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DoctorWhat posted:Yes, because the sun turns out like a light at night Collecting solar energy is generally easier to do when facing the sun, before our atmosphere scatters it into auroras because you're facing the wrong drat way. e: now that's how you start a page. VVV Point taken, but I will maintain that this is among the best derails this thread could possibly have. Sighence fucked around with this message at 00:11 on Sep 20, 2014 |
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Sep 20, 2014 00:01
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 Kill... me...
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Sep 20, 2014 00:05
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terrordactle posted:
There has been a lot of dodgy stuff in NuWho. There have been some truly terrible designs -- the Slitheen, the Abzorbaloff. No one can ever defend this, though. Someone thought it was a good idea to have an alien-human hybrid have six giant cocks hanging from its head.
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Sep 20, 2014 00:12
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Every time I look at it, I see a rasta hat and dreadlocks.
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Sep 20, 2014 00:25
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To be fair the Abzorbaloff was literally designed by a child.
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Sep 20, 2014 00:31
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and even he was disappointed by the final product.
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Sep 20, 2014 00:34
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Bown posted:and even he was disappointed by the final product. it was supposed to be as big as a bus.
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Sep 20, 2014 00:34
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What I think many are forgetting about Daleks Of Manhattan is that the human Dalek, the climactic revelation/cliffhanger at the episode's conclusion, was plastered all over the front page of the Radio Times in the week leading up to the episode. It was almost impossible for a British human to avoid, and as a result the reveal just had no dramatic power or unexpectedness at all. And then, just as the audience is finally caught up with what they were anticipating for the entire hour, and before the human Dalek can do anything surprising or evil, the episode just ends.
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Sep 20, 2014 00:35
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Those of us who were not spoiled beforehand also found the reveal had no dramatic power. That episode was just plain bad.
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Sep 20, 2014 00:37
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Yeah, whether you knew about penis-face before or it was a "shock" reveal, it was still lame as hell at best and unintentionally hilarious at worst.
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Sep 20, 2014 00:50
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I can honestly say it was the most penises I've ever seen on one head.
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Sep 20, 2014 01:15
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SymfonyMan posted:I can honestly say it was the most penises I've ever seen on one head. Yes, but does it beat the giant penis hair from Avatar?
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Sep 20, 2014 01:18
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Jsor posted:Yes, but does it beat the giant penis hair from Avatar? I left you open for "Lord knows it's not the most I've seen" and that's all you've got? I've seen Avatar and I didn't think of penises and let's face it, you cannot deny the penitude of that dalek's head. So I'm saying yes, that does beat whatever penises you keep seeing in Avatar. That image is etched into my mind's eye. When I'm old, decades from now, suffering from dementia and someone asks me, "hey Aaron, how are you feeling today?" You know what my response will be? I AM A HUMAN DALEK HYBRID BEWARE MY MULTI-PENSISED HEAD! And the nurse will roll her eyes and wheel me down the hall to the lunch room while I wait for my pig-men to attack. Thanks RTD! E: Another great Bown opinion ahead! An Ounce of Gold fucked around with this message at 01:51 on Sep 20, 2014 |
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Sep 20, 2014 01:25
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Boy this thread gets lovely in between the reviews.
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Sep 20, 2014 01:31
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terrordactle posted:
This is so bad, it is actually worse than the rubber masks from old Who, which were literally recycled so much that they were deformed to fit larger faces sometimes. Some of them were falling apart at the seams from having been eaten by moths and they were better than this design. Still, Doctor Who has had designs that are just as bad. 
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Sep 20, 2014 02:54
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Bicyclops posted:This is so bad, it is actually worse than the rubber masks from old Who, which were literally recycled so much that they were deformed to fit larger faces sometimes. Some of them were falling apart at the seams from having been eaten by moths and they were better than this design. That looks like it'd belong in "Dr. Who['s Gonna gently caress You]".
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Sep 20, 2014 03:15
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umalt posted:That looks like it'd belong in "Dr. Who['s Gonna gently caress You]". Looking at it after the Dalek penis-head image, it's kind of like they just pulled the whole mask down and made it into a full, green suit.
