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Yeah I thought that episode was pretty good. Seems borderline impossible to summarize it without sounding ridiculous though. "Man uses his magical space box to run away from a space puddle". Bill won me over pretty fast too. With other recent companions it seemed like they expended a lot of effort showing how special + valuable + competent they were, so having someone (thus far) normal is a nice change of pace and just generally I thought Bill and The Doctor had a fun dynamic. Payndz posted:All the stuff to make Capaldi's Doctor seem 'cool' comes across to me as a middle-aged man trying too hard. And I say that as a middle-aged man who etc. I'm not blaming Capaldi for it; he does what the script says. How old is Moffat again? Going back to this, the impression I got wasn't that they were trying to make him cool but more showing how he didn't really give a gently caress, so he just holds rock concerts for himself. I guess people will have different reads on it though.
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Apr 16, 2017 01:11
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Trin Tragula posted:What was that actually about? Does anyone know? There was some running around and some people being very enigmatic and it was all nicely photographed and performed well enough...but if you had to describe that episode to another fan who didn't see it, what would you say about it? It's about using a magic space box to run away from a space puddle. Which I find amusing because it makes me start thinking of Doctor Who episodes as a sci-fi version of Florida man headlines. "Gallifrey man uses magic space box to run away from a space puddle." "Gallifrey man crashes spaceship into babysitter" "Gallifrey man crashes horse into spaceship" "Gallifrey man's momento keepsake actually his own personal torture chamber" "Gallifrey man returns from exile and becomes Lord High President, whereupon he immediately disgraces himself and run away into exile."
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Apr 17, 2017 02:26
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That was a I decent episode but I agree that it messed up the ending. For one thing The Doctor randomly flips allegiances and for another thing resetting the Vardi didn't really make sense. Wouldn't resetting them restore them to 'factory settings' of serving humans? And if you're saying they're sentient then isn't mindwiping an entire species monstrous? Yeah you don't exactly expect realistic technology rules in Doctor Who, but it just seemed dumb that turning the robots off and on again caused them to lose all knowledge of humans but retain all their sophistication and all knowledge of themselves. And how would the humans pay rent anyway? They didn't exactly bring much material wealth with them (they could scavenge their ship I suppose, but that's a temporary solution at best.) I like the idea in this topic of the Vardi learning about grief from losing one of their own and I think it would've been a funny inversion, because it would've been the one time ever that grabbing a gun and shooting something helped solve a problem in Doctor Who rather than exarcebating it. The setup of "Robot designed to keep people happy decides the best way to curb unhappiness is though good ole' murdering" is fine. Yeah you'd hope in any real world that "don't murder humans" is one of the first things robots learn, but technology goes wrong all the time in this series and this seemed like a reasonable way for it to happen. I liked the Vardi's design too. I thought Bill's questions were fine. "Are there seatbelts?" "Why can't you reach the console from the seats?" are silly goofy questions in a soft sci-fi series, but well they're kind of legitimate practical questions too so they worked for me.
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Apr 24, 2017 14:08
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Oxygen was a good episode, but of all the obvious twists this one was the most obvious.
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May 15, 2017 01:36
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I liked it but I accept the complaints that it doesn't really hold up that well under scrutiny.Burkion posted:The Doctor just forgets about her for 9000 years while loving around. Not sure Missy would really sweat on the details anyway. "After 10,000 years I'm free!" - "It was only 1000" "Well it felt like 10,000!" Vinylshadow posted:I laughed a lot harder than I should have at the dudes freaking out about the Doctor's Fatality Index count It's funny comparing this to what he said to Bill some episodes back though. "Have you ever killed someone?" -" Well... sometimes options are limited. But I have an EPIC fatality index, and my longest killstreak is like 4 trillion or something."
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May 21, 2017 23:35
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TinTower posted:Linked from the actual scene's page, this is pretty dope tbh. As someone who wasn't aware Doctor Who impersonators were a thing I was extremely confused for a few moments. "Wait that's not. But it sounds like? But who's that? And I definitely know this scene... Bwuh?"
