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jng2058 posted:You fortunate bastard. You better report back on your impressions when you finish, dammit! We don't get enough first watch responses to old episodes around here. About the only place it comes into effect is over in the Occ/Oxx thread. Oh, I will report back. But it'll have to be tomorrow. I told my wife (her favorite Doctor is Matt Smith) about this (to us) lost episode and she's freaking out with excitement, so I'll be watching it with her tonight. We both love Christmas movies. Even cheesy ones. Even (some) Hallmark Channel ones. I don't even know why, but we just really love Christmas movies. They melt the cold cynical ice around my heart, somehow. So (from what I can tell in the description) a Christmas Carol story with Dumbledore standing in for Scrooge and Matt Smith's the Doctor standing in for the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future is about the best drat cross section I can imagine.
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Nov 25, 2014 20:33
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PriorMarcus posted:It's easily the best Christmas special and is actually in my top ten for the revival in general. Granted, it's not exactly up against particularly stiff competition. 
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Nov 25, 2014 20:58
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Fil5000 posted:I think he wrote the Life on Mars where the guy in police custody ends up dead by Ray force feeding him drugs. Which was, if I recall, managed to fail on matching the tone of the rest of the series and on sticking to any sort of characterisation that was already laid out. Yeah, that rings a bell. It's like Chibnall's version of the characters were the worst versions of themselves and it was a chore to watch. Actually, I think that was Tregenna's failing on Torchwood in some of her episodes, except in the opposite direction. She had the characters not acting like utter shitbags when they were already established as utter shitbags and it didn't match the tone. At her best, she managed to make Rape Monkey watchable during "Out of Time", but at her worst she had everyone on their knees yelling "Whhhhhy?" in "Meat" and given those characters were already established as utter shitbags, it came across as hypocritical, even nonsensical. The utter sturm and drang of the performances certainly didn't help with that one either. If I'm going to be charitable to Chibnall, I will say he has interesting ideas. He just can't turn those ideas into a cohesive script half the time. The other half of the time he churns out middling, somewhat serviceable scripts that are hobbled by poor internal logic and dreary characterization. "The Power of Three" was an interesting idea that completely fell apart in the last act due to him not knowing what the gently caress to do with the idea, so he ends it by bringing in a loving weak villain and having the Doctor wave his magic wand to make the bad man go away. It was loving awful, and having a decent starting premise does not excuse that one bit.
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Nov 25, 2014 21:03
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Metal Loaf posted:Granted, it's not exactly up against particularly stiff competition. The snowmen was a christmas episode wasn't it? That was actually a good episode. Not just a good* episode *for christmas
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Nov 25, 2014 21:18
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The best Christmas episode is The Chimes of Midnight, and everyone knows it.
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Nov 25, 2014 21:25
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Little_wh0re posted:The snowmen was a christmas episode wasn't it? That was actually a good episode. Not just a good* episode Yeah, it was good. They're the two best Christmas episodes. "Voyage of the Damned" and "The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe" are the weakest ("The End of Time" would definitely be in the running but I'm not sure if it counts or not).
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Nov 25, 2014 21:25
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The End of Time counts, but it's clearly the second best one. I didn't care for the Snowmen.
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Nov 25, 2014 21:27
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thrawn527 posted:Oh, I will report back. But it'll have to be tomorrow. I told my wife (her favorite Doctor is Matt Smith) about this (to us) lost episode and she's freaking out with excitement, so I'll be watching it with her tonight. Man, I wish there was a lost Matt Smith episode I could watch  Although I'd probably sit on it, just so I knew there was one more out there. Don't read this 'til you've watched it, but I imagine the last line is going to be pretty poignant for you, considering.
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Nov 25, 2014 21:31
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I liked the Snowmen. Looking back, it suffers from the "Who is Clara, besides the Impossible Girl?" problem that 7.5 had, but it's still a good episode.
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Nov 25, 2014 21:32
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The first audio I had my mom (and almost-70-year-old dad!) listen to was 1963: Fanfare for the Common Men, because the Beatles stuff served as a good "reference point" for a pseudohistorical radio story. Both of them liked it! But it was The Chimes of Midnight, listened to on Christmas Day 2013, that got my mom REALLY into Big Finish, and modern audio stuff (like Welcome to Night Vale) in general. She'd listened to The Shadow and suchlike as a kid, but yeah, Chimes owns.
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Nov 25, 2014 21:35
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All the Christmas specials are just varying degrees of terrible.