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Sep 20, 2014 03:16
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Bicyclops posted:Still, Doctor Who has had designs that are just as bad. It gets even funnier when you hear it speak.
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Sep 20, 2014 03:18
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Like... were they going for some sort of vague body horror? A kind of Uncanny Valley? A slimy, scary Lovecraft thing? Whatever the hell they were aiming for, they sure as hell missed by so many miles, nobody can tell anymore! And the writing is too all over the place to give us any clues.
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Sep 20, 2014 03:23
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Clearly there were some people designing the monsters who had some issues.
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Sep 20, 2014 03:31
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I genuinely don't want to oversell this and normally I hate my own writing because I think it's kinda garbage (this isn't fishing for compliments please don't do so) but I really, honestly 100% believe I wrote a really, really good review this time around- lik3 probably the best I'll ever write
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Sep 20, 2014 06:15
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Then post it you tease.
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Sep 20, 2014 06:17
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Doctor Who "The Lazarus Experiment" Series 3, Episode 6 The desire to live forever is humanity's basest impulse. When you think about it, in some way, all humans crave immortality. We as a species realize that it's a fundamentally foolish and impossible endeavor, so instead we collectively funnel our lingering need to not-die into other things- we emphasize and overemphasize sex, to play up our evolutionary imperative. We create long standing works of art. We do great and terrible things. We run for public office, we become famous, we invent. All of these things, and many more, are part of humanity's futile attempts to stave off the inevitable: our own individual mortalities. We want to leave a legacy, in some way, so even when we die, we still do live on, in the hearts and minds and thoughts and even genes of the people still breathing. The greatest irony of all, of course, is the fact that living forever is terrible. Like, absolutely horrible. It makes all of your relationships meaningless (because everyone will leave you, whether willingly or not), it makes all of your experiences pointless (because, due to the cyclical nature of time, it has all happened before and will all happen again). Worst of all, immortality means that eventually, everything decays. The law of entropy is irreversible; even the universe has a time limit, vast as it may be. The only thing that survives the slow, inevitable destruction of everything, if you're immortal, is...well...you. So when everything dies- your family, your planet, your galaxy, the concept of time itself -you will live on, in a meaningless, pointless existence. Forever. The end is never the end, is never the end. Horrifying. So what happens, "The Lazarus Experiment" asks, when humanity meets immortality? The answer is one of the best episodes that Doctor Who has yet produced. The plot of this episode is entirely to service the extended metaphor of Humanity meeting Immortality. Richard Lazarus (Mark Gatiss) has essentially built a de-aging machine, which he unveils to great fanfare during the party he throws to celebrate its creation by having himself be the first test subject. It all proceeds exactly as planned- he emerges at least forty years younger, a fresh-faced young man -until, of course, the predictably unpredictable side effects occur, turning him into a monstrous beast that needs to feed on humans just to stay alive. The Doctor, however, is able to figure out a way to stop (and subsequently kill) Lazarus, and all ends well- well except for those women Lazarus ended up killing (including his own wife!). This episode, it's Dr. Jekkyl and Mr. Hyde, it's Jurassic Park, it is essentially every single "Science run amok" story ever conceived, especially when concerning a scientist attempting to regain something he had lost via his own invention. It ends, of course, on a cruel irony- Lazarus wanted to live forever, but he ended up dying on the same night, he pursued eternal youth, but instead ended up a hideous monster. This isn't groundbreaking stuff, not by any means. No sir. What makes it different, what makes it amazing, is the inclusion of The Doctor. Oxx once mentioned in his review for the "Impossible Planet" two-parter that it was essentially a generic sci-fi horror film that is changed by the fact that The Doctor exists within its framework, so instead of watching the crew slowly get hunted down and killed until the heroic captain and his saucy love interest somehow make it out alive (perhaps with the heroic captain heroically sacrificing himself in the process), we instead got an episode with The Doctor saving people and being weirdly introspective. It's much the same here- instead of an episode with an ultimately good-intentioned, if naive, pursuer of greatness destroyed by the creation/monster he helped