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There's one thing no one mentions, but I think it needs to be acknowledged: The actress who played Ursula previously played MOANING MYRTLE. So she previously played a girl who was trapped in a toilet and had a creepy lust towards the male protagonist, and here she played a woman who was trapped in a stone slab and had a creepy sexual relationship with the male protagonist (of this episode).
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Sep 4, 2014 06:13
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Gynovore posted:The whole idea of "Doctor Who without the Doctor!" is amazingly dumb to begin with; I realize that there were Production Reasons, but still, it was dumb. I'm gonna have to disagree strongly with that one. "Blink" did basically the same thing, but far better.
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Sep 4, 2014 22:33
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Grouchio posted:I promise to both Oxxipation and Toxxupation that the Eleventh Era will not only trump over the RTD era, but constantly poo poo on it. It gets better. Look how wrong you are.
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Sep 6, 2014 02:05
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I can agree with most of this review. It really doesn't deserve its rap, and I especially like that the monster is an innocent child and not evil. Also, I just remembered it has one of my favorite silly lines:quote:You just stole a Council axe from a Council van and now you're tearing up a Council road! I'm reporting you to the Council! I don't know, there's sort of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer vibe to it, how people ignore the insanity and danger in the world and obsess over maintaining their little fiefdoms. Doctor What, that's an interesting point about the Olympics. I don't know, I guess they just weren't thinking too hard about the implications. Come to think of it, a monster has to be stopped by showing a massive population a symbol that will inspire feelings of love and good will- isn't that the ending of Ghostbusters 2? Jurgan fucked around with this message at 04:35 on Sep 6, 2014 |
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Sep 6, 2014 04:31
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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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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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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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quote: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 Oh, they will. They will.  It's funny that the best idea for a Cyberman story came from what might be the worst Cyberman story: Cyberwoman. Yes, it was pretty terrible, but when Captain Jack talks about how the Cybermen take advantage of people's emotions and use the promise of getting their loved ones back to spread... that's the sort of thing that might make a good story, but it never really is developed. Still, I kind of like the whole vampire/zombie way they spread. I like them less when they're shouting "DELETE," because I imagine the writers copy-pasting the word "EXTERMINATE" out of a dalek episode.
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Sep 7, 2014 07:45
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MikeJF posted:The thing that I disliked about this episode was the whole AND NOW WE UNLEASH A BILLION GADZILLION DALEKS followed by AND NOW WE VACUUM UP A BILLION GADZILLION DALEKS. Throwing numbers at us somehow made the threat seemed less, because now we knew we needed a Deus Ex Machina to get out of it and we were going to magic it up. Four Daleks that were personally coming for you actually felt more of a worry than the big abstract wave of CGI dots streaming out of the genesis ark and it felt like they were just trying to use numbers to tell us 'oh no' rather than actually showing us that we needed to feel concerned. There's definitely something to that. The four daleks vs. an army of Cybermen was scary enough, and whoever wins, we know they'd do immense damage to the Earth in the process. Adding in millions more daleks did seem to weaken the threat, paradoxically. One ninja is a deadly threat, but an army of them are cannon fodder. On the other hand, I loved the payoff of "Time Lord technology" meaning the ark is bigger on the inside and can hold millions of daleks. And while the ending is sort of a deus ex machina, at least it relied on the Doctor's intelligence to figure it out rather than someone getting superpowers in the last act.
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Sep 7, 2014 18:10
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Rarity posted:I can't stand Catherine Tate. Her comedy show is terrible and all her jokes are based around her shouting really loud. But Donna ended up being pretty good. A huge breath of fresh air after Rose for sure. She works really well as a one-and-done. Anything more than that and /i think she would have ended up grating. I thought The Catherine Tate Show was hilarious for about five or six episodes, and then it just kept repeating the same jokes with the same characters over and over again. How many times can you watch the woman demand her co-worker guess something and then make fun of her for guessing wrong?
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Sep 10, 2014 01:52
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Random Stranger posted:Peter Purves played a "comical" American bystander in episode 3 of The Chase and was introduced as a new character that would become a companion in episode 6. So one month would be the record. Is it okay to give general impressions like this? Personally, I thought the first half of S3 was kind of weak, but the back end is amazing.
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Sep 11, 2014 15:44
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Gaz-L posted:The pilot itself is pretty good, but unless you know what you're getting into, the rest of that story is pretty.... rough until the ending with the Doctor doing his first Doctor-y tricking the villain into incriminating himself speech. I thought the whole thing was pretty good- I like that the Doctor was self-centered at first and Ian and Barbara had to force him to help. I also like that they did a story about cavemen who were smart and didn't use the broken English normally would. The Aztecs was a lot of fun, too, especially the hammy villain, who was basically the villain from Manos: The Hands of Fate. On the other hand, I started watching "The Daleks," and it's pretty slow. I'll finish it eventually, but I can't imagine there's enough story to be worth seven whole episodes.