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Nov 25, 2014 21:43
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DoctorWhat posted:The best Christmas episode is The Chimes of Midnight, and everyone knows it. Nope, Spare Parts. It's made of plastic!
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Nov 25, 2014 21:44
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Fungah! posted:Nope, Spare Parts. It's made of plastic! If we're going to have this discussion, I'll put the kettle on.
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Nov 25, 2014 21:59
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The relative merits of Spare Parts and The Chimes of Midnight could be debated until the heat death of the universe, but I don't think it can be readily denied that Chimes is better as a Christmas story.
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Nov 25, 2014 22:05
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A Christmas Carol was so great I consider it an honorary part of season 5, thus furthering 5's status as the best season of the revival so far. It gave me such high hopes for future Christmas Specials from Moffat. Then the next one he did was The Doctor, The Widow & The Wardrobe. 
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Nov 25, 2014 22:06
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Jerusalem posted:
Which managed to gently caress up the reunion of the Doctor and the Ponds with that goddamn "humany-wumany" line . 
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Nov 25, 2014 22:13
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Noxville posted:All the Christmas specials are just varying degrees of terrible. This man (baby?) knows his stuff.
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Nov 25, 2014 22:26
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Noxville posted:All the Christmas specials are just varying degrees of terrible. Everything is various degrees of terrible because we live in a cold horrible world, akin in its horribleness to dystopias featured in Doctor Who, but there is no space alien coming to save us or magic box in which we can flee, so we are forced to live in a world run by people who make Daleks look nice. Some of that crushing despair can be alleviated by watching a few of the Doctor Who Christmas specials, though, some of which are good by any definition that one can use the word "good" to describe this flavor of television, in my opinion, as well as looking forward to the next one, which has Santa Claus, who is also not real or coming to save us.
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Nov 25, 2014 22:37
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The Christmas specials are mostly, but not universally, terrible. The Snowmen is good and Christmas Carol is very good. Pretty much everything else is pretty bad though.
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Nov 25, 2014 22:41
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Bicyclops posted:I didn't think 42 or The Power of Three were that bad (granted, I haven't seen 42 in a pretty long time), and Dinosaurs on a Spaceship just had the same problems everything in that half-season did. I rewatched The Power of Three a few weeks ago and it felt almost like two (or at least one and a quarter) stories crammed together, and only the first one is memorable. I can barely remember the alien bad guy responsible for making all the cubes appear all over Earth (who didn't show up until, like, 5-10 minutes until the episode ends IIRC), or even how the Doctor defeated him. I think he was a figure from Gallifreyan mythology? Or at least a nursery rhyme? The rest of the episode is a pretty entertaining bit of light-hearted fluff, though, with the Doctor going stir-crazy waiting for something to happen.
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Nov 26, 2014 02:06
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DoctorWhat posted:The relative merits of Spare Parts and The Chimes of Midnight could be debated until the heat death of the universe, but I don't think it can be readily denied that Chimes is better as a Christmas story. My position is "DON'T MAKE ME CHOOOOOOOSE". Though yeah, Spare Parts is a story that takes place during (the Mondasian equivalent of) Christmas, whereas Chimes is a Christmas story. As for the specials, A Christmas Carol is best, and I would watch The Snowmen and The Runaway Bride again on purpose too. Actually, come to that, The Christmas Invasion was fine too, if not quite on the same level of quality. I really only dislike Voyage of the Damned and The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe.