build we instead get The Doctor foiling Lazarus and showing him the error of his ways. Because that's ultimately the thing- in these "Science run amok" stories, there never exists a character that is a living embodiment of what the scientist is attempting to pursue. It's always an ideal and by definition of the narrative it's meant to be an impossible pursuit- which is why, ultimately, the foolish protagonist fails. He falls, and by doing so becomes the unwilling antagonist. But The Doctor is, for all intents and purposes, immortal. He's a man who knows that ultimately, what Lazarus is looking for is a curse, and The Doctor has become rather cynical and jaded to the whole exercise anyways. When you think about it, The Doctor, from the very first shot of this episode, had been suffering the consequences of his immortality. He had lost one of the greatest relationships he had ever built, in Rose, due to his unique ability to simply live longer than everyone else. We saw his inept handling of his post-Rose funk in the preceding episodes, but "Lazarus Experiment" is the first episode that finally handles the loss of Rose with grace instead of embarrassing ineptitude. If you think of what The Doctor and Rose had as a long term, romantic relationship, The Doctor had just dumped the quote-on-quote "love of his life", and the first episodes of series 3 were him trying to pick the pieces together. So we got a lot of whining about his "ex" to his new rebound Companion, which got steadily more and more embarrassing, as he kept on going out with Martha in a series of "One-night stands". As he insists when he first brings Martha along, it's "just one trip". He doesn't want those messy commitment issues that you get when you have a long-term Companion. And so, in the first shot of the episode, we have The Doctor dropping Martha at her place, further compounding the "walk of shame" one-night stand aspect of The Doctor's character. He had his fun, he brought back a nice, attractive black lady to his swinging bachelor pad of a time-traveling phone booth, and it lasted a little longer than he had planned because, well, because they were having so much fun. But the laughs ended and, well, Martha needs to go home. I mean, The Doctor doesn't come back because he realizes that Martha is important to him- he comes back because he heard something that sounded directly relevant to his job as Universe Cop. Which is the point of the thing, really. If the episode had kept to this metaphor, it would've been eye-rollingly trite reinforcement of the kinda forced sexual tension between The Doctor and Martha. But, instead, by having the episode ultimately be about Lazarus and his experiment, they expand the scope of the episode that makes that first scene all the more narratively impactful. Because, ultimately, The Doctor and Rose's relationship wasn't romantic (or at least, not sexually romantic), and instead that first scene helps build to the point of the episode, which is all a statement of how tired The Doctor is of his life. He pursues going out with Martha not to have that sexual tension again, but in a sort of hollow echo of the excitement his life had. He drops her off not because he doesn't need her, or because he's too broken up about Rose, but because he recognizes the shell game that is his existence for what it is and he's tired of repeating the cycle over and over and over and over. This sort of tired, beaten-down cynicism persists throughout the entirety of the episode- Tennant commits to playing The Doctor as a barely-overgrown child, his cries of "AW, LOOK! THEY GOT NIBBLES! I love nibbles." revealed ultimately to be sort of a desperate flailing to a time when he still had a sense of wonder and excitement about the world and universe at large. There's a sense- an unspoken sense, but one that persists all the same -throughout the episode that The Doctor has very much had it with this whole timey-wimey poo poo. He justs wants it all to end, but it won't, because he can't. The universe won't let him, for the end is very much never the end. Which is ultimately what the episode builds to. Mark Gatiss plays Lazarus wonderfully, giving him that sympathetic edge Lazarus needs to be understandable and even likable as he's doing monstrous things to himself and others. Again, his quixotic desire for immortality is something that we, all humans, share, so the viewing audience as a whole can all see a bit of themselves in him. He's not evil, not really, he just has done a lot of evil things. Ultimately, he's the most human of us all- both thematically, metaphorically, and literally- as even The Doctor notes, he didn't change, even though he looks it he's not a monster, a recessive gene merely took over. But, ultimately, the episode is a lot of nonsense and running around and terrible CGI leading to the moment where Lazarus confronts The Doctor about his life-ruining quest. The final meeting of humanity and immortality. It's an incredible scene, nicely set in a chapel for that extra metaphorical edge, that would be great even if the writing weren't absolutely amazing- which, to be clear, it is. Just watching two great actors, in Mark Gatiss and David Tennant, bouncing off each other in a tense, genuinely reserved scene would be compelling television by itself, but the writing is what makes this scene incredible. Because, Lazarus