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In before:toxu posted:gently caress gently caress FUUUUUCKKKKK!!!!!
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Sep 7, 2014 01:24
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This thread has been the most amazing experience I've ever had on SA. 
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Sep 7, 2014 01:57
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One Swell Foop posted:Two indigo-tinged tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved The Doctor. I've been waiting for this post.
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Sep 7, 2014 02:08
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Yeah, this two-parter was great. Looking forward to the review.
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Sep 7, 2014 02:30
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Toxxupation posted:DOCTOR WHO RULES Oh god you guys broke him  I despise the 2nd part of this story. It got me banned from TWOP (it was for the best)
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Sep 7, 2014 02:33
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I can't, for the life of me, remember what I thought about about Army of Ghosts/Doomsday except a certain exchange that made me laugh like a madman because it was GLORIOUSLY STUPID. Otherwise, I'm drawing a complete blank.
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Sep 7, 2014 02:37
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I actually re-watched this two-parter in anticipation of Occupation's getting-to-it and found it stupidly fun.
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Sep 7, 2014 02:46
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DoctorWhat posted:I actually re-watched this two-parter in anticipation of Occupation's getting-to-it and found it stupidly fun. Heh, same here, I watched them last night and really enjoyed them.
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Sep 7, 2014 02:47
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thexerox123 posted:Heh, same here, I watched them last night and really enjoyed them. Me also!!!!!
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Sep 7, 2014 02:48
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It's been awhile since I rewatched earlier episodes of the new series... I was surprised at how different the overall look of the show was compared to more recent seasons.
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Sep 7, 2014 02:49
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For the record, I don't think I've ever really liked a Who season finale, (not sure I've ever really liked any of the multi-part episodes, now that I think about it) and this one is pretty mediocre even by those standards. It does have that scene, to be fair. Rarity posted:It got me banned from TWOP (it was for the best) Is there an interesting story here or just standard forums drama?
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Sep 7, 2014 02:53
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Also what is twop?
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Sep 7, 2014 02:55
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Jerusalem posted:Also what is twop? Television Without Pity.
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Sep 7, 2014 02:57
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Autonomous Monster posted:Is there an interesting story here or just standard forums drama? I dunno if it's interesting and I'm not talking about it now cause spoilers. Remind me after Occ's finished the season.
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Sep 7, 2014 03:00
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Doctor Who "Army of Ghosts" Series 2, Episode 12 Neither Oxx nor I have really spent any time whatsoever in either of our reviews for any episode this season talking about Torchwood/The Torchwood Institute, and since it's especially relevant to this episode I'll fix that now. "Torchwood" and "The Torchwood Institute" were the arc words for Doctor Who Series 2, much like how "Bad Wolf" was the arc words for Series 1. This time around, the references are more explicit on a per-episode basis- the references in Series 1 were so hidden as to be barely noticeable (I only started noticing when the episodes started specifically pointing them out near the end of the season). This time around, the references are very clear on an episode-by-episode basis: Most of the time, the arc words are explicitly spoken, and we even get hints of what Torchwood is/The Torchwood Institute is doing, from scenes like how in "The Christmas Invasion" Torchwood activated some killer death beam that destroyed the Sycorax, or how in "Tooth and Claw" we saw Queen Victoria literally found The Torchwood Institute, in addition to issuing a dire warning about The Doctor's status within that organization. So it's with all that said that we finally get an introduction to The Torchwood Institute proper, in a genuinely exciting, fast-paced, and fun romp of an episode that hits the ground running