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Nov 26, 2014 02:38
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Speaking of Christmas Specials..... The Time of the Doctor. The 800th episode of Doctor Who, the last Matt Smith episode, the 2013 Christmas Special, a wrap-up of almost all the major hanging plot threads of the Moffat era, a follow-up to the near universally acclaiming 50th Anniversary special.... this episode is a LOT of things. As a result, it fails to really hold together as a cohesive story in its own right. It has moments of utter brilliance, some points that hit you hard emotionally in the gut, some great ideas.... but also equal amounts of rushed sequences, an overabundance of cameos, some misplaced humor, and some important story elements that don't stand up to anything but the barest passing scrutiny. There is an almost RTD feel to the whole thing: the narrator; the excess of monsters showing up for cameos; the lengthy asides with the companion's family; the Doctor looking foolish after getting a bit full of himself; and the broad brushstrokes of inventing magnificent sounding concepts that come out of nowhere but get treated like they were always around - The Church of the Papal Mainframe feels like a more competently executed Shadow Proclamation. It isn't quite as self-indulgent as something like Journey's End, but it IS self-indulgent in a way that the 50th Anniversary could get away with but feels less suitable here. It still works in parts, and very well, but I do get a sense of Moffat throwing ALL his toys together almost without rhyme or reason because it's his last story so dammit they're going to be there! Throughout all of time and space a message is being sent, a message that nobody can decipher but that nonetheless fills every race capable of picking it up with a sense of unrelenting dread. Most of the advanced races in the universe send ships to the planet of origin, but arrive too late as they find the planet shielded by the Church of the Papal Mainframe. A powerful organization that has essentially co-opted ALL Churches under a single roof and worships each as need or circumstance dictates, the Church sets up a stalemate for the assembled races. Some are powerful enough to shatter the Church's shields and land on the planet, but that will kick off a war with the other assembled races they might not be able to win. The ones not powerful enough to break the shields can only sit back and wait to see what happened. None will leave, because all are terrified of the source of the message and want to find out more about it, if only so they can destroy it and end the dread. Into this stand-off appears the Doctor, just as curious about the source of the signal which even he can't translate. After a couple of humorous false starts where he accidentally walks into and offends the ships of both the Daleks and the Cybermen, he gets sidetracked by a call from Clara. It's Christmas back on earth and Clara has decided to be the adult this year and host Christmas dinner in her flat... but she's also been happily lying to her family all this time about having a loving and caring long-term boyfriend and now she has to produce one... and the Doctor is it! It's a very sitcom-y situation to throw into the middle of an inter-galactic standoff but the Doctor, being the Doctor, cheerfully agrees to manage both. Juggling both priorities, he shows up at Clara's house naked (appearing before the Papal Mainframe in the nude is a sign of trust, faith, and non-threat) and completely misunderstands her objections, creating a holographic projection of clothes that only SHE can see, much to her family's shock (and her nan's delight).   During the RTD years, families of companions were a near constant presence and for better or worse we got to know them. Moffat-era companions have not been the same, whether mostly non-existent like Amy's, mostly unseen like Rory's, or present only in brief flashbacks in Clara's case. Here, Moffat sets up a typical Doctor/Companion's Family awkward dynamic that falls a little flat because we don't know ANY of these characters, they're completely blank slates. Apparently Clara has a stepmother and their relationship is strained, but that means nothing when this is the first time we get to see it, and it also makes little sense given Clara's own predilection for acting as a nanny/quasi-mother figure to other people's children (and her becoming a teacher?). As a result, the times where the story cuts away to Clara's awkward dinner scenes, or the touching moment between her and her nan with the poem fall flat or fail to have quite the emotional resonance they could have. Wacky Jackie started life as a very one-dimenional character, but by the end of season 2 she was able to give her daughter a fearful warning about the danger of her lifestyle and have it mean something because we'd come to know her as a character. Clara's family are complete strangers to us, the only time she has even mentioned her parents was when talking about her deceased mother in The Rings of Akhaten. Her father, stepmother and even her nan thus end up meaning slightly less to viewers to Handles the detached Cyberman Head, which gets a surprisingly emotional farewell late in the story. The Doctor and Clara return to the Church of the Papal Mainframe, where there is a little bit of physical comedy from Jenna Coleman (Clara is technically naked herself) as she tries to figure out exactly where to place her hands to retain her modesty. There they meet Tasha Lem, a completely new creation who certainly feels to me like she is absolutely meant to be (or be revealed to be) River Song. So much about the way she acts, little references made both to River and to her ("you've been fighting the psycopath inside you all your life", "I'd have never gotten this far without River Song" etc), the nature of the Papal Mainframe as a giant computer system ala that which housed River in the Library, Tasha's easy ability to fly the TARDIS, Tasha's lack of aging, and River's own winking line in The