Squalitude posted:

Yes if only things could be more spoiled with fewer surprises.

Squalitude posted:

You're saying the episode should have had "part one" and then started talking about what the TV guide said for next week. I'm trying to emphasise that some of us don't want to know what to expect going into an episode. I know I'm a stupid luddite and should get with the times and just happily read the episode guide I saw in SFX earlier this week, but I just don't want to. But, as you so wonderfully put it, you just don't know what I mean.

Wolfechu posted:

Just got done watching the episode, and I don't know if it's our TV, or they've changed the sound mixing or something, but Jesus Christ, Murray Gold was just stamping on half the dialogue.

I haven't even complained once about the incidental music in the last ten years, but we had to watch several scenes multiple times to figure out what people were saying, Davros particularly. We ended up watching the last ten minutes with closed captioning on.

Other than that, really enjoyed the episode.

And More posted:

The episode was pretty entertaining. I was kind of bummed when I realised they were not going to wrap things up. Moffat seems hell-bent on turning Doctor Who into feature films. It just doesn't seem like such a good idea considering how hit-or-miss the show can be. Series 8 had a nice breakneck pace to it that made it easy to ignore the duds. This feels a little slow.

MrL_JaKiri posted:

Disagree entirely. Almost all of the things that are brought up are resolved in the episode, to the extent that someone could watch the cold opening and the last few minutes and, with all likelihood, not miss anything that will affect part 2.

The stuff about the planes? Resolved. UNIT? Resolved. The Doctor being "missing"? Resolved. What is there apart from "The Doctor is on Skaro with Davros, who he left in a minefield as a child, and his companion, the Master, and the TARDIS have all been daleked"?

MrL_JaKiri posted:

MEEEEEEEE

(Or, more accurately, a trip back to Producer/Script Editor land because I don't think it's any coincidence that the quality of the scripts supplied by the show runner absolutely nosedived over their runs)

Cleretic posted:

I feel like a lot of these two episodes were probably filled in by Capaldi. Not in full, the gist of the plot was probably there, but I feel like Capaldi had a lot of input on seeing scenes like this happen.

This is kind of a weird two-parter, structurally. Last week's episode was one that really needed its second part to complete the story, but this episode barely needed the previous at all. I mean it does need it, if only for context, but it almost works as a standalone just because so few questions it raises were answered in the first. That's not a bad thing, but it does enforce that feeling that this might have been planned as a movie-length opener.

I think my favorite part, doing no disservice to the rest of the episode, was The Only Other Chair On Skaro.

Maxwell Lord posted:

I mean, sure, it'd be fine for the showrunners not to think "we can do no wrong, the audience will follow us anywhere." But I'm thinking more of the kind of clumsy top-down interference that gave us Galactica 1980, Buck Rogers Season 2, and Community Season 4.

And plus, really, despite all the craziness in Part 1, this ended up being downright traditional. The Doctor gets put in a trap by an old enemy, manages to clever his way out by the skin of his teeth, the Master- er, Missy gets caught in a collapsing city but probably will be around for the next time they need her, etc.

On top of which, they actually managed to handle the self referential stuff in an interesting way- they touched on the idea that there's this icon of "The Doctor" that is wonderful and good and heroic, and there's the real old man in a box, and he wants to live up to that ideal but it takes work. He does have those values of mercy and compassion but he has to push himself sometimes. This is good writing. This is character development. For all that the concrete plot stuff gets handwaved, this season and the last have actually delved into The Doctor as person in a way the show rarely has in the past.

Maxwell Lord posted:

A Deus Ex Machina is something that literally comes out of nowhere. We know regeneration energy is powerful and can be transferred in some circumstances. We know there are decomposing Dalek mutants in the sewers. There is foreshadowing.

Jerusalem posted:

I didn't realize this was a 2-parter

Edit: Kind of an odd episode, I kept feeling like there was something more going on and it was going to come to the fore at any point, and it moved at a good enough pace that I wasn't really aware of the time and didn't realize it was a 2-parter right up until it ended (there's something going on with the deaf lady refusing to let her translator into the ship). Like The Magician's Apprentice I think I won't really be able to get a read on this until the 2nd part has aired, and hopefully it doesn't feel as detached from its first part as The Witch's Familiar did.

Pesky Splinter posted:

Cerv posted:

remember when tennant did something sonic to a pair of 3D specs? was amusing as a one note joke, but I think making these shades an ongoing thing is a bit tedious.

and it's a bit weird them being such an obvious identifiable brand. if the BBC did product placement you'd be rolling your eyes at how it's a bit much. tennant wore converse but they didnt' shove it in the audience's face so.