and never really stops. It's really quite an accomplishment for an episode of Doctor Who; most episodes of Doctor Who that I've enjoyed for being "fun" has been caveated with the fact that it's still, well, dumb. I sincerely thought that Doctor Who had exactly two modes for its episodes: Either an episode that's self/subconsciously stupid, or an episode that tries to be serious in some form, usually to its detriment. The two episodes that I've enjoyed the most so far, "The Doctor Dances" and the "Christmas Invasion", are the two logical extremes of those opposing ideologies; "The Doctor Dances" is an intense, emotive hour of genuinely affecting television, and "The Christmas Invasion" is an exercise in barely controlled insanity and ludicrousness. But with "Army of Ghosts", we get a third type of episode that splits the difference between those two extremes, and may be arguably the best episode that I've seen so far. "Army of Ghosts" still keeps the sort of knowing sense of fun that "Christmas Invasion" possesses, without having to going full retard (as RDJ in Tropic Thunder would say), while also keeping a real sense of thematic stakes and plot consistency that the "Empty Child/Doctor Dances" two-parter possesses. Essentially, it's an episode that's the best of both worlds, pun fully intended. The Doctor and Rose arrive back on Earth, only to find that apparently in the intervening time the world has been infested by ghosts. Everyone seems overall fine with and if anything, have embraced the development, as The Doctor and Rose are rightfully creeped out by the development and the Earth as a whole's overall placid reaction to it (Jackie herself seems fine with the ghostly appearances, simply because one of them resembles her father), so quickly set to tracking down the source of the ghostly appearances. Such wandering eventually leads them to The Torchwood Institute, lead by a certain Yvonne Hartman (Tracy-Ann Oberman). As Yvonne explains, Torchwood is, essentially, a British MIB, with the addition of focusing on taking alien tech and co-opting it for their own purposes. There's a certain level of sinisterness to their actions- Yvonne herself mentions how they're preparing for the oncoming "British Empire" -but overall their goals seem fairly pargmatic, and understandable. As the episode continues, The Doctor eventually learns that Torchwood itself is responsible for the ghosts- they've found a disturbing, unsettling Sphere that entered through a rip in reality (which also allowed the ghosts to enter), which they've then compounded by performing tests on the reality tear, trying to figure out the source of the enormous power that's been produced to allow for the Sphere's existence. In the meantime, Rose sneaks around the Torchwood compound, attempting to figure out what, exactly, is going on and any and all extra information she can scrounge together. The one thing that marks this episode is how competent it is. It moves. It constantly has interesting things happen, constantly sets up little mini-mysteries (which it then just as quickly, resolves). It continually introduces fun, well-acted new characters to interact with, the script is incredibly bouncy and fun, and the overall mood of the episode is incredibly up-tempo. I'm complained before about the pacing issues endemic to Doctor Who, and I've complained before about the tonal issues that infest this show, so it's so utterly refreshing and honestly, kind of amazing to watch an episode of television that has neither. It's an episode that has complete command and understanding of how to tell a story, how to keep it interesting, and most importantly how to make sure it all flows. This air of competence in all aspects even extends to the characters themselves. They could've easily made Yvonne into a character much like Henry van Statten in "Dalek", some sort of hammy, moustache-twirlingly evil egomaniac who ignores the clearly more intelligent and knowledgeable suited alien shouty man (which would've been all the more ridiculous considering the backstory that Torchwood and The Doctor have- I mean, he saved the founder's life, he probably knows what he's talking about), but instead Yvonne just comes off as a supremely capable and dedicated leader of a shadowy organization that's doing admittedly important work, even if it is sort of ethically shady. It's that level of nuance that makes her scenes work, even despite the fact that Oberman plays her extremely well. There's a level of informed inferiority complex that Torchwood has- no matter how much work they put in, they'll never be as good or as knowledgeable as The Doctor, and the fact galls them even though they admire him -that's personified by Yvonne that really makes her interactions with The Doctor all the more affecting; her standoff sequence against Tennant, as he leans back in his chair and encourages her to go ahead with the Ghost Shift, is a particular highlight. Extending the theme of "competent characters", Rose spends a lot of time in this episode in her own plot, sneaking around the facility, trying desperately to unearth any sort of