is simultaneously so sympathetic and so foolish, and The Doctor himself is simultaneously so wise and so cynical. They are opposites, and yet they are equals. They oppose each other in every way, down to the ideological level, but on some level still do respect each other. These are just two men, and they are having a discussion- about immortality, about the pursuit of immortality, about the curse of powerlessness and power and triumph and failure and it's spellbinding. It's everything that Doctor Who is and is not, and it's just stellar. Ultimately, who is right? Well, The Doctor wins, in the end, but was he right? He closes Lazarus' eyes, out of respect and maybe even a bit of love, and decides, in a nice closure of the narrative loop, to take Martha along with him. Clearly, he has changed from his adventure, refocused his beliefs and attitude in some way. Maybe The Doctor was wrong all along, maybe his cynicism and fatalism and general tiredness was the problem, and not Lazarus' crazed, ultimately fatal desire for immortality, for permanence. Maybe the point is in the journey, even if he's seen it a thousand and one times before, and will see it a thousand and one times again. Maybe that's the greatest treasure of all. Or maybe it's the greatest curse. Is it? Grade: A Random Thoughts:
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Sep 20, 2014 06:41
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I did not expect something so positive! Fan opinion on this one trends towards the decidedly mediocre.
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Sep 20, 2014 06:47
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What, that was Mark Gatiss? I'd never have noticed that, and I just rewatched it again.
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Sep 20, 2014 06:57
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I guess I'm going to have to come to terms with the fact that Occ is a bigger fan of this show than I am, now. We've come a long way.
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Sep 20, 2014 07:07
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Ah yes, forgive the terrible monster CGI and you're left with a really good episode. Again glad you liked it. I'm a big Gatiss, and League of Gentlemen fan, but some of his Doctor Who stories haven't been the best because he's going for that old school style of Doctor Who episode and it doesn't always work out. Also, kind of off topic but it's starting to bug me, what is this, "quote-on-quote", are you trying to say "quote unquote", or is it an actual term?
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Sep 20, 2014 07:15
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Doctor Who "The Lazarus Experiment" Series 3, Episode 6 This episode and the next are widely regarded as two of the most forgettable in all of Doctor Who, to the point where fans often suffer a brief double-take whenever their names are brought up. Personally I think it's an inevitable side effect of the average human mind trying to carve out the memories of the "Daleks In Manhattan" two-parter, because God knows I remembered very little of "The Lazarus Experiment" going in. Just a big goofy CGI monster and a desperate need to get as far away from the Great Depression theme-park as possible. I'm not as enthused by this one as Occ clearly is, but I don't think it's a bad episode by any means. That could actually be its most damning quality, in that, unless you happen to be taken in by its themes or some particularly strong scenes, "The Lazarus Experiment" has almost nothing to distinguish itself - it's a standard setup followed by a standard monster-chase followed by some standard above-quality scenes from Tennant and some standard below-quality moments of science silliness as a resolution. It's about as by-the-numbers as Doctor Who can get, to the point where its thought-provoking bits feel sometimes like they happened by accident. But before we skip ahead to that part, let's cover the good and bad bits that Occ couldn't quite discuss before his joy-spasming cut off all the oxygen to his brain. The good: Tennant's acting, physical or otherwise, is better than usual here, not to mention he looks downright dashing in that suit. His cheerful obliviousness to social niceties followed by the way he cavorts around the sets when Lazarus gets all monster-y makes the episode pass by smoothly if nothing else, and as Occ pointed out, there's a sense of frantic desperation to his goofiness this time around, due to his scenes in the chapel, that lends them a bit more punch. Especially cute was his permanent invitation to Martha in the ending - the way he maintains his bug-eyed innocence even as he's clearly getting a kick out of her misunderstanding says a lot about how much the relationship between them is grown, even if the shadow of not-Rose still hangs over Martha in her insistence to "not be just a passenger." We also get a look at Martha's family here, which thankfully lacks the spotlight-hogging or shrill obnoxiousness of Jackie and Mickey. Tish and Leo are perfectly well-adjusted, inoffensive characters (Tish's momentary infatuation with Lazarus is annoying, but understandable - the man's her boss and he's got more money than God and a perpetual-life machine, and he goes all insectile before the shine gets a chance