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armoredgorilla posted:it's cobiwann and they're doing an audio. no that can't be right i haven't gotten the email yet
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May 28, 2015 05:41
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i did a thing, i made a decision
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May 28, 2015 07:01
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ftfy, also I have no idea what this show is but it sounds awful. More awful than who
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May 28, 2015 07:07
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Toxxupation posted:In which nobody knows how computers work One of the few episodes I gave up on watching even in background (not counting those from series 1-2 that I skipped thanks to this thread) fatherboxx fucked around with this message at 07:20 on May 28, 2015 |
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May 28, 2015 07:17
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Blasmeister posted:It's Tim Allen, isn't it or Ted Danson. They're basically the same person as I understand it
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May 28, 2015 08:01
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Doctor Who "The Bells of Saint John" Series 7, Episode 7 I like Clara. It's been two false starts but, finally, Jenna-Louise Coleman is aboard the TARDIS - well, almost. I guess Eleven could, in the Eleventh Hour (ehh? EHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH?) gently caress it all up and land one hundred years later over a day later like Clara asked, but disregarding major catastrophe Clara is now a full-time Companion of The Doctor. And it's here that we finally see what Clara's like as an actual character over someone who saves the day then dies, and what's there with Clara Oswald is really fascinating. She's definitely a texturally different companion from what we've seen be- Oxxidation posted:
-fore now on Doctor Who. Ahem. As Oxxidation pointed out, she's the Martha Jones to Eleven's Ten (man Doctor Who's plot can construct some really stupid-looking sentences), but the differences go further and run deeper than that. Clara is the first Companion Doctor Who has had that joined the TARDIS explicitly temporarily. Every other Companion the joined, joined more-or-less for life (or for such a long time that it mine as well be for life). Every other Companion goes on board with the expectation and desire to stay for as long as humanly possible - which reflects backwards on their personality. The TARDIS represents change and the capability for improvement to a potential Companion - an ability to see the known universe, yes, but also to find themselves in some way and improve, to arc and change and grow as a person. But that requires the Companion in question being somehow flawed; people can only improve if they start from a state that needs improving. So, every single Companion of The Doctor had some crucial flaw that needed fixing or a desire that wasn't being sated. Rose was feeling choked out and stuck in a rut, forced to do a soulless job she hated and desperately wanted to see the world. Mickey's realization that he's the "tin dog", the put-upon, is what motivates him to climb aboard; the desire to be useful for once in his life is what motivates him, initially, to sign on. Martha had the supreme desire to expand her own horizons combined with a lovely rehash of Rose's unrequited crush on The Doctor "arc". Amy had a desperate, deep-seated psychological obsession with The Doctor since her youth and needed to be validated by him. Even Donna, who was introduced in "The Runaway Bride" as more-or-less supremely well adjusted, needed to be changed to feeling completely aimless in her life and goals so it'd make any logical sense for her to hop aboard. The closest any Companion got to being actualized was in Rory, so Moffat - cleverly - made his fatal flaw Amy, and his sole motivation for coming aboard. What this means is that the low status that Companions enter the TARDIS with automatically - because they need The Doctor or his abilities in some way, The Doctor doesn't necessarily need them - is even lower because the Companions are somehow incomplete if they're not brought on full-time. It widens the inherent power dynamic that all Doctor/Companion relationships have to the point that The Doctor becomes some combination of lover, parent, and personal savior to everyone who goes inside that blue phone box. Every previous Companion's personalities reflective this deep-seated desire to stay in the TARDIS at all costs - Rose and Amy illustrated it most obviously, where at least in the latter's case the show had the good sense to treat her Doctor obsession as unhealthy as it clearly was. But Donna and Rory got it too, and even Martha did. Martha's the straight man to Ten, yes, the person who keeps him in line but her scenes of being the Costello to Ten's Abbott are undercut by, one, her crush on The Doctor (ugh), and two, her clear need to accomplish whatever greater plan she has aboard the TARDIS. There's a certain humorlessness to Martha's character - it's good, it's what makes her distinctive - that is due to her overriding desire to get The Job Done, whatever The Job is. Clara is essentially cajoled onto the TARDIS, brought onboard by Eleven's curiosity/awe at how she's managed to die twice while still being alive and her generalized other accomplishments both as Oswin and as Clara Oswin Oswald. So, yeah, she's a straight man to Eleven, but calling her another Martha Jones is a bit reductive; there seems to be an overwhelming sense of fun to Clara, where she's this light personality game for anything not because she has to be but because it's easier than the alternative. Her acceptance of the TARDIS gig is mostly due to humoring her weird Northern alien friend. Admittedly, he