information she can. And it's a genuinely enjoyable plot sequence, because again Rose has become a character that's interesting and intelligent enough to do the heavy lifting for a plotline by herself. As I said at the very beginning of this season, it's kind of astounding how much work the show has done into reversing the way that Rose acts in Series 2, and how much Billie Piper has grown into the role. Rose is genuinely a fun, interesting, capable character to watch onscreen now, and that's great. It's also an indictment of one of the worst tendencies of Doctor Who: so much of its plotting and structure is predicated on someone being an idiot in some capacity, placing The Doctor/The Companion/The World in danger as a result. In Series 1, it was usually Rose, which is part of why she was so terrible to watch onscreen: she was so inept in every conceivable way it tainted all of her interactions. It's also just a lazy way to tell stories: it assumes that the only way something can happen is if someone's an idiot, if someone makes a mistake, over just figuring out a way for the plot to proceed. The closest anyone ever comes to being an idiot is the white dude/black lady couple who get controlled by the Cybermen (and who then hack the Ghost Shift to force the climax), but 1) they were barely characters in the first place and 2) The Cybermen were already there, so it would've happened with someone anyway, it just so happens it happened to two idiots. Oh, right, the Cybermen. So the "ghosts" turn out to be Cybermen walking through the tear between worlds created by the Sphere. I really hate the Cybermen, I think they're a stupid, terrible knockoff of an enemy, and the mere fact that they were revealed to be the major antagonists of this episode nearly threatened to ruin my entire enjoyment of the episode as a whole. They're just...so bad, and even off of only two episodes with them I already desperately wanted to forget they ever existed. Luckily, the episode, like with nearly everything else, quickly glosses over their introduction and perceived threat and essentially uses them as a glorified plot point. This is why the episode works so well for me. It moves. Oxx will complain about how they don't focus on a certain aspect of the "ghosts" that he liked in his review, but to me this is "Army of Ghosts"'s greatest strength. It's an episode that doesn't dwell on anything, that constantly tries to introduce new quips, characters, scenes, sets, and plot development, and as a whole doesn't feel tired or slow. Especially in comparison to Who's nearly turgid pace, especially in the first half of two-parters, this episode is an explosion of themes and ideas; sure, a couple of them get undercooked as a result but I love the fact that it's so willing to throw out so many interesting concepts. In my opinion, I would've loved the further examination of the nature of the Sphere- I love the concept of the existential horror of nothingness, and I really enjoyed the sort of unsettling fear that the Sphere instilled on everyone who came into contact with it. But, I'd rather that an episode move quickly and touch on themes and ideas then over examining a singular one to the detriment of the episode as a whole (which is how most themes in Doctor Who are resolved in-episode). It's just a great episode, one which the script handles adroitly. It's fun without being stupid, it's clever and makes you feel clever, and it still is able to have these more heady, more introspective moments and themes without having them play out for so long that they feel melodramatic. It's an accomplishment of an episode that knows what dials to twist, and how hard to twist them, to keep the episode a genuine delight throughout. It's even able to serve the oft-forgotten or marginalized serialized nature of the show in a satisfying way- bringing back Mickey and the Cybermen in a way that doesn't feel forced and authored, but instead feels like an earned narrative payoff for the events of "The Age of Steel". Especially coming off the absolute trash of "Love and Monsters" and mediocre disappointment of "Fear Her", "Army of Ghosts" comes off all the stronger and more in command of all aspects of its production. Plus, the cliffhanger was absolutely, completely loving fantastic. Very rarely does my face light up when watching Doctor Who, but I was nearly squealing when the Sphere opened up to reveal...Daleks. For an episode that played up the mystery and vague, unsettling weirdness of the Sphere, to have the payoff of the episode and the promise of the genuine series finale being the Doctor's greatest enemy (hopefully) kicking the living poo poo out of his worst...yeah. This show fuckin' rules. gently caress up the Cybermen, Daleks. Grade: A Random Thoughts:
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Sep 7, 2014 03:16
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The Mickey reveal in this episode is seriously one of my favorite moments of Doctor Who. Mickey who's grown up and come into his own is awesome. Damnit I may have to rewatch these episodes tonight now. They really are some great TV.