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Sep 17, 2014 02:29
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Random Stranger posted:Unless you're enjoying a story, give up and walk away. I mean, if you're a big fan you might want to come back to it later, but if you're just going, "I want to see what this old Doctor Who stuff was like," then don't subject yourself to the disagreeable stories. The Daleks in particular gets pretty clunky in the middle episodes. Genesis was the first Classic story I watched, and I liked it a lot (though the foam rubber clam was hilariously silly). But Davros is great, and the Doctor is very conflicted. I've only recently started really looking into Classic Who- I got Hulu Plus mainly for that reason (also Community), and have watched a few of Pertwee's stories. I love the Master, so that's fun.
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Sep 17, 2014 03:43
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Yeah, all I can really say about these episodes is that they're pretty bland. I remember the "HUMAN-DALEK" and one pretty funny gag from part two, and not much else. I seem to recall the idea of the Doctor helping the daleks evolve was good, as though he was hoping to find an alternative to his perpetual war with them, but it didn't really go anywhere. Out of curiosity, what was "the best paragraph [you]'ve ever written?"
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Sep 17, 2014 06:11
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I don't know what this is, but it makes me laugh every time.
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Sep 17, 2014 15:13
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Jerusalem posted:The Aztecs is great, if a little melodramatic (which may be part of the reason it is so great!). The villain is identical to the priest from Manos, and I love it.
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Sep 19, 2014 00:14
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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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It was kind of a dull one. I enjoyed it at the time, but I don't remember much except some of the quiz show stuff (I remember Elvis vs. the Beatles, actually, and some sort of recreational math problem, and that's it). In my opinion, you're over the hump for Series 3 and it's all good from here on, but of course no two people agree on everything. Hopefully you enjoy the next few.
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Sep 21, 2014 05:13
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MrL_JaKiri posted:The odd thing is that it skips an entirely round number of seconds. Do scenes normally last exactly 30 seconds or whatnot? If timing has to be that precise, it could be that they filmed it in exact thirty second multiples, for ease of editing. "We have exactly 84 blocks to fill," something like that.
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Sep 21, 2014 19:26
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EvilTobaccoExec posted:Sometimes not living up the hype totally works for the best. Best one was the struggle to prevent the rebirth of that legendary monster impervious to stakes, blades, and every weapon man tried, but Buffy stops him because no one in the past ever blasted him with a rocket launcher before. drat that owned. That was good, but he wasn't a Big Bad, just a midseason villain. Although with the hype, people might have expected him to take over. Same with that creepy vampire kid who was still hanging around from season one before Spike offed him.
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Sep 22, 2014 18:58
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More never mind.
Jurgan fucked around with this message at 21:03 on Sep 23, 2014 |
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Sep 23, 2014 20:06
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Toxxupation posted:I'll finally understand what makes the internet so obsessed with this goddamn thing for literally almost a decade Wait, have you watched "Family of Blood" already? Did the last review cover both parts of the two-parter?
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Sep 25, 2014 00:34
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Toxxupation posted:
That's pretty much how I watched it, since I didn't start until the revival had been on for a few years. So I was hyped for this one as well, but fortunately I didn't know anything other than the basic description of the angels and their powers. And that's about all I can say.
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Sep 25, 2014 01:37
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computer parts posted:Blink is The French Mistake of Doctor Who in that it's very good as an episode but it's not something you want to show to new viewers. I don't know, I showed it to my dad and it seemed to work. I have thoughts on why, but it'll have to wait until afterwards. His first question was "are the angels connected to the dale-eks?"
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Sep 25, 2014 02:14
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Doctor Spaceman posted:It's a joke by an English comic-book writer whose approach to continuity is to include everything. Possibly literally so, in some of his multiverse stories. Who would that be? Alan Moore? I wouldn't be surprisad to see a Doctor Who/LXG crossover.