Name of the Doctor about the fact that she hadn't faded away as a data ghost yet just screamed to me that Tasha was actually River. That is never confirmed though and as far as I know nobody has ever said this was the intended meaning. If that is the case, then Tasha is very much proof of the oft-made claim that Moffat has a very basic template of female characters. Whatever the case, she is afforded a familiarity and referenced history to the Doctor that she hasn't earned, we're told that her and the Doctor have a mutual respect for her based on all those adventures that have never been referenced before because the character never existed before this episode. Tasha knows that the Church can't hold back the assembled races for long so she asks the Doctor if he will teleport down through the shields and investigate the source of the message. He is more than eager to do so, of course, as the message hasn't filled him with fear but rather excitement, which he at first puts down to his natural curiosity. Upon arriving though, things get a little more serious, as he discovers what the signal is coming through, and where it is coming from.  The Cracks in Time were the major source of concern in the excellent season 5, Moffat's first season of Doctor Who. He brings them back here in a way that makes sense but absolutely stinks of being chosen to shortcut the sense of,"poo poo is getting real!" As he explains to Clara, the universe was destroyed on the 26th of June, 2010, which surprises her because she certainly doesn't remember it. He casually explains that he helped put the universe back together afterwards, but that scars in reality remained afterward and now something is trying to push in from the other side. It makes perfect sense, anything trying to get in would find the weakest point to do so. It is just a pity that Moffat insisted on showing us that the Doctor so feared that the Cracks would eventually return that he saw them in "his" room in The God Complex, a huge misstep that ruins the perfect way they handled that in the episode by leaving it up to the viewer's imagination. Handles earlier insistence that the source of the message was Gallifrey now takes on entirely new meaning - beforehand the Doctor dismissed that as impossible, but the cracks change all that, and in a rather fun callback to The Five Doctors he produces the High Seal of Gallifrey, which enables Handles to decode the top-level Gallifreyan security code of the message and tell him what the question is. It is, of course, the oldest question, because the message is being transmitted through all of space AND time, and as we know by now the oldest question is,"Doctor who?" The message is decoded for ALL the assembled races, all of whom immediately pick up on the meaning, including Tasha. That's when everything comes together, as we learn that the town called Christmas is located on the planet of Trenzalore, destined to be the place where the Doctor dies to prevent him answering the oldest question and ending the universe. The Time Lords are on the other side of that crack, and if they hear the Doctor's name they'll know they can pass back through where they'll discover the most advanced races in the universe waiting for them, terrified and ready to fight because they remember the Time Lords as the bastards who almost wiped out the entire universe in the Time War.... and the Daleks are there too. And this is both a great strength and a terrible weakness of this episode. Moffat here makes an attempt to actively tie up every hanging thread, every major plot element of his three seasons in charge of the show. The Cracks in Time, the Church of the Silence, the oldest question, who blew up the Doctor's TARDIS in season 5, why the Church tried to kill him before he could get to Trenzalore, his fated death on Trenzalore already seen as an established fact in The Name of the Doctor etc. All of that is thrown in to the story and resolutions or attempts at resolutions made, some satisfactorily and others less so. The Cracks in Time we already knew were created by the exploding TARDIS. The TARDIS was blown up by the renegade faction of the Church of the Silence, but no explanation is given for HOW or whose voice it was we heard saying,"Silence Will Fall!", leaving us to extrapolate that it was River herself who unconsciously set the TARDIS to explode, and the voice was purely in her own head. The reason the oldest question is,"Doctor who?" is because the Time Lords want to make a quiet and safe return to the universe and the only person they trust to tell them it is okay is the Doctor, and so they want him to tell them his name, something only he would know (or Tasha Lem, if she is indeed River Song). Why is Trenzalore a place where no lie can be told? Because the Time Lords are projecting a Truth Field that makes it impossible to lie. The Papal Mainframe became the Church of the Silence in order to keep the Doctor from saying his name and letting the Time Lords back in which would inadvertently restart the Time War, and a renegade faction who fought the key to this was killing the Doctor was kicked off by Madame Kovarian, which turned out to be a Destiny Trap that lead to the Doctor arriving at Trenzalore in the first place. It's great that an attempt is made to explain all of this, or at least provide the information for us to extrapolate answers from.... but it all gets thrown out there quickly amongst everything else going on, the 60 minutes of the episode are packed to the gills with information as Moffat tries desperately to wrap everything up in time for Matt Smith's departure. Not helping matters is the presence of such a large number of cameo aliens, all packed together so tightly that they either fail to have impact or end up looking comically inept. The Sontarans almost look the most foolish, but of course they're meant to be comedic characters (which annoys me, since Strax is a comedy character but Sontarans in general shouldn't be), so sadly the enemy that looks the most foolish are the Weeping Angels, which basically appear