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Sep 7, 2014 03:26
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Toxxupation posted:Plus, the cliffhanger was absolutely, completely loving fantastic. Very rarely does my face light up when watching Doctor Who, but I was nearly squealing when the Sphere opened up to reveal...Daleks. For an episode that played up the mystery and vague, unsettling weirdness of the Sphere, to have the payoff of the episode and the promise of the genuine series finale being the Doctor's greatest enemy (hopefully) kicking the living poo poo out of his worst...yeah. This show fuckin' rules. That cliffhanger is one of the best things I've ever seen the show do, whether revival or classic. To the point that I have to force myself to consider the rest of the episode, which is mostly very, very good. It's just that holy poo poo is that cliffhanger amazing, and a perfect encapsulation of what the Daleks are. They arrive, they notice life-forms OTHER than Daleks are present and IMMEDIATELY start screaming to exterminate them. Not because they're a threat or they want to keep a secret or anything, but because they simply are and that is unacceptable to the Daleks, how loving dare they exist and be not-Daleks? The Daleks are actually offended by this, and they will not let this aggression stand.
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Sep 7, 2014 03:26
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Toxxupation posted:[*] I really wanna see part 2, right now.[/list] Go with that feeling. I'd love two Toxx Reviews on the same night as a new episode of Doctor Who!
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Sep 7, 2014 03:26
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jng2058 posted:Go with that feeling. I'd love two Toxx Reviews on the same night as a new episode of Doctor Who! Oxx wouldn't go for it sorry 
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Sep 7, 2014 03:29
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Army of Ghosts/Doomsday is one of the only two finales that I actually really enjoyed in the Rusty era, and I'd say more with regards to that but really Toxxupation summed it all up better than I ever could.
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Sep 7, 2014 03:49
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drat.  Still, great review. I'm looking forward to reading your reaction to Doomsday.
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Sep 7, 2014 03:49
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EDIT: Don't open this til after you've seen the next episode. Jerusalem has corrected me. It's a pretty funny cartoon about something that happens in the next episode. Forgive me. I think this is part of the cliffhanger of the newest episode. Forgive me if I'm not remembering right, and in case it isn't, I'm not posting it directly. Either way, it's a pretty funny joke and maybe don't open it til you watch the next episode. http://imgur.com/qpMagnN egon_beeblebrox fucked around with this message at 03:55 on Sep 7, 2014 |
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Sep 7, 2014 03:49
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Yeah, that's from the start of the next episode.
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Sep 7, 2014 03:50
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Jerusalem posted:Yeah, that's from the start of the next episode. Thanks, so don't open my previous image til you've seen the next episode. I'm editing it now.
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Sep 7, 2014 03:54
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I forgot how much I liked Army of Ghosts and the next one is definitely entertaining if you don't take it seriously. You'll probably like it based on your reviews so far.
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Sep 7, 2014 03:56
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Doctor Who "Army of Ghosts" Series 2, Episode 12 And so we come to the end of Season 2. What the hell was I doing when I first watched these episodes? I started making ominous mutterings about the quality of this season from my "Parting of the Ways" writeup onward, because I legitimately believed I was in for a real crap-fest of a time here; my recollective memory is pretty sharp, and yet when I dipped it into the well of Season 2 it came up with nothing but CYBERMEN, cat-nuns, "The Girl in the Fireplace," and the twin bullets I'd dodged in the form of "Love & Monsters" and "Fear Her." Maybe I was in such a hurry to get to a certain episode in Season 3 that I sort of skated over this lot; maybe I was still trying to warm up to Tennant; maybe the initial mistake I'd made of watching most of Season 2 before "The Christmas Invasion" kind of soured me on the whole thing. Who can say. I also remembered very little of this finale, but given the toxic levels of idiocy in most of Davies' finales, I considered that a positive thing anyway. Imagine my surprise, again, when this two-parter turns out to be one of the only times the man can actually keep a grip on his drat pacing and turn out the kind of wide-ranging whiz-bang action climax that always