to wear off). Leo's screen time is brief, but the way he politely brings up that this whole situation is, technically, Tish's fault and not Martha's, followed by Tish's quick jab in his ribs, says a lot about the three siblings feel about each other; there might be some occasional hostility between them, with Tish viewing Martha as a humorless control freak and Leo constantly trying to keep his mother's neurosis from infecting Martha's personal life, but they still stick up for each other in the end. And Mrs. Jones, played with grim politeness by Adjoa Andoh, shows a surprising amount of depth for what would otherwise be another bit-part anti-Doctor gadfly, since she's obsessively hung up on her unfaithful husband and that sentiment bleeds into her relationship with Martha. She's not just distrustful of the Doctor because he's a silly alien science man who makes her daughter act differently, she's distrustful because she was recently betrayed and is a tad fanatical about saving her daughters from the same fate - a much more personal, concise, and sympathetic reason than Jackie had for most of her run, and it doesn't help that the OBVIOUSLY COMPLETELY TRUSTWORTHY representatives of the mysterious Mr. Saxon are quietly egging those feelings on. There's also the chapel scene. We'll talk about that later. The bad: Monster-Lazarus is a Resident Evil boss. I fought him across a series of hanging train cars and shot him in the mouth with the Broken Butterfly until the QTE's kicked in. Lazarus' initial transformation is also undeniably goofy, as he simultaneously attempts to do the Robot and the Worm and fails at both. Really, everything to do with Monster Lazarus is a bit of a mess outside of the basic concept - too much of the episode is spent running from this thing, and the Doctor's methods of damaging it or slowing it down are silly and unconvincing. He manages to fill an entire room with gas just by yanking the tubes off a couple of Bunsen burners, polarity-reverses him into a wall (apparently neglecting to check for a pulse afterwards), and finally ROCKS THE gently caress OUT on a sonic'd up pipe organ to kill him with mere gravity. The resolution also feels far too rushed, given what Martha and Tish just went through; they exchange a brief hug and then it's back to Martha's room for the finale. And on a more minor note, Gatiss' magnificent thatch of chest hair disturbs me. But, all that's excused, if not for the positive qualities just mentioned, then at least for the conversation in the chapel. The chapel scene (filmed in Wells Cathedral, incidentally, not Southwark as mentioned) is about as close to truly excellent scene-setting and cinematography as Doctor Who ever gets, and it's surprising and a little bewildering to see it in this episode of all places. You get the sense of its competence right from the start, as the Doctor and his entourage advance on the naked, shivering Lazarus, wrapped in his red emergency blanket (the only splash of solid red in the set, emphasizing his isolation). The backing music is one of the best tracks heard yet, all thrumming strings and ominous drumbeats. And that's before he and the Doctor have their little debate on the nature of survival, which offers up some genuinely cogent, open-ended points. The Doctor says humanity is about facing death. Lazarus counters that it's about surviving at any cost, and neither of them bother to follow up on this point. So who's in the right? Lazarus obviously doesn't come off too well, given the circumstances - throughout the whole episode he's been an exemplar of slavering, animal instinct under a veneer of humanity, his monstrous form literally a product of his drive to keep living. On the other hand, Tennant's weariness comes through strong in his counter-arguments; for once, he's not hamming it up, reciting his points to Lazarus as if he's had to do it a thousand times before (which for all we know, he probably has). His admiration of humans for their ability to face death, in the context of his performance, comes off more like a projected death wish than anything else. He's previously lauded the human race for how "indomitable" they are, for how they survive until the Earth burns and well beyond, but in the same breath he denies Lazarus even though he is, for all appearances, the embodiment of that very quality - the Resident Evil boss transformation is just an unfortunate side-effect. The Doctor's able to easily sidestep the dilemma this poses on account of how Lazarus is trying to eat him and Martha, but the question is still left hanging, probably in perpetuity. For all the Doctor's gushing over humankind, he still can't account for outliers like Lazarus, and denies them even if they fit into his pre-established model of what humanity's like (to bring back what he said in the Satan Pit, I guess Lazarus just "doesn't fit his rule"). At least the whole debate gives us one more reason why the Doctor needs Companions, and usually human ones - because no matter how enamored he is with people, his own weariness, cynicism, and idealism is always working on his perception of them, warping them out of true. He's an outsider looking in, and needs someone to keep reminding him of that, no matter how much grief it might cause him in the end (which, lest we forget, is never the end, is never the end, is never the end).