for the sake of appearing and are then laughably dispatched by a simple mirror slapped on the ground in front of them. They're certainly a long way away from the figures of dread they were in Blink. The origin of the Silence is casually given by the Doctor as if it is something he has always known, again suggesting previous adventures/information he gained that we the viewer weren't privy to. The Cybermen show an ability to adapt but are as easily dispatched as ever, and the Daleks are quite deliberately left a non-entity outside of their first appearance till roughly 35-40 minutes into the episode where they suddenly strike. While it's cool that the Daleks have done the same basic thing they always do of running into a wall they can't possibly get through and coming back later to stubbornly smash their way through it, it does mean that we get a completely missed opportunity to see a confrontation between Daleks and the Silence, who are just as easily co-opted by the Daleks as everybody else in the Church.   The actual reveal that the Church has ALREADY been overrun could have been very cool, and Tasha's angry exclamation of,"I died in this room screaming your name!" followed by her muted, surprised,"Oh that's right... I died in here...." is excellent. Unfortunately it is preceded by a badly edited and ill-placed visual reveal that all the members of the Church (including the Silence) have already been caught and converted by the Daleks. Dalek conversion of human(oid) subjects is always a rough area, because by their nature they shouldn't use/rely on anything other than Dalek... but then again they've ALWAYS had slaves/robo-men/pet monsters going all the way back to their second story in 1964. That body horror might work better with the Cybermen, but nobody would buy the Cybermen as being capable of overcoming the Church. But then the conversion process is almost too simply overcome by the Doctor pissing off Tasha and getting her to break the control of the Daleks and retake control of the Church - Moffat wanted the Church to be overrun, he wanted the Church to be won back, but he had so much else going on in the story that the entire conquest/rebellion takes place in the space of 2-3 minutes. So it comes down to the Doctor backed up by the Church against the Daleks, as we all knew it really had to. The other races who stick around to fight are either destroyed or end up cutting their losses, their dread of the Time Lords' potential return overcome by the very real risk of their destruction if they remain. But this leaves the threat of the Time War even more relevant, because not only have the Daleks built up their forces in preparation for the return of the Time Lords, but they have recovered information on the Doctor that was suppressed in Asylum of the Daleks. This is basically setting them back on the path to exploring the potential technologies that saw them raise to the same level as the Time Lords in the first place, so the Time War restarting is a near certainly if the Time Lords return. Yes the Time Lords would come in peace, and yes this new Dalek Empire isn't quite on the same "ability to alter reality itself" level as the former Dalek Empires, but set the two fighting again and the Time Lords will soon be back on a war footing and the Daleks will be fueled by the necessity of war to innovate and raise to overcome the obstacles put in their way, as they have traditionally done for the last 50 years. Throughout all this, the Doctor has had multiple outs. At any point he could have said his name and the Time Lords would have burst through the crack and had his back. Once Clara returns with the TARDIS he could have easily escaped to anywhere in time and space and left Trenzalore to burn - he could have easily taken the entire population of Christmas with him so nobody died too. Even without the TARDIS he could have had the Papal Mainframe pick the inhabitants up and leave the assembled races to destroy the planet. But for once we see the Doctor make the decision to stick around, to actually stay in one place and face up to his responsibilities. He put Gallifrey into the pocket universe, he can't just leave them without the question answered. But he can't answer the question and risk the lives of the people of Christmas. But he can't leave them undefended either, so he takes on the responsibility to be their Sheriff, to let them have as normal and safe a life as he possibly can while fighting off the various alien races trying to blast their way in. The dashing young man slowly grows to match his actual age, as hundreds of years pass and Matt Smith ends up looking more and more like William Hartnell - the old man who fled Gallifrey is now the old man defending Christmas and waiting on Gallifrey's return.  I think there are two conflicting issues with the theme of the Doctor waiting around hundreds of years though. We're told rather than shown in the space of a few minutes the progression of centuries, during which NOTHING changes except for the Doctor himself. The impact of the Doctor's long wait isn't shown, the small town of Christmas remains almost totally unchanged till the Daleks takeover the Church and then there is just a bit more debris lying around and the odd fire here and there. The society doesn't evolve or change, they remain the same quaint place out of time they were when the Doctor and Clara first arrived. Does the population not change? Do they not have a way to get off the planet themselves? It is a colony after all and not a place of indigenous lifeforms. If it is a farm-world, is this the ONLY town or are there others? How do they farm in a location with only a few minutes of sunlight? How do they farm with multiple alien races constantly attacking the village? But on the other hand I think the location, the theme, the use of narration etc are all designed very deliberately to invoke the same sense of storybook/fairytale atmosphere as was so prevalent throughout the excellent season 5. This is the end of the 11th Doctor's story, and I think Moffat wanted to end it