seems to play in his head. A big part of this episode's success in comparison to, say, the last season's (God-Rose aside, of course) is the set itself. Satellite 5 was cramped and sparsely populated, making the lead-up to that brief, regrettable skirmish with the Daleks limp and unexciting from the word go - when the good guys' side consists of one alien with a screwdriver, one none-too-bright blonde, one devilishly handsome man, and a bunch of terrified interns with assault rifles, the initial losses seem sort of inevitable. "Army of Ghosts" takes place mainly in the towering interiors of the Torchwood Institute, a cross between a modern office building and Area 51, and the interiors and nature of the place give the extras much more room to breathe and make their uneven numbers more understandable. If Raj's Orb Lab has all of two people working there, well, that's fine, because the other scientists are busy in one of the other two million rooms in the place. If the professional soldiers aren't standing shoulder-to-shoulder in every room, that's because Torchwood has field operations and field operations are possible because unlike Satellite 5 this skyscraper is not in outer loving space. Even in his best moments, Davies needs to be choke-collared to keep his plots from bloating out of control, and the Institute gives him enough space and variety to maintain a fast, varied tempo while also preventing him from straying too far. And the pace absolutely is quick - better yet, it's quick and productive, without a lot of harried running and shouting through corridors. The Doctor hustles around first to study the ghosts and then at the whims of Yvonne, while Rose goes undercover under the very reasonable assumption that no one will ever bother a blonde in a lab coat, except maybe for drinks. Even the Terrible Twosome of Mickey and Jackie get moments - Jackie's furious exasperation as the Doctor's stand-in "Companion" is good for a laugh, whereas Mickey's little stealth-hello is one of the more subtly comedic and impressive moments of the series so far, followed by the revelation that the man's actually grown a few vertebrae since we last saw him (guess that killing robots in France did the boy good). And instead of us realizing from the word go what this episode's threat is and then having to spend thirty agonizing minutes waiting for the characters to figure it out, we get a hint at the start (hint: it's the loving Cybermen again), but not the full picture until the episode's climax. The sight of the ghosts marching into formation as the Cybermen's pneumatic lockstep grows steadily louder is the closest thing they get to unsettling in the whole series, most likely, and then you get the Daleks as the cherry on top. Hardly a single minute wasted. It's not thought-provoking stuff, of course, it's popcorn fare, but it also doesn't make your frontal lobe want to cave in, which is an achievement for a Davies finale. My one major sticking point, as Occ mentioned, is the ghosts themselves. I really liked the concept behind the ghosts at the start of the episode, even though I'm aware that what I wanted them to be could never have been what they are, because Doctor Who isn't that kind of show. The ghosts are voiceless, formless, and odorless; they're ciphers wandering through society for a few minutes each day, and yet they're eventually accepted, even cherished, by the general public because people begin to psychically imprint the images of people they've loved and lost onto the ghosts' outlines. It's never even said outright that this is some deliberate property of the ghosts themselves - Jackie could be smelling her departed father's cigarettes out of a strictly psycho-somatic need, with no help from the ghosts needed. It's a fascinating scenario, and a thought-provoking one - if there was some kind of representation of someone you cared about hanging around your home, barely moving, no more interactive than a glorified photograph, but still convincing enough to make you believe you could smell them, feel them, believe their eyes met yours, would you still want them around? Would you eventually need to have them around? The ghosts are eventually revealed to be Cybermen, of course, "footprints" as the Doctor calls them, the shapes they create on the other side of the dimensional curtain. But it's that initial property of them that interested me most in this episode, even if a story based on that probably wouldn't be Doctor Who's speed at all. The ghosts, through no fault of either their own or the people who let them in, prey on our loneliness. They're the barest refutation of our most basic and most-denied truth - that the dead stay dead. The world lets in the ghosts because it lets them ignore that, for a little while. But it's useless. What's lost can never be gotten back. gently caress it, let's watch the Daleks kill some robots.
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Sep 7, 2014 03:57
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I think I remember disliking something about this two parter, but the A-grade is making me rewatch and at least the first episode is pretty enjoyable. Maybe it's the second one I didn't like.