GonSmithe posted:

I'm pretty sure Peter Capaldi probably asked to play the guitar because he plays the guitar and thought it would be cool if his Doctor could play guitar.

The_Doctor posted:

But he was also Dennis Pennis and various other roles for years.

thrawn527 posted:

I'm glad I'm not the only one who didn't care for this episode. All of the plot hooks just dropped (the phone not mattering at all, intruding on his own timeline not mattering because it was just a hologram anyway, the "it's a paradox! Weird...anyway...", etc.) felt way off. So ghosts aren't real? Or the Fisher King used their "souls"? Doesn't that imply ghosts are indeed real, just that he grabbed them and used them for...a communications relay? That's weak. The Fisher King looked great in profile, but pretty awful straight on.

And yeah, the Doctor won with a trick that was half a step above, "Made ya look."

The setup was intriguing, and the special effects were great. But that's about it.

Also, we're two stories in, and both have the Doctor coming to terms with his own death, only to say, "Nah, never mind." Is every story this season going to involve the Doctor coming to terms with the concept of his own death, just to hand wave it away? And the guitar. My god, the guitar. Again, fine, I guess, to have the moment once, but two stories in a row hand jamming in Capaldi playing the guitar seems incredibly forced, and I don't really understand why. Did he learn to play in the off season, and they just said, "Eh, let's have the Doctor play the guitar in every story now. Why not, who gives a poo poo?"

I'm really not liking this season so far. Wasn't this season supposed to be the Doctor and Clara finally comfortable and just having fun adventures? It's been dour, "I'm going to die" stories so far. It's like a rehash of the Trenzalore story line, but every week started and "resolved". Sure it's just two stories, but it's 4 episodes, which is 33% of the season. I want my fun adventures, dammit.

Fil5000 posted:

Is Who airing later than it did previously as well? In my head Who starts some time between 6:30 and 7:30, but it seems constantly to be sitting at 8pm+ these days.

thespaceinvader posted:

I liked bits of it, especially the bits where Capaldi actually got to ACT. (And Maisie Williams got to act. And Jenna Coleman, to some extent, the scene where she almost convinces them to leave was brill) but there was so much stupid it just bothered me. Electric eels do not live in Norway. Vikings didn't wear horned helmets. I'm pretty sure Vikings didn't call themselves Vikings, although that can be handwaved by translation circuits, but why were those still working when it was two days' sail away? If Baby is a language, why cant the TARDIS translate that too? Electromagnets strong enough to do that from that distance would also have been strong enough to rip all the nails out of the roof, not to mention the phone out of the dude's hand. Etc etc etc. The fake CGI snake looked horrible, and it didn't make it much better that it turned out to in fact BE a fake CGI snake in story, because... why were the power armoured laser-wielding strongest warriors in the galaxy SCARED of a snake? Why did Ashildr even need to be in the helmet in the first place, it's not like she had any ability to use the tech. Or was it some kind of mind reading helmet? The whole thing with her dying felt a bit weak and un-foreshadowed, but setting the doctor up as willing to sacrifice her for everyone else felt in keeping with Capaldi's portrayal. Then the finale was just a complete take-back of that whole interesting development. And also, has the Doctor learned NOTHING about what goes wrong when alien battlefield technology goes to work on humans from ARE YOU MY MUMMY for gently caress's sake.

It rang too much of spitfires in space and robin hood with laser sheriffs. Either do comedy, in which case don't do dark and serious, or do dark and serious in which case gently caress off with the silly electric eels and so forth.

It had its moments, I liked the aliens, both the power armour and the head design, Capaldi's moments of bombast and some of the jokes and character interactions etc. But overall it just had too many moments which broke my suspension of disbelief to actually enjoy it.

I was also a bit baffled by TO BE CONTINUED. It was a finished story, albeit setting up what is clearly intended to be a recurring character. The next story isn't *continuing* this one, it's a new story which happens to include this person.

Arg.

thespaceinvader posted:

Actually it kind of was a history documentary originally. And yes, I do take that point, but at the same time, there's no harm in being accurate to things like horned helmets. And electric eels. Because they're things that kick people out of stories.

The_Doctor posted:

I need to watch that again, because right now all I can think is 'Well that was a mess'.

The_Doctor posted:

I really need to watch this episode again, so I can see this great wonder I apparently missed.

CobiWann posted:

The plot of The Girl Who Died reminded me a lot of movies like Seven Samurai, The Magnificent Seven (or its anime counterpart Samurai 7) and Battle Beyond the Stars, all movies where a group of ragtag warriors are recruited to defend a poor village from an overwhelming force.

Astroman posted:

Very excited about the 10/Donna audios!