like it started, as a fairytale - from Amelia Pond and the Raggedy Man to The Man Who Saved Christmas. Clara, just starting to finally develop some sense of depth to her character (and boy does that pay off in season 8) is tossed back and forth in this story. Pulled out of her own story into the Doctor's, thrown out again and forcing her way back in, sent away again and then brought back by Tasha Lem... she finally faces the Doctor as he truly is, an impossibly old and kindly man who just wants the best for everybody. The scene where she gently helps the old, somewhat confused man to pull the Christmas cracker and reads the poem to him is really, truly sweet. Like her nan he wants a joke, and grumbles that he doesn't get it when she reads the poem, an extract whose meaning is rather obvious both within the story and as a commentary on the end of Matt Smith's run. quote:And now it's time for one last bow The 11th Doctor's time is over, and like he had earlier told Clara that means the Doctor's time is over. The War Doctor and 10's aborted regeneration both officially count in the "rules" of regeneration, and so despite the fact he is the 11th Doctor this is his 13th life and once he dies, it's truly over. He knows he can't escape this fate, he already saw it when The Great Intelligence showed him his tomb, and after centuries of defending this one small village it is time to face the music. The Daleks have arrived, the Prime Minister confident enough at last to make an appearance in its ship and demand the Doctor come and face his death. Despite the Truth Field the Doctor "lies" to one of the villagers that he has a plan, admitting to Clara that his "plan" is nothing more than to talk for a bit, hope something happens, and then take credit like normal. He walks to face his death after insisting that Clara find somewhere safe to hide, explaining that even he can't break this rule or change his own timeline... maybe if the Time Lords were still around, but they're not, and even now he won't break and say his name and bring them through to fight this battle for him. So he leaves, and Clara once again proves why the Doctor needs a companion. As he staggers slowly up the stairs to face the exultant (but still not quite confident enough to openly attack him) Daleks, Clara storms up to the Crack in the wall and finally gives the Time Lords' an answer. She repeats the same thing that was hammered home in The Name of the Doctor, that they've completely misunderstood the Doctor by asking him to tell him his name. His name IS the Doctor, that is who he really is, and he has protected and guarded them for centuries and now he needs their help. They've been asking him to give an answer that is meaningless to him, all that talk over the last 7 seasons about the Doctor's name being so important comes down to misunderstandings by others (the Time Lords, the Great Intelligence, River Song etc) that created the same destiny trap that Madame Kovarian tricked herself into - he is the Doctor, and he needs somebody else to help him now.   As the Dalek Prime Minister roars from its saucer that the Doctor's defenses have finally been broken and that they are finally going to kill him for good, something rather magical happens. The Doctor won't stop mocking them but knows he has nothing left, no tricks to pull.... but then just as they declare that the rules of Regeneration are known to them, the Time Lords reopen the crack in space/time in the sky above Christmas and let flow free an unspecified amount of regeneration energy, gifting the Doctor with more life, more time.... and more tricks to pull. Matt Smith's sudden transformation from tired, somewhat senile old man to gleeful mocking of the horrified Daleks ("We blew it again, guys!") is fantastic, as he laughs that if there is one thing they should have learned by now, it's that you never tell him what the rules are supposed to be. Marshaling and directing the destructive force of the Regeneration process (a new addition to Regeneration only seen in the revival, but well established by now), he wipes out the Dalek fleet, saving Christmas from the last of the besieging forces and conveniently destroying those Daleks aware of who he is (Moffat gets his cake and eats it too), assisted at last by the Time Lords in the most competent display of their power seen since their very first appearance in The War Games when they were more akin to the terrible, judgmental power of Greek Gods. Really, this episode is a big ol' mess that is saved by an excellent performance from Matt Smith in his final episode of his run as the character. Frequently hidden away behind make-up for much of the episode, he still manages to get across a strong and emotional performance that holds everything together. He's ably assisted by Jenna Coleman as Clara, who does particularly well in her final couple of scenes with him as well as her tearful appeal to the Time Lords to save the Doctor for once. The best is saved for the last though, when Clara returns to the TARDIS an undetermined amount of time after the destruction of the Dalek fleet. Tasha Lem and the Church of the Papal Mainframe are forgotten as she finds the phone off the hook and the Doctor's old clothes strewn about on the floor. To her great relief she finds HER Doctor waiting for her, young and healthy again, dressed in clean clothes and looking ready to jump off on another wonderful adventure with her. But it isn't to be, as the Doctor sadly but sweetly tells her that his time is up, the new Doctor is coming and soon he will be gone. In his final moments he sees the first face his face ever saw, little Amelia Pond playing amongst his vision of the children's drawings that decorated his tower in Christmas before Amy Pond (in a wonderful cameo by Karen Gillan) walks down the stairs and says her final goodbye to "the raggedy man". He has one final message for Clara before he goes, and it is about as perfect a final line as you could get, a moment that for me makes up for many of the episode's other obvious shortcomings. The Eleventh