Regy Rusty fucked around with this message at 04:00 on Sep 7, 2014 |
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Sep 7, 2014 03:58
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I thought about the Daleks evolving forms over the years and noticed a strange thing. In the classic episodes, the Daleks all looked like rusty, personalized tanks. They were soldiers and grunts. Only the Daleks at the top of the order every had any sort of markings beyond dark mundane colars and battle scarred. But in the revival, they all look so... regal. They're all creepily majestic, like they now consider themselves not only to be the superior life form, but also gods. And the change is justified because the Daleks are now one of the most dangerous forces in existence, capable of going to war against the Time Lords, a species that itself is capable of removing an enemy before it exists, and matching them equally.
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Sep 7, 2014 04:00
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So we've seen your Bottom Ten episodes. After watching Doomsday, how about listing your Top Ten for the first two seasons?
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Sep 7, 2014 04:03
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This episode is probably the scariest the daleks have ever been, and I think it depends on the human actors' reactions. Let's face it, the daleks are pepper shakers with plungers, but Billie Piper seems so genuinely terrified that I'm scared along with her. The same effect happened in "Dalek"- Christopher Eccleston's rage and fear combined made me believe this thing was a monster, moreso than any of the special effects could. Also, yeah, Mickey. Based on his first appearance, I never expected to care about him in the least, but he really grew over time.
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Sep 7, 2014 04:05
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Jurgan posted:Also, yeah, Mickey. Based on his first appearance, I never expected to care about him in the least, but he really grew over time. Mickey is so often dismissed based on his first appearances (which are admittedly awful) but he ends up getting a lot of really interesting character development over these first two seasons, and his regular appearances mean that it comes across as rather natural even though the Mickey that was in Rose is completely different to the Mickey at the end of season two. He was really badly served by the burping dustbin and,"Let's go out for pizza. Pizza. PITZZZZZZZ-ZAAAAAAAA! Baby baby honey sweetie baby BABY!"
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Sep 7, 2014 04:39
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I can't wait until he gets to the first exchange between the major villains.
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Sep 7, 2014 04:44
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Toxxupation posted:The closest anyone ever comes to being an idiot is the white dude/black lady couple who get controlled by the Cybermen By the by, you may just want to go and forget that lady's face before you get confused. I don't think it's a spoiler to say they reuse her actor for an unrelated role at a later time and it's very jarring if you're watching the epsiodes at a quick pace. (Or I'm just dumb and get confused easily. That's entirely plausible)
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Sep 7, 2014 04:48
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Jsor posted:By the by, you may just want to go and forget that lady's face before you get confused. I don't think it's a spoiler to say they reuse her actor for an unrelated role at a later time and it's very jarring if you're watching the epsiodes at a quick pace. I must have missed that the first time through. I had to imdb it to figure out who you were talking about. I don't think I've ever rewatched these episodes, though; it'd probably stand out if I did. Like a certain guest star in "The Fires of Pompeii."
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Sep 7, 2014 04:58
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Jurgan posted:Like a certain guest star in "The Fires of Pompeii." I kind of hate myself for saying this, but guest stars. But we'll get to that.
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Sep 7, 2014 05:17
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I think a big part of the reason why Fear Her got slammed was that the dude who wrote it was known, at the time, for his work on a really excellent British cop show. that a lot of people thought of as being science fiction even though it was pretty clearly not. People were expecting a Life on Mars-ish thing, and Graham gave them something he thought his kid would like.
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Sep 7, 2014 05:29
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Wasn't he also notorious for passing off all criticism of the episode as "it's for kids!"? That's very disingenuous if so.
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Sep 7, 2014 05:34
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mind the walrus posted:Wasn't he also notorious for passing off all criticism of the episode as "it's for kids!"? That's very disingenuous if so. RTD's publicist thankfully stopped him before throwing out the same excuse to cover the cement blowjob line.