did save her life, and sure she does have a vague desire "to travel", but beyond that Clara comes across as someone who would be perfectly content if The Doctor zoomed out of her life forever a minute after "The Bells of Saint John" ended. And that makes her interesting because it means she keeps her status while becoming a Companion - she doesn't really "owe" The Doctor anything nor needs any function that he or his spaceship provides, and explicitly is joining for a predetermined and relatively short amount of time. It means she's joining, essentially, on a lark and views it as such. Her dynamic with The Doctor in "Saint John" reflects that, sort of a cheery, witty, almost disinterested tone to her conversations with him. She's not hanging on his every word or looking at him like he's a god made flesh, but as this extremely bizarre, incredibly earnest alien with a phonebox spaceship. It also helps that Clara in this episode is incredibly human. I've made enough hay out of how goddamn terrible Clara Oswin Oswald was in "The Snowmen", but it's really quite amazing how much more palatable Jenna Coleman comes across onscreen when she's playing a flawed normal human character over the most perfect being to ever exist. Sure, it's a bit stretching the bounds of plausibility that someone in the year 2013 wouldn't know how Wi-Fi works or what it does, much less the whole loving Internet, but I'll take it if it signifies that Moffat's willing to write a human character with real human flaws over the beautific martyr Clara of "The Snowmen". I've written a thousand words about this episode without even touching on the plot in any specific way, which should impress how cold it ultimately left me. Sure, it wasn't bad but it wasn't exactly good, either. Part of this is the fact that the conceit was something I swear I had already seen before, but it was also because "killers in the Wi-Fi" means the episode had to say the word "Wi-Fi" a lot, and I started noticing how stupid of a word "Wi-Fi" sounds when spoken aloud a lot. Like, it sounds really, distractingly dumb, the syncopation of it. It just sounds like a Dr. Seuss word and it made the threat inherently silly when it should have come across as threatening. It also doesn't help that the episode involved a lot of "hacking" or whatever the gently caress passes for that on Who so we got some NCIS-level technological accuracy here. Again, the plot wasn't bad, just firmly secondary and kind of dull, with some "computers are literally magic" silliness that always happens when shows try to display hacking in a visually interesting way. It had some very good setpieces (Clara and Eleven on board the plane, for one, and Eleven driving that motorbike up the side of that tower was some incredibly hilarious poo poo), but the villains weren't ever really threatening - I mean, they spent the entire episode standing in a room staring at screens. The meat of the episode was focused on introducing Clara, the real Clara, to the audience, and "The Bells of Saint John" did a wonderful job at doing that. It says something for how much I hated Clara Oswin Oswald in "Snowmen" and really liked - not loved, but really liked - her here. It's a real turn around on characterization that Moffat pulled off. It's just a shame that "Saint John" is ultimately an episode that doesn't really have any selling points beyond the Eleven/Clara dynamic, on any real level. Unlike, say, "The Eleventh Hour", which was loving incredible on absolutely every level, "Saint John" is a mediocre episode of Who elevated by being able to introduce the new female Companion in a strong and interesting way. It has nothing else to really sell it on, though. Unless you really like watching motorbikes drive up the side of buildings. Which, admittedly, is pretty awesome. Grade: B Random Thoughts:
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May 28, 2015 09:54
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I couldn't sleep, this won't be A Thing
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May 28, 2015 09:57
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Souls uploaded to the Internet? Feels like Ghost in the Shell or Serial Experiments Lain to me.
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May 28, 2015 10:09
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I really liked Bells when I watched it, and whenever I think about it, I tend to think well of it.... but I also find it a surprisingly easily episode to forget, which is pretty odd for an episode that marks the start (technically) of a new Companion's run. I do like that it feels almost like a modern, Moffat-era rehash of Rose, and everything wraps up in a way I found satisfying... but it just doesn't really stand out in my mind beyond when I'm viewing it.
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May 28, 2015 10:10
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Toxxupation posted:
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May 28, 2015 10:51
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Toxxupation posted:It also doesn't help that the episode involved a lot of "hacking" or whatever the gently caress passes for that on Who so we got some NCIS-level technological accuracy here. NCIS wishes it could be as accurate as this episode. And I'm not complimenting this episode.
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May 28, 2015 11:00
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reminds me of the library two-parter "5000 souls have been saved" or whatever the statue faces say.
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May 28, 2015 11:44
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Attitude Indicator posted:reminds me of the library two-parter "5000 souls have been saved" or whatever the statue faces say. The saved / safe distinction in that episode is a good contender for Moffat's dumbest "smart" line.