Doctor posted:We all change, when you think about it. We're all different people all through our lives. And that's okay, that's good, you've got to keep moving, so long as you remember all the people that you used to be. I will not forget one line of this. Not one day. I swear. I will always remember when the Doctor was me. I will always remember when the Doctor was Matt Smith, too  The Time of the Doctor is a compelling episode, but it is a messy and self-indulgent one that is saved by the goodwill of the 50th Anniversary Special and the strength of Matt Smith's always excellent performance in his final appearance in his run. He came into the show perfectly and went out perfectly too, and while everything that came in-between was of varying quality, you could always rely on him to carry the best material to ever higher levels, and the worst material to be at least passable. Nine regenerated happily with a final goodbye to Rose Tyler, Ten regenerated alone saying he didn't want to go and fighting it every step of the way. Eleven though, has said all he needs to say and done all he needed to do. Despite Clara's tearful objection as she begs him not to change, he just sweetly smiles and then without fighting, frustration or fanfare, he's gone.  
Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 22:38 on Jan 7, 2015 |
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Nov 26, 2014 04:31
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The soundtrack to both Day and Time came out on Monday, and while the show is a bit too reliant on Murray Gold (I swear, it must be in the way it's mixed), Gold's massive strength in having pieces that can be easily representative of parts of the episodes, and vice-versa. When used well, leitmotif can be very effective: take, for example, the Cyberman reveal through the music in "Dark Water", although my personal favourite is how the Cyberman theme turns into the Dalek theme in "Army of Ghosts". That all said, I still can't stop listening to "Never Tell Me the Rules". 
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Nov 26, 2014 05:40
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Jerusalem posted:We're told rather than shown in the space of a few minutes the progression of centuries, during which NOTHING changes except for the Doctor himself. The impact of the Doctor's long wait isn't shown, the small town of Christmas remains almost totally unchanged till the Daleks takeover the Church and then there is just a bit more debris lying around and the odd fire here and there. The society doesn't evolve or change, they remain the same quaint place out of time they were when the Doctor and Clara first arrived. Does the population not change? Do they not have a way to get off the planet themselves? It is a colony after all and not a place of indigenous lifeforms. If it is a farm-world, is this the ONLY town or are there others? How do they farm in a location with only a few minutes of sunlight? How do they farm with multiple alien races constantly attacking the village? But on the other hand I think the location, the theme, the use of narration etc are all designed very deliberately to invoke the same sense of storybook/fairytale atmosphere as was so prevalent throughout the excellent season 5. This is the end of the 11th Doctor's story, and I think Moffat wanted to end it like it started, as a fairytale - from Amelia Pond and the Raggedy Man to The Man Who Saved Christmas. For what it's worth, the Tales of Trenzalore collection of short stories does give some background on Trenzalore and Christmas, how it's a human colony, how they sustain themselves on a planet of almost constant darkness and snow. And the stories are great to boot. I'd highly recommend it as reading, particularly during the holidays.
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Nov 26, 2014 06:00
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DoctorWhat posted:The best Christmas episode is The Chimes of Midnight, and everyone knows it. Christmas just isn't Christmas without
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Nov 26, 2014 06:18
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I've only cried at one ficiton thing, the ending to Toy Story 3. But Eleven's regeneration comes close. 
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Nov 26, 2014 06:20
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Astroman posted:For what it's worth, the Tales of Trenzalore collection of short stories does give some background on Trenzalore and Christmas, how it's a human colony, how they sustain themselves on a planet of almost constant darkness and snow. And the stories are great to boot. I'd highly recommend it as reading, particularly during the holidays. Obviously I can't speak to the quality or otherwise of those stories, but I do think that you shouldn't have to read/view/listen to content in a different media to get a "complete" story. I can't suggest a way they could have fit any kind of explanation (or even visual image/line of dialogue we could at least use as a basis for interpretation) in to the already jampacked story, but then again maybe that just goes to show that too much had been jammed into the episode in the first place. Moffat was focused so much on wrapped up his hanging plot threads that I think he just never stopped to think,"Okay maybe this quaint little Christmas town being subject to a centuries-long siege by Daleks, Cybermen et al needs a little fleshing out/backing up?" But then again, I can equally see that he just didn't care because he was more concerned with the storybook atmosphere. Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 10:43 on Nov 26, 2014 |
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Nov 26, 2014 06:27
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Jerusalem posted:I will always remember when the Doctor was Matt Smith, too This is by far my favorite "Doctor's farewell". So perfect and true to Smith's Doctor and a breath of fresh air after the angst and selfishness of Tennant's regeneration.