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Sep 7, 2014 05:55
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Bicyclops posted:RTD's publicist thankfully stopped him before throwing out the same excuse to cover the cement blowjob line. I'll be honest, if I were a ten year old I don't think my mind would go to "blowjobs." The line is gross, no doubt, but it's just subtle enough that it would go over the heads of most kids. howe_sam posted:I kind of hate myself for saying this, but guest stars. But we'll get to that. Oh, right, I forgot about her (she at least looks considerably different). Also, Jerry Orbach was a lawyer in the first season of Law & Order.
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Sep 7, 2014 06:13
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Doctor Who "Doomsday" Series 2, Episode 13 Well, goodbye Rose. Strangely enough, you will be missed! Still though, what an episode to go out on, a complete treat of an episode that lived up to the very high standards set by "Army of Ghosts". This isn't an episode made on its plot. Although the plot is decent, and moves very quickly besides, it is an episode that focuses almost solely on its character interactions. The plot of the episode, such as it is, mostly consists of the Daleks and Cybermen fighting each other, until Pete Tyler and the crew from the alternate Earth (we'll call them Earth-B) show up, after which The Doctor figures out how to save the day- essentially reversing the polarity on the Void portal, turning it into an extended vacuum that would only suck up Void travellers and closing off the connection between universes (which was shown to have a very deleterious effect on the state of Earth-B as a whole). Again, this is not an episode that's made on its plot. I mean, it's clever and it's fun and it once again moves, but RTD wisely decided to pull back on the emphasis of plotting over just having the episode do some really good character work on its principal cast (and even quite a few supporting cast members). God, where to start. I guess the beginning is as good of a point as any- in Rose's sendoff episode, she's great from the very first moment she's onscreen, essentially bamboozling and manipulating the Daleks into keeping her, Mickey, and Raj alive. Her initial confrontation with the Daleks sets the tone for exactly the sort of Rose that we've come to know and like- the Rose that actually knows what she's doing, the brave, clever, intelligent Rose of Series 2 over the terrible, author's pet wish fulfillment idiot Rose of Series 1. Nearly every scene (bar the final one) with Rose in "Doomsday" is genuinely fantastic, and Billie Piper turns in a great performance in what is ultimately her curtain call. Of a specific note is her reveal to the Daleks that she was the one who killed the Emperor, way back in "The Parting of the Ways"; Piper's slow, sadistic delivery of her lines, combined with her look of homicidal glee as she impresses on the Daleks that she, herself, was the sole cause of the destruction of the Dalek race calls to mind Eccleston's wonderful, wondrous performance in "Dalek". I mean, heck, it was such a good character moment that it made "The Parting of the Ways", one of the worst episodes of Doctor Who I've ever seen, less absolutely terrible; if making Rose into a literal God just so she'd eventually cheerfully, maniacally recount her genocidal destruction in "Doomsday" was Russel T. Davies' plan all along, well, it was almost worth that loving terrible-rear end 45 minutes of bullshit. It was that good. If "Doomsday" only had that scene, that confrontation between Rose and the Daleks, going for it, it'd still be an A episode. Luckily, it doesn't, but as a whole "Doomsday" feels like an apology from RTD. An apology for all the terrible bullshit he has put me through for the last two seasons, and course-correcting their failures by writing scenes that invalidated the worst aspects of them. For instance, the Cybermen. The Cybermen are a loving terrible antagonist, part of one of the worst episodes in Series 2, and when I saw in the preview for "Army of Ghosts" that they had shown up again, I rolled my eyes so hard they nearly popped out of my skull. The Cybermen, they're terrible as an enemy; they're third-rate Daleks with a really stupid way of killing people and a generally uninteresting motivation. If they were the only antagonist of this two-parter, it would suck. But, by existing, they made the reveal of the Daleks as one of the primary antagonists in "Army of Ghosts" all the more impactful, all the more surprising, and made the cliffhanger ending land even harder since the viewing audience assumed that the episode had no more tricks up its sleeve. In "Doomsday", they essentially exist only to get chumped by the Daleks- which is cathartic, since they were so bad before -and to give Yvonne a decent sendoff. I loved all the Yvonne scenes in this episode- I really felt like they did right by her character, and the way she gets Cyberized, walking proudly to her