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May 25, 2017 02:14
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Cleretic posted:Speaking of this season being so good it's almost annoying, how about we start a betting pool: what major issue will Peter Harness' story ham-fistedly reference and mishandle THIS time!? Okay, who had "GM research" ? Come collect your prize. Anyway, echoing what people have said here about that being not great and making little sense. I liked some parts of the setup, but everything with the lab was extremely dumb to the extent that it sort of meant the monks had a point. Except it's a point that has no bearing on the real world because the disaster was too dumb and contrived to be believable.
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May 28, 2017 02:27
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So the Monks really were just imitation brand knock-off versions of the Silence. The Silence have been here for years, secretly guiding humanity from the shadows. The Monks are pretending they've been here for years, openly guiding humanity from the spotlight. Yeah they aren't a 1:1 copy but it did feel like it was retreading some familiar ground, except it was done better before. The Doctor tricking Bill into shooting him felt dumb and unnecessary, especially with everyone laughing about it. I almost expected him to say "it's just a prank bro!" to explain it. The monks giving the doctor any kind of autonomy makes no sense given that idealogically he's their complete opposite. And the idea that he could trick them seems dumb when their main technology is simulations to understand their enemies and simulations to predict the future. "This guy's beliefs completely clash with what we want to do, everything we know about him says he's going to get in our way and oppose us, he often relies on trickery and guile instead of brute force.... but he's saying he wants to work with us. He's probably on the level, right? Might as well let him do his thing, right? GASP HE BETRAYED US. WHO COULD HAVE PREDICTED THIS. US I GUESS, IF ONLY WE LEFT THE PREDICT-O-MACHINE ON." I mean imagine if you had an enemy that could read minds.. that was ultimately defeated because it forgot that it could read minds. And why bother with the setup episodes if none of it ends up really being relevant? And I do think there's scope for an interesting episode when The Doctor is facing a foe that can predict all his plans (as long as it doesn't get a bit too Curse of Fatal Death). You got an idea how the monks operated, but not really what they wanted. Everything they did was so they could be in power, without any indication of why they wanted to be in power. The resolution was some unsatisfying asspull bullshit. About the only things I liked was the idea "No matter how bad things are, if you can convince people it was always this way then that's 90% of the work done." and the contrast between Missy's problem solving vs The Doctor's problem solving.
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Jun 3, 2017 22:01
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Cleretic posted:I actually thought that was an interesting ending, and didn't personally interpret it as 'power of love' bullshit. It's a clever little play on how they defined the Monk's power as explained through the Missy scene; they infect people's memories, they couldn't do anything with Bill's image of her mother not because of love, but because it's not a memory. Bill remembers jack poo poo about her mother, every single thought about her is an out-and-out fabrication and she knows it. Since that's not the part of her brain that they can actually do anything with, she can overpower them with it. "Bill has an imaginary friend version of her mum" was something that was introduced this episode though, in a way that didn't really make sense... solely so it could explain that ending which I still didn't find interesting or satisfying. If you're defining the monk's ability as strictly related to memory (and any interference blocks them) then anything spontaneous or imaginative could have defeated them. Evil alien overlords defeated by freestyle rap. Alien invasion thwarted by improv comedy routine. And I'm not sure why that set-up was even necessary. "Of course, she's the anchor! Her thoughts take priority at influencing the broadcast!" seems like all the technobabble necessary to explain why Bill could overpower the broadcast when The Doctor could not. Also if your episode hits close to real world issues (as mentioned earlier, it's not even a metaphor) I think you need to have something interesting to say. "Fake news is defeated by an even tighter fabrication" or "Fake news is defeated by white noise uselessness" seem like useless messages, whilst "Fake news is defeated by actually getting to the real source" might have some value to it. AndyElusive posted:Before the fake out, 12 was really quite good at being a bad guy collaborator. I agree on this, but