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Nov 26, 2014 06:35
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All this talk of terrible Christmas specials and no mention of The Feast of Steven yet? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5X9kzITMaEI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmev8P7eT0g The only episode we have literally no hope of recovering in the future because not a single broadcast station outside the UK ordered it. Because no one wanted it.
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Nov 26, 2014 07:08
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I liked Time Of The Doctor more when I rewatched it recently but it really does have too much plot crammed in. You don't need an origin story for the memory-proof Silence monsters! You don't have a dry conversation about all the plot points from the whole prior series over dinner! Why the hell is Tasha Lem not Madam Kovarian? The good bits are really good though, and I love him prancing about shooting Daleks down with regeneration energy despite how dumb that is. I still think it's worse than The End Of Time but not by as much as I used to.
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Nov 26, 2014 07:22
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DoctorWhat posted:The relative merits of Spare Parts and The Chimes of Midnight could be debated until the heat death of the universe, but I don't think it can be readily denied that Chimes is better as a Christmas story. The relative merits of any two things can be debated, doesn't mean Spare Parts isn't better
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Nov 26, 2014 07:34
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Barry Foster posted:Man, I wish there was a lost Matt Smith episode I could watch I did this for the longest time with Tennant. A few months back, I finally decided to watch it! It was Planet of the Dead. I gave up ten minutes in.
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Nov 26, 2014 07:37
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MrL_JaKiri posted:The relative merits of any two things can be debated, doesn't mean Spare Parts isn't better Spare Parts is an incredibly well-executed story about the origins of the Cybermen. Davison and Sutton, as well as the guest cast, turn in excellent performances in a fairly straightforward story. It has its moments, OH IT HAS WONDERFUL MOMENTS, but it is, by necessity, overrated. The Chimes of Midnight is not overrated. Every single line of dialogue is goddamn brilliant, often brilliantly, bitingly, viciously satirical. It's the most cynical Christmas Special (of any quality) this side of Blackadder, but manages to subsequently transform itself into a genuinely POSITIVE story about the triumph of the oppressed classes over their wealthy abusers. A truly Whoish, alchemical marvel, right up there with The Ribos Operation, Gridlock, and Planet of the Ood. It's the exact sort of self-righteous, uncompromising progressive influence that every single Doctor Who story should at least aspire to be.
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Nov 26, 2014 07:48
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Nah it's not that good
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Nov 26, 2014 07:50
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shut up, it totally is.
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Nov 26, 2014 07:51
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Speaking of progressiveness, I'll agree that A Christmas Carol is easily the highest quality Christmas special in most regards but the way the woman in it is treated bugs the poo poo out of me. She's not even treated as a person, it's like she's some kind of delicate toy to be brought out and played with on special occasions.
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Nov 26, 2014 07:54
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Solaris Knight posted:I've only cried at one ficiton thing, the ending to Toy Story 3. 
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Nov 26, 2014 13:33
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Watched this at the cinema with my then three year old son. Me and my wife were in floods of tears while he was going "What's wrong mummy and daddy, the toys are happy!"
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Nov 26, 2014 14:22
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Fil5000 posted:Watched this at the cinema with my then three year old son. Me and my wife were in floods of tears while he was going "What's wrong mummy and daddy, the toys are happy!" I swear there wasn't a dry eye in the house when I saw it at the cinemas Jerusalem posted:Speaking of Christmas Specials..... The Time of the Doctor. Something I loved about that last speech is it's very obviously Matt Smith just breaking the fourth wall and talking to the audience as a final goodbye. Neddy Seagoon fucked around with this message at 14:43 on Nov 26, 2014 |
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Nov 26, 2014 14:23
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| # ? Apr 19, 2024 02:18 |
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TL posted:I did this for the longest time with Tennant. A few months back, I finally decided to watch it! *click*
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Nov 26, 2014 14:33
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