own doom, as she repeats to herself forcefully, "I did my duty." -this is how I want the women in Doctor Who to be written, flawed and still able to fail, but to still have individuality and focus of character to make them fascinating to watch on screen. I mean, heck, even watching her as a Cyberman, defending the Doctor as he puts into action the final plan, tears streaming out of her metal face- it was affecting, it worked. This foresight and care in servicing all of the episode's characters, not just Rose and The Doctor, is reflected on so many other scenes as well. Mickey is a riot to watch onscreen, and they finally wrote to Noel Clarke in a way that Mickey is finally loving cool. It's kind of incredible to think that this Mickey is the same Mickey that we saw in "Rose" (heck, even the same Mickey we saw in "Age of Steel", where he was such a pathetic loser he needed a pep-talk from his alternate universe version of himself), because of how much better and more confident he's written. And Pete and Jackie's meeting in the middle of the episode- in an episode full of great moments, this might arguably be the greatest, and one of the most long-awaited payoffs. We've seen Pete alive, and we know how crucial to Rose he is, but we've never had a sense of closure between Pete and Jackie, and "Doomsday" played it exactly right. It knew to make the meeting suitably emotional, but to also cut it with a fair bit of humor- Mickey's eyeroll as Jackie says there was "never anyone else" is a standout. It even serviced the two-line sequence I adored in "Age of Steel", where Pete attempts to distance himself from Jackie, trying to trick himself into believing she's a different person than his wife, before getting caught up in the emotionality of the sequence and abandoning himself to it. It's a finale that does the most important thing right, which is service the characters. They all get their moment in the sun, they all get their little scene of closure in one way or another, and this is RTD finally respecting and, well, loving all of his characters over marginalizing or objectifying one in service of either the plot or a joke. It's an episode that knows what balance it wants to strike and does so with aplomb. The confrontation between the Daleks and the Cybermen, though- what a loving riot that was. In an episode that services all the characters fully, the bar-none best sequence was watching The Doctor's most competent long-running enemy trade barbs with his least. It's an incredible scene that somehow made me genuinely root for the Daleks- those genocidal bunch of hateful maniacs -because, well, at least they're good at one-liners. It's an amazing scene and I cannot stress how great it is; I mean, heck, it even works as a microcosm of the differences in ideologies between the Cybermen and the Daleks. Just an incredible scene. This episode still has problems. I still kinda wish they explained more about the Cult of Skaro- I think a group of Daleks meant to infiltrate and "understand" other opposing races is a rich narrative field that they could've explored, and I was somewhat disappointed when they didn't (although I understand: It's not that type of show). My biggest issue- and it's rather marginal, on the whole -though, is the final scene between Rose and The Doctor. It kinda felt like they were treading the same ground twice in quick succession, what with the (genuinely emotionally affecting) scene of Rose sobbing as she bangs against the now-closed portal, as The Doctor leans sadly on the other side, in his own Earth happening right before the face-to-face final scene; but hey, I get it, you're writing Rose out of the show, she was a really important character give her a proper sense of closure. My biggest issue was the whole scene where, right as The Doctor is gonna confess his true love to Rose, the temporary portal closes. It just feels like a cop-out ending, and also not really in-character for The Doctor to be doing so in the first place; but if you're gonna have The Doctor make a confession, just have him do that, don't hide it behind a narratively tired trope. I would've much preferred, though, if this is how that scene between Rose and The Doctor ended: Rose: "I love you." The Doctor: "Quite right, too." It just seems to convey the emotionality of the scene better, even if with the ending we got we get the final, fairly affecting shot of The Doctor with tears streaming down his face silently wiping them off and continuing on. Tennant, for once, underplays the scene and it's all the more intense because of it. But in the face of all that good, a little bad- not even bad, really, just kinda hokey and melodramatic -can be excused. An incredible episode that did everything I wanted it to do, and more, closing out an often-times inconsistent season of television with a bang. Goodbye Rose. Goodbye, Billie Piper. You will be missed. Grade: A Random Thoughts:
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Sep 7, 2014 06:26
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