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Sep 20, 2014 07:22
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Really interesting to see this one get such a positive review. For me, it's a very cool concept for an episode and in parts it works really well, but overall it's a mostly forgettable, "standard" story where everything is handled with a relative level of competence (the CGI is a little ropey, as most CGI tends to be) but there is nothing particularly memorable about it. The parallels between the Doctor and Lazarus are pretty clear, and I like that Lazarus gets consistent characterization: an arrogant but admittedly brilliant man and a bit of a creepy lech who can't admit his own faults but still has a sympathetic and understandable origin for his personality. But I just feel like the episode doesn't really offer anything I haven't seen before in the show (to be fair, I've watched hundreds of more episodes than Toxx), and it isn't helped by the fact I really can't stand any of Martha's family, and they have such a prominent role.
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Sep 20, 2014 07:24
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BSam posted:Also, kind of off topic but it's starting to bug me, what is this, "quote-on-quote", are you trying to say "quote unquote", or is it an actual term? I assume he's trying to say "quote unquote," but I don't see why, given that when typing, you can just use quotation marks. Actually, I've never understood the term "quote unquote" anyway- why would you say "unquote" before saying the thing you're quoting? Isn't it supposed to come after the quoted phrase? Otherwise what's the point of saying "unquote" at all when it doesn't indicate where the quotation stops? Derail, I know, but that phrase has been a pet peeve of mine for a long time.
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Sep 20, 2014 07:40
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Do the episodes you're watching get the trailers for next week by the way? And if so, do you watch them and have any of them excited you for the next episode or made you want to steer way clear? I'm asking mainly because I remember the trailer for Lazarus Experiment was surprisingly decent, even after the Dalek two parter. PS I'm shocked there hasn't been more mention of the fact they had Dalek Sek wearing a collar and leash, that was infinitely more hosed up for me than how many penises were on his head or whatever.
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Sep 20, 2014 07:46
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Chucat posted:Do the episodes you're watching get the trailers for next week by the way? And if so, do you watch them and have any of them excited you for the next episode or made you want to steer way clear? I told Occ to stay away from the trailer for this one because it's kind of spoilery, but he watches them to the best of my knowledge. Mostly they just serve as a warning that Cybermen or something will make an appearance.
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Sep 20, 2014 07:52
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Oxxidation posted:I told Occ to stay away from the trailer for this one because it's kind of spoilery, but he watches them to the best of my knowledge. Mostly they just serve as a warning that Cybermen or something will make an appearance. Part of me thinks he shouldn't but it's his call. IIRC, some of the trailers are WHOPPERS.
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Sep 20, 2014 07:53
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It's mostly laziness, I have to wait till the credits for cast names anyways and I don't like scrubbing
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Sep 20, 2014 08:33
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Immortality seeking has actually been a trend this season. The giant enemy crabs in Gridlock set up the motorway for this, supposedly, and also came out worse for it. And now you have this guy and his Ra's AlGhul act. In both cases, the Doctor has been forced to do a little bit of playing God figure and tell the mortal races that no, they can't have what they want. Not at this price. I'm just pointing it out because I'm genuinely surprised Occ didn't notice it given the attention he pays to the show. I hadn't picked up or had forgotten the crabs intent until I had read his review.