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Sep 25, 2014 05:14
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Angry Salami posted:I'm getting the impression the Master reveal actually has more impact if all you know is "He's some bad guy who calls himself "The Master" than if you actually know what the character's like... This was pretty much where I was. I knew there was a bad guy called The Master and he was a rogue Time Lord who liked to gently caress around with the Doctor, and I'd been waiting for him for a while. For instance, I thought in Doomsday they'd find out The Master was the one who brought the Cybermen to Earth instead of the Cult of Skaro. So I was hyped when he finally showed up. Does it work if you know nothing about it? I don't know, I feel like you got all you needed from their interactions. quote:Martha: He's a Time Lord, that's a good thing, isn't it? That gives the important facts: he's a Time Lord, but there are good and bad Time Lords, and when we see Tennant's fear as he says the name "Master," we get that they have a history and this guy is dangerous. It seems to me like that's enough. Also, I think you've nailed the RTD vs. Moffat debate. This episode is a good example of plotting done well, I think, because of the fobwatch. The fact that they set up the idea of Time Lords hiding as humans several episodes in advance made the payoff much better. I think Moffat is not as good at emotional writing, and he screws up the most when he tries for a big, weepy moment and fails, but so far that hasn't happened.
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Sep 29, 2014 20:47
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quote:Uh don't you vote for parties in the British MP elections over individual people? Like isn't that like, The Big Difference between how Americans are elected into political office versus how British people are elected into political office? Yeah, that's a bit troublesome. I handwave it away by saying that Saxon allied himself with one of the parties and used his force of personality to get people to vote for his party, with the understanding that they'd elect him prime minister if they got a majority. Similarly, the American president introducing himself as "president-elect" was an embarrassing gaffe- I'm guessing he meant "duly elected president" or something. quote:The Mr. Saxon stuff was stupid and pointless this season and had literally no effect or point on this episode in any way; why was there so much time spent on Martha's boring-rear end family being spied on, again? Why was The Master doing all this? I suppose because he saw Martha with the Doctor in the distant future, and then was sent back to before they met. He wanted to find the Doctor again, and he knew he and Martha eventually crossed paths, so he kept an eye on her until they did. quote:Speaking of this, Occ should watch Time Crash when the time comes, if only for the line about the Master. Seconded.
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Sep 30, 2014 04:08
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SirSamVimes posted:Occupation has already mentioned that he made sure it was the version with that scene that he's watching. I've seen THAT SCENE on youtube, but apparently there was seven minutes worth of material cut from the Netflix version? What else is missing? For spoilers sake, probably no one should answer this until after the next review, but I am curious if there's anything near as glorious cut out.
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Sep 30, 2014 04:20
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thexerox123 posted:This is a nitpicky thing and it doesn't really effect my enjoyment of the episode at all, but it has always bugged me... how did the Master conveniently end up with the name Yana, perfectly lined up to work with the "You Are Not Alone" hint? You've got the cause and effect backwards. Jack knew the Master used the name Yana, and so told the Doctor "You Are Not Alone" to try to hint that Yana was the Master. I assume he couldn't tell him outright because then the Doctor might never go to Utopia at all and it would create a paradox.
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Oct 2, 2014 16:38
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This is one of those episodes where I remember it fondly because I remember a few fun little bits. Truth is, though, most of this episode is a dull blur, and if I rewatched it I'd probably be bored. Daleks in Manhattan was the same way. In Voyage, I really liked the tour guide's bizarre ideas about what Christmas is, and the "Allons-y, Alonso!" joke was fun because it was a callback from quite a while ago.quote:a suprisingly expository old coot newspaperman That was also one of my favorite parts. The actor is a veteran of British television named Bernard Cribbins. His casting was a bit of fanservice, in that he also starred in a non-canonical Doctor Who TV movie from 1966 where Peter Cushing played the Doctor. I have not seen it, but by all accounts it's very strange.
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Oct 5, 2014 19:11
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quote:and the latter is so stunningly SJW tumblr bullshit it makes me loving furious to even think about. quote:gently caress you RTD, you homophobic loving rear end in a top hat. "Stupid tumblr SJW's getting offended over everything! Now let me explain to you how this TV episode proves this gay man hates gay people." Yeah, I really think you're stretching here. Villains need motives. He was just trying to give the villain a relatable motive. You can certainly say he failed, and that the failure has unfortunate implications, but the claim that he's homophobic is pretty hard to back up, I think.
