what is happening, she comes up with plans, she leads and the others naturally follow. When they appear trapped, she reveals - much like at the start of the last episode - that she has absorbed nearly every detail of the room upon entry almost instantly, picking up on the floor plans pinned to the basement wall show a secret "Assignation tunnel", which is a very polite way of saying one of the former owners of the house liked to sneak out and gently caress. As Angels close in on them, the Doctor pulls every trick she can just to get them through the tunnel. Getting out of the tunnel doesn't "solve" the issue, but that isn't the point. As Missy once noted to Clara, a plan doesn't necessarily entail laying out every step in advance, but simply figuring out how to survive from one moment to the next long enough that you escape/win. The Doctor isn't fighting against a clock that says she has to solve everything by the end of the episode, the Doctor's concern is just getting them out of Jericho's house and through the tunnel. After that there is still the village to deal with, Yaz and Dan to find, the missing little girl, escaping the Angels etc. But she's taking it one step at a time until suddenly she isn't, as she realizes for once she's been played by a different chess-master, that the Angels stop actively trying to catch her when they could have, and she is informed that the Angels have decided to give her some time because "they're enjoying watching you work it out." Some of the most memorable moments of the revival have come when somebody - usually the Master - gets to drink in the moment the Doctor realizes they've been hoodwinked or haven't seen the truth hidden in plain sight. This moment doesn't land as strongly as those, but it's still a strong moment, as the Doctor finally grasps that the Angels have changed their target, that Dan, Yaz and Jericho are trapped in 1901, that Claire is trapped in 1967, and that she is simply trapped. Taking it slowly to enjoy her horror all the more, the Angels slowly contain the Doctor within the form of a Weeping Angel of her own, sealing her frozen in a quantum moment that even she won't be able to escape from, because now she's quantum locked in a state of non-existence only they can release her from. As cliffhanger endings go, it IS one that I think will stand the test of time, even if the resolution in the next episode isn't particularly good. The visual of the Doctor reduced to a statue, head buried in her hands, taken away by a triumphant enemy in front of her horrified companions is a hell of a climax for the episode. https://i.imgur.com/PEw0z8W.mp4 It's barely been mentioned, but Bel's adventures through what remains of the universe continue in this episode. The subplot interferes with the quality of the overall episode in my opinion, but I do think it was a necessary addition albeit one that would have best fitted in another episode. With only six episodes in the season though, there wasn't much else room to put it, and it had to take place after Once, Upon Time as a major aspect of it relies on the Sugar Skull Gang instituting the next phase of their plan to "rule in hell". It serves the purpose of showing us what is happening in the Universe, how desperate the situation is, and continue the storyline of Bel and Vinder's attempts to find each other. We see that Azure is collecting people through the use of "Passenger", which is apparently is an entity known enough that Bel understands it is dangerous, but not well known enough that thousands of survivors from all across the universe who have assembled on the planet at Azure's beckoning see nothing at all concerned about the giant, impassive serial killer looking thing that absorbs people into itself. Bel saves the guide who took her to be "rescued" by Azure, enraging him as he believed he was going to be saved. After she leaves, he eventually meets Vinder and admits he now suspects she saved him, but fears he will never get to thank her. He also admits that time appears to be acting strange now (which is odd, since the Mouri re-restrained Time so things should still be moving normally in the remains of the Universe, that's why the TARDIS is "less" hosed up than it was), but leads Vinder to a message left by Bel that rather irritatingly has her admit it's a one-use only thing she can't gently caress up before she rambles on long enough that she runs out of time to leave him her coordinates. She has told him WHAT she is doing though, if not where, as she takes it upon herself to track down the Sugar Skull Gang and see what they are doing with the people they have "rescued", meaning he just has to go in search of people who are already openly broadcasting out how to be found. https://i.imgur.com/udam2Q5.mp4 The budget and filming limitations stand out pretty strong here, not least of which being that all the survivors of the Flux who showed up on the planet appear to basically be humans/humanoids with not even simplistic facial prosthetics to give them an alien look. Village of the Angels is an odd bird in that it works best as a standalone story, but it is tied too deeply into both the season long storyline and the wider overall story Chibnall was trying (and failing) to tell to really work that way. Where it is more firmly its own thing is when it is at its best, and it serves as a reminder of what remains true whether the showrunner is Chibnall, Moffatt, RTD or anybody else: you need variety in your writers. This is the only episode of the season that Chibnall did not solely write, and it is the strongest. Part of that is simply because it doesn't entirely feel like all the other episodes so, and Doctor Who is at its best when it is providing a broad range of ideas, stories, characters and ways of telling a tale. I wouldn't rank this episode as one of the all time best stories in Doctor Who history, whether revival or classic series, but I do rank it as the best of this season. That's not damning with faint praise, it's a genuinely good episode that, had it been made outside of the context of THIS particular season, probably could have raised to even greater heights. The heights it reaches is still impressive though, especially knowing that for the rest of the season, it's all downhill from here. https://i.imgur.com/lWqKyJM.mp4 Index of Doctor Who Write-ups for Television Episodes/Big Finish Audio Stories. Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 04:12 on May 4, 2024 |
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May 4, 2024 04:10
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHGW3PlUKMY Soon™
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May 4, 2024 18:15
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Classic Simpsons gag, love it. I don't usually comment on colour grading but hard to not notice that turquoise TARDIS. Unless he's repainted?
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May 4, 2024 18:36
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Khanstant posted:Classic Simpsons gag, love it. About that...
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May 4, 2024 19:06
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While tooling around youtube i stumbled on the second episode (and only the second for some reason) of RTD's pre-Doctor Who miniseries The Second Coming. Worth a watch if you've a spare hour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKvyETDdW6Y It was fun to catch some bits that made it into Doctor Who eventually. particularly how when confronted with his own death the protagonist has a brief power trip where he claims he could stop himself dying because the world needs him too much, then decides that being mad with power is a sign that it's his time to die. Also a while before that when someone dies and the protagonist says "he's gone to a better place" and his girlfriend responds "well that's all right then!"
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May 4, 2024 20:59
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Cool story but a little preposterous. A president named Keith? Over my dead body!
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May 4, 2024 21:11
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