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Sep 20, 2014 09:16
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Were the Macra involved at all? The motorway was locked down by the Face of Boe to try and prevent the mutated drug virus from getting through to them, and the people trapped down there ended up forming their own culture based on their new set of circumstances. They were only down there for something like 24 years if I remember right (in my mind far too short a time), and the Macra themselves were just mindless scavengers attracted to the rising levels of pollution - they'd lost their intelligence over the billions of years between their first appearance in the classic series and this episode, and their appearance was both a pure coincidence of the narrative and a little continuity nod to fans of the classic show. They (or rather their descendents) weren't in any way involved in the lockdown of the motorway. Doctor: Tell me, how long have you been driving on the motorway? Alice: Oh, we were amongst the first. It's been twenty three years now. Doctor: The Macra used to be the scourge of this galaxy. Gas. They fed off gas, the filthier the better. They built up a small empire using humans as slaves and mining gas for food. Man: They don't exactly look like empire builders to me. Doctor: Well, that was billions of years ago. Billions. They must have devolved down the years. Now they're just beasts. But they're still hungry and my friend's down there. Hame: They died, Doctor. The city died. Doctor: How long's it been like this? Hame: Twenty four years. Doctor: All of them? Everyone? What happened? Hame: A new chemical. A new mood. They called it Bliss. Everyone tried it. They couldn't stop. A virus mutated inside the compound and became airborne. Everything perished. Even the virus, in the end. It killed the world in seven minutes flat. There was just enough time to close down the walkways and the flyovers, sealing off the under-city. Those people on the motorway aren't lost, Doctor. They were saved.
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Sep 20, 2014 09:25
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One aspect of the whole immortality thing that few stories confront is the idea of full immortality for the universe. Mostly they just have one immortal amongst an entropic existence, but what if life simply continued? What if it kept going and going and no one ever died and new people kept being born even as their great, great, great, great grandfather was still kicking? The only story I know of that confronts this is the Thanos Imperative, a Marvel Comics miniseries. Basically, an entire universe where death has been eliminated has overgrown. It's literally called the Cancerverse. A universal tumor that's constantly needing to invade other dimensions for new space and material, ruled under the iron grip of the most powerful monsters in existence. The ruling god, Shuma-Gorath, is powerful enough to have defeated Death several times over and has existed for trillions of years. It's freaking awesome, and it's probably the only story that makes a convincing argument that death is necessary without falling back on the typical "boohoo, I'm immortal and no one else is" plot. It actually shows that even if everyone were immortal and you would never be separated from your loved ones by death, that it would still be a really bad thing.
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Sep 20, 2014 09:31
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"this episode was totally mediocre but the last scene was amazing therefore A" is up there with "hannibal glorifies murder" for classic baffling occ statements. but it's the most interesting thing that was gonna come out of a review for this episode, so fair enough.
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Sep 20, 2014 09:53
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Now, y'see, my overriding memory of this one is the godawful CGI and the incredibly lazy and incoherent "ME GO TOO FAR!" plot. But I guess I have to respect-Toxxupation posted:Wait, if Mark Gatiss is a good writer and a great actor, and he's fairly handsome as well, what does that mean for us writers? What does that make us, Oxx? Oh god...  you what You think Gatiss is handsome? I don't know if it's just that I grew up watching the League of Gentlemen, but the very idea makes my skin crawl. Eesh. Jurgan posted:I assume he's trying to say "quote unquote," but I don't see why, given that when typing, you can just use quotation marks. Actually, I've never understood the term "quote unquote" anyway- why would you say "unquote" before saying the thing you're quoting? Isn't it supposed to come after the quoted phrase? Otherwise what's the point of saying "unquote" at all when it doesn't indicate where the quotation stops? Well, it's less about accurately indicating that you're quoting something and more about marking sarcarsm, isn't it? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i3puuhDS2E
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Sep 20, 2014 09:57
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 22:31 |
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Toxxupation posted:But, ultimately, the episode is a lot of nonsense and running around and terrible CGI  terrordactle posted:One aspect of the whole immortality thing that few stories confront is the idea of full immortality for the universe. Mostly they just have one immortal amongst an entropic existence, but what if life simply continued? What if it kept going and going and no one ever died and new people kept being born even as their great, great, great, great grandfather was still kicking? It actually shows that even if everyone were immortal and you would never be separated from your loved ones by death, that it would still be a really bad thing.
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Sep 20, 2014 09:59
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