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Oct 5, 2014 20:51
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MrL_JaKiri posted:Why not just leave all stuff like stopping WW2 unsaid because there's no way a family programme about a time travelling alien can do justice to the concept without being crass? That's probably for the best- I can't imagine a story where the Doctor comes face-to-face with Hitler turning out well. Generally, I think the "fixed point" thing is shorthand for "poo poo is really complicated and we'd best not gently caress with it." "Father's Day" didn't do it all that well, in my opinion, because it wasn't clear why Rose couldn't save her father but the Doctor could save others. Maybe it is a paradox thing- if her father never died, she wouldn't be Rose anymore. "Fires of Pompeii" is much better about it. Basically, I imagine that the Doctor looks at Pompeii and somehow senses that any attempt to save it will fail. Most of the time, with big events he doesn't know why they're fixed, just that they are. It's not that an invisible barrier bounces him back if he tries to touch a fixed point, but rather that he gets swept along in events and ends up failing or making things worse. In this case, it's clear he was somehow destined to destroy Pompeii. He didn't realize that at first, but he knew that trying to save it was a futile effort. I can think of some other cases where the Doctor attempts to rewrite a fixed point and events correct themselves despite him. So I basically say he's not omniscient, but he's been around long enough that he intuitively knows when something is too big to fix. The other thing I think about is that he's not the only thing that mucks around in time. Time is a "big ball," after all, and it's possible events in the future can somehow alter the past. I think the "ghosts" in the Dickens episode were like that, though I haven't seen that one in a long time. So it's easier to stop the baddies if they are changing history and the Doctor is restoring it.
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Oct 8, 2014 03:20
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ikanreed posted:God drat you person in this thread who I can't identify for fear of spoiling things talking about a future episode in an amusingly uninformed way. I want to quote you and say something snarky, but I just can't. Private message?
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Oct 10, 2014 05:06
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Zaggitz posted:What broke it for me, and this might actually be from next ep but its not a spoiler, but Rattigan at some point says "I'm clever!" which no American(or Canadian for that matter) would use as a descriptive for being a genius. I thought the same thing. He at one point shouts "I'm cleverer than you!" I'm pretty sure any American would say "I'm smarter than you."
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Oct 14, 2014 22:53
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I personally enjoyed Torchwood a lot, but Children of Earth is the only part I will defend as great. The first two seasons, though, I thought were fun (okay, Cyberwoman was terrible, but I liked the cannibal episode). Martha's guest appearance was good, and led to this great exchange.  Android Blues posted:Also the first episode establishes one of the main cast members as a date rapist, just so you know it's dark and edgy. Yeah, that was... ugh. I think that writers thought of the chemical Owen used as just sort of a fancy cologne. The writers (Davies, I suppose) didn't think of how, if the person apparently is incapable of resisting, it's something a bit more than that. Owen never again does anything that comes close to rape, so I'm willing to write that off as a out-of-character moment by a crew who hadn't quite nailed down all the characters at that point.
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Oct 19, 2014 07:00
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Pwnstar posted:This episode was dumb and goofy and cheesy and that's why it was great. It's good to have "fun" episodes in between the entire word being in peril again and scenes of the Doctor being emotional about A Thing. I agree, this one was a lot of fun, and I really liked it. It also avoids the "world in peril" thing Ocx have complained about- it's just a handful of people rather than a planet-threatening crisis. I haven't done a hard count, but I think there are more of those "small" episodes this season than the previous ones.
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Oct 29, 2014 03:55
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Ohtsam posted:"Hey, Who turned out the lights?" is the goofiest thing I've ever actually gotten scared by. I don't know, it really seemed like a recycling of "Are you my mummy?"
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Nov 1, 2014 05:46
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I can't really say what I think of River without spoiling future episodes. Let's just say that in her first appearance I really liked her. It's hard to judge this episode on its own merits, without thinking about the payoff to the various stories that start here. On its own, I think this is a very good two-parter, though probably not as good as The Empty Child. The rest of my feelings will have to wait for later.quote:River is rad because she's an extremely competent independent woman who is as strong or stronger than the main male character with her own political and personal agency. Right, that's why I like River in this episode- she's got her own agenda and isn't completely dependent on the Doctor. She basically puts him in the same position he usually puts other companions in, and it's fun to see things reversed. She's an archaeologist who is romantically involved with the Doctor, but that's not her main motive. The worst moments for Rose and Martha were when they seemed to ignore their own lives in favor of pining after the Doctor. Here, I like that we have a companion whose life intersects the Doctor but doesn't revolve entirely around him. She's not an archaeologist because of the Doctor, she just happens to meet up with him in the pursuit of her other goals. Jurgan fucked around with this message at 04:53 on Nov 2, 2014 |
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Nov 2, 2014 04:47
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Zaggitz posted:I expect next episode will have a really divisive guess pool. Really? This is one of few episodes where there seems to be a very strong consensus (I don't think that's a spoiler, as long as I don't say what kind of consensus).
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Nov 3, 2014 07:07
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Irony Be My Shield posted:Is this supposed to be sarcastic, because what you've just described is a classic far-right wet dream Or the Iraq war.
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Nov 7, 2014 19:12
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