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May 28, 2015 11:48
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Toxxupation posted:Okay I'm pretty sure that "souls uploaded to the Internet" was the conceit of a piece of genre media I've seen before, because I kept on getting feelings of deja vu while watching "The Bells of Saint John". Does anyone have any idea what I might be talking about? Don't worry about it. Please wake up. I'm sure it's nothing, sometimes things sound familiar when they aren't. Unplug! Please! Your family needs you!
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May 28, 2015 11:58
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I really didn't like Clara in this episode, I would rather have Dalek-Clara or Mary Poppins, because that would be so goddamn silly and perfect. Now this is just...  I feel like in series 7 she's more a walking McGuffin than a character, and that's boring.
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May 28, 2015 12:56
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One thing I like about Clara's mystery is that it's a bit of an inversion of Amy's. With Amy the Doctor had a huge impact on her life by blundering into her garden once when she was a kid, and took her with him partly out of guilt for that and partly to study the weird time stuff going on in her head. With Clara there is no weird time stuff, she's a perfectly ordinary young woman (which is a mystery itself, because there were two clones of her centuries apart, how can there be no weird time stuff?) and it's her who had an impact on him before they ever even met. Plus I kind of like that she's actually well-adjusted and won't be "fixed" by travelling with the Doctor. I'd say something hacky like "maybe this time it'll be her who fixes him" but he's basically fixed now too, so maybe they'll just have fun adventures.
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May 28, 2015 13:14
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Clara's a bit difficult to read in that she's presented as a mystery for the Doctor to solve. Rewatching these episodes as Toxx gets to them, with the benefit of her about to become the longest-running revival Companion, her personality traits are definitely there, they're just not being shown front-and-center like Amy's were. Part of the deal in this half-season is the Doctor assuming she'll react to something like Amy would, or like her other selves would, and then getting confused when she doesn't. I keep on wondering what the show would have been like if it'd gone straight from the Wedding of River Song to the Snowmen, skipped the six episodes of Pond farewell and given Clara and Eleven more room to breath.
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May 28, 2015 13:38
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This episode reminds me a lot of that Dirk Gently series, where they tried to shoehorn modern tech into a story that was written 25 years prior, by people who clearly didn't really understand much about modern tech. It just felt really awkward and out-of-place - quite an accomplishment for a sci-fi show drenched in futuristic technology - and Eleven acting as a super-hacker felt really absurd despite that already being established back in 11th Hour. Other than that I loved this episode, and you can throw me squarely in the 'loving love Clara' camp. Yes she feels more like a structure than a character at times, but the fast-paced dialogue and wit she brings to the table just trounces everything else in my mind. It makes the show fun to watch, and that's what we're all here for isn't it? zzMisc fucked around with this message at 18:07 on May 28, 2015 |
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May 28, 2015 14:15
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Toxx, thank you for your post in the other thread, because I was just trying to think of stories that should be reviled for being morally repugnant, so you were very on topic.
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May 28, 2015 14:26
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Bells of Saint John Back in the realm people actually guessed he might be! A adhuin Ali Aces BeefyTaco Blasmeister BSam cargohills ewe2 jng2058 LabyaMynora MikeJF onetruepurple Random Stranger Rochallor Well Manicured Man B And More Angela Christine Bicyclops Capfalcon Colonel Cool Dave Brookshaw DoctorWhat Gandalf21 Grouchio Jsor Labratio Lipset and Rock On Organza Quiz Paul.Power Senerio Stumiester Xenoborg C Attitude Indicator Mo0 Ohtsam Regy Rusty D fatherboxx F Nobody at all. Overall Average Guess: B. So the consensus was basically right on this time. Current rankings: Labratio: 5 Grouchio: 6 And More: 7 LabyaMynora: 7 Paul.Power: 7 DoctorWhat: 8 Dave Brookshaw: 8 ewe2: 8 Xenoborg: 8 Well Manicured Man: 8 Ali Aces: 9 Angela Christine: 9 Bicyclops: 9 Capfalcon: 9 Colonel Cool: 9 Mo0: 9 Ohtsam: 9 Rochallor: 9 Senerio: 9 Attitude Indicator: 10 Blasmeister: 10 jng2058: 10 adhuin: 11 BeefyTaco: 11 fatherboxx: 11 Jsor: 11 Lipset and Rock On: 11 MikeJF: 11 Organza Quiz: 11 Stumiester: 11 BSam: 12 Gandalf21: 12 onetruepurple: 12 Random Stranger: 14 Regy Rusty: 14 cargohills: 15 Labratio maintains the lead, but Grouchio is within spitting distance and anyone in the three-way tie at seven points still has a good shot.. WHO WILL TRIUMPH? WHO WILL BE ANNIHILATED?