I can't see how these won't sell like gangbusters, and I fully expect 10 to go into at least a T Bakes amount of output per year.

Also this means there's no real reason we can't have Matt Smith audios. I'd also be shocked if they didn't do a Jenny series at some point, when Moffat figures out if she will or won't be back on screen and what her journey would be to get there. I mean if her father and husband are doing audios...

The other great thing is that it's pretty much a lock that within a year or two of him leaving the screen, Capaldi will probably be doing audios so as the Ood say, the story never ends.

A few years ago I had a mental wishlist of stuff that I'd love to see from BF, and while the list is constantly updated, they've delivered on almost all of it--4th Doctor, a great Anniversary, bringing back The Valeyard, full cast adventures in the first 3 Doctors' eras, and now New Series Adventures with Captain Jack, River, and 10. Pretty much the only things I can think of would be getting David Bradley and Sean Pertwee to do 1 and 3. At this point, I'd literally say anything is possible for BF.

I haven't been able to listen lately because my fm transmitter in my car broke, but I have a new one on the way so I have a lot to buy! I've been able to do a rewatch of enough of Blake's 7 to feel comfortable diving into those audios. Also looking forward to The Prisoner.

DeafNote posted:

I do know that I ... dont know how I feel about this episode
It was very un-who-ish

Burkion posted:

OH and bonus points- The Doctor advocates the murder of Zygons so long as 'a few are kept alive for questioning.'

IceAgeComing posted:

I'm pretty sure that when it wasn't on at the same time of year as Strictly Come Dancing it was on at around 7/7:30: but unless they move it to the Spring or change the day (which would be stupid, Doctor Who has always been a Saturday show) or something then they're kind of stuck at going out when they currently are.

Dunno what I thought about that: it was better than the last one and the ending bit was quite nice, but it was nowhere near good enough to counter the poo poo that the first episode was. Capaldi was very good though: I think that he may have made the script seem better than it fundamentally was.

Neddy Seagoon posted:

Yeah, that was utterly fantastic . This episode was a complete inversion () of Invasion in terms of quality, and made The Zygon Invasion completely irrelevant because none of the supposedly big important story beats carried through to this one. They could've gutted Invasion down to about 5-10 minutes of setup and wrapped it into Inversion altogether.


That said, I did like Kate's remark of "five rounds, rapid". Finally found something bullets work on .

The_Doctor posted:

I'm currently watching Fringe for the first time, and I've got to the arc where Walter mentions Peter's death a few times before revealing the truth, so I've become a little sensitive to that sort of dialogue. This doesn't feel like that, and aside from this instance of 'a month/a couple of days' where are people pulling this Clara's dead thing from?

One Swell Foop posted:

So did anyone else notice the tardis-style litter bin/trashcan just after the doctor and Osgood parachuted to safety? I got very distracted wondering if it was somehow a plot point but then realized I was probably way overthinking it.

Sentinel Red posted:

Hahahahahahahaha, what the gently caress? Um...

Cerv posted:

they ran out of script and just stopped

echoplex posted:

My girlfriend said that too - having read the script I knew where it was going but its really interesting to see so many people get that idea from it.

I actually think this episode turned out stronger than the shooting script suggested it would, the atmosphere overall was really good. I will say (diplomatically) that I think Ep9 is the least-strong of all of them, and I think 10 & 11 are the strongest (on paper anyway), so I'm looking forward to the next two episodes.

Rochallor posted:

This is far from a good story but I don't understand at all the complaints about the sleep dust. It's thematically appropriate and it works from a folkloric perspective (the dust accumulates because nobody's sleeping).

Wheat Loaf posted:

Does anyone know why they're going back to two-part DVD releases for season nine? Last year they did the "Deep Breath" single-disc then had the complete season eight set out in time for Christmas, but I was looking on Amazon the other day and it seems as though season nine part two won't be out until early next year (no word on when the full thing will be out, either).

OldMemes posted:

The confession dial was like a pocket dimension type thing, I thought. So the Doctor isn't actually over a billion years older, he just lived out the loop that long, when he came back to the normal universe, hes still chronologically the same age. At least that's how I read it.

thespaceinvader posted:

Yep pretty much. The Doctor didn't age at all beyond what was actually shown in the episode (though it's a little unclear how long each loop was, it didn't feel like it was more than a week or so per loop), he certainly wasn't continuously active for the whole x-ty billion year cycle.

Wheat Loaf posted:

I enjoyed it a lot. It was something a bit different.

The way I reconciled the diamond wall thing was that he always finds each room the way he left it, and every time he went into room 12 the diamond wall had an incrementally deeper hole in it from last time.