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May 28, 2015 14:27
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Ha! Solidly in the middle in the dice-rolling contest, exactly where I expected to be somehow!
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May 28, 2015 14:51
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idonotlikepeas posted:B I'm kind of surprised I didn't give this an F, now. When I saw the wikipedia article I was pretty convinced that I hated every second of it. I guess the episode is just really forgettable, instead. 
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May 28, 2015 15:40
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Toxxupation posted:Clara is the first Companion Doctor Who has had that joined the TARDIS explicitly temporarily. Every other Companion the joined, joined more-or-less for life (or for such a long time that it mine as well be for life). Every other Companion goes on board with the expectation and desire to stay for as long as humanly possible - which reflects backwards on their personality. Well, except for Martha and several others.
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May 28, 2015 16:07
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Stink Terios posted:I really didn't like Clara in this episode, I would rather have Dalek-Clara or Mary Poppins, because that would be so goddamn silly and perfect. Now this is just...
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May 28, 2015 18:23
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Clara's a bit of a blank slate at first, but she gets much better as she goes. I didn't have any opinion of her at first but I really like her now.
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May 28, 2015 20:34
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Yeah, I think Clara's the best companion in a lot of really fun ways, but it takes her a while to get there.
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May 28, 2015 20:38
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In a lot of ways, Clara has a lot of natural character development as she goes along, as opposed to "here's your new companion, these are her characteristics, she won't change much".
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May 28, 2015 20:45
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I really need to revisit the second half of season 7, because the first time through it didn't seem like Clara came through as a developed character. Although maybe it was that I didn't like how Eleven approaching Clara as a Puzzle Box meant we were by necessity seeing her as a Puzzle Box, too. I'm impressed at how much you were able to get out of her character in one episode, Toxx, because to me she came off as fairly generic the first three/four episodes she was in, and really didn't hit her stride until Season 8.
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May 28, 2015 21:24
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In which the sun ODs on a leaf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rings_of_Akhaten
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May 29, 2015 02:59
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Still can't sleep?
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May 29, 2015 03:13
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I've been rewatching a lot of these series 7 episodes for the first time and I'm liking them all a lot better than I remember. Except for this episode which I detested because singing sucks!! Edit: singing is STUPID!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 2house2fly fucked around with this message at 03:19 on May 29, 2015 |
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May 29, 2015 03:14
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2house2fly posted:I've been rewatching a lot of these series 7 episodes for the first time and I'm liking them all a lot better than I remember. Except for this episode which I detested because singing sucks!! If you ignore the singing and the plot tho, it's a fantastic looking episode.
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May 29, 2015 03:17
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Angela Christine posted:If you ignore the singing and the plot tho, it's a fantastic looking episode. Apart from the obvious cut-arounds to accommodate the gutted SFX budget.
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May 29, 2015 03:25
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2house2fly posted:I've been rewatching a lot of these series 7 episodes for the first time and I'm liking them all a lot better than I remember. Except for this episode which I detested because singing sucks!! Are you saying you also don't like The Rimmer Experience?
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May 29, 2015 03:27
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HE'S ARNOLD ARNOLD ARNOLD RIMMER
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May 29, 2015 03:36
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I think I'm in the minority but I'd probably consider this episode - up to this point, at least - to be the worst episode of Moffat's whole tenure. I loving hate it.
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May 29, 2015 03:38
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DetoxP posted:I think I'm in the minority but I'd probably consider this episode - up to this point, at least - to be the worst episode of Moffat's whole tenure. I loving hate it. I really like it, but surely the worst it could be called is inoffensive?
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May 29, 2015 03:41
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BSam posted:I really like it, but surely the worst it could be called is inoffensive? Nah, it's bad. I find it embarassingly stupid and overly sentimental, which happens a lot in Doctor Who, but I don't find it any fun to balance it out. Really, the whole leaf thing just drives me crazy. edit: I say this with the caveat that I barely remember the Silurian two-parter
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May 29, 2015 03:46
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DoctorWhat posted:HE'S ARNOLD ARNOLD ARNOLD RIMMER WITHOUT HIM LIFE WOULD BE MUCH GRIMMER
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May 29, 2015 03:52
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HE'S ALSO A FANTASTIC SWIMMER HE'S ARNOLD ARNOLD RIMMER
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May 29, 2015 04:17
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