it just left me MORE annoyed by the fake out. Bill vs The Doctor was an interesting scene, until you discover it's all a sham and basically meant nothing. The Doctor brainwashed into being a figurehead puppet facist leader is an interesting premise.. that it drops almost immediately to make the monks the sole enemy and they barely did anything the whole episode. I also agree with people saying almost nothing happened. The Doctor tricks bill into shooting him for no reason, then talks to missy but doesn't like her plan so decides "gently caress it we'll just charge into their base and hope for the best". Luckily it turns out there's only 12 of the monks, and it just so happens that they're weak to guns. And they also can't predict poo poo either. Elite fucked around with this message at 09:00 on Jun 4, 2017 |
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Jun 4, 2017 08:53
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I agree it wasn't anything ground-breaking (ha!) but it was definitely passable. I do think the coward colonel coming back to save the day via heroic sacrifice was a nice emotional moment (but, much like The Doctor, everyone probably suspected it wouldn't actually involve any sacrifice). Jerusalem posted:Yeah I'm digging this so far just for the fun of Victorians on Mars. The dialogue with these soldiers is fun too - "That's enough from you, you 'orrible old man." "I dare say the British Empire can handle a couple of upright crocodiles"  2house2fly posted:I loved the payoff to the Doctor not knowing any movies. Decent episode, but then anything would look good after last week. I liked the payoff there too. Certainly seems better than The Doctor randomly busting out the ghostbusters theme tune.
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Jun 11, 2017 02:18
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The thing that annoys me about Torchwood is that it started from such an advantageous position and still managed to gently caress it up horrendously. Captain Jack Harkness' paranomal investigation squad was a legitimately good concept for a show that squandered it's potential on DAY ONE so I find it bizarre it got a 2nd season, let alone a 3rd and 4th (though yeah it did pick up a bit). It's attached to Doctor Who and has some likeable character overlap so it kinda starts with a built in audience. It's set on Earth so they don't need to do exposition about alien worlds nor try to justify why ALL OF TIME AND SPACE takes up less screentime than present day Earth, but the dimensional rift idea means they can still introduce weird and wonderful aliens whenever they want. Whilst also having a good excuse why they appear one week then are never heard of again. Moving away from being a family show could have given them an opportunity to explore ideas too heavy for Doctor Who proper, but instead they embraced the most laughably immature idea of what "adult" means. If it was just rejected Doctor Who scripts investigated by the Torchwood team then that would have been a semi-passable show (though certainly not great), but it's the ridiculous attempts to sex things up at a cost of everything else made it truly awful. TL posted:This is from a while back, and while I mostly agree, there is one area I have to disagree: while Moff is obviously an extremely talented writer, and I have no doubt he absolutely loves Doctor Who, he is a TERRIBLE producer/showrunner. You can quibble with the direction he's taken the show, though overall I've enjoyed the hell out of it. But we've also essentially lost two entire seasons under his watch, and his running of the show seems to be resulting in us losing two amazing actors playing the Doctor prematurely. From that perspective, he's done a terrible job. Well I wouldn't go quite so far as to say he did a terrible job but with the benefits of hindsight it seems fair to say Moffat's talents are better employed as a writer than as a showrunner. I was really excited when Moffat became showrunner because he had penned my favourite episodes of the revival series... but the golden age I was anticipating never really happened and the show seemed to suffer more production issues with him at the helm. And I suppose when you think about it it's kind of obvious that showrunning and writing involve different skills.
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Jun 13, 2017 15:27
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That was a great episode. Would have been even better if they hadn't tipped their hand a bit about The Master and Cybermen though.Facebook Aunt posted:I wonder if the Master had anything to do with that expedition to the 500th floor failing? They had the clocks showing that 2 days passed in the control room while 10,000 years passed at their end of the ship, so they should have realized how long an expedition would take. Even a quick look 'round would have had them away from the city for years. The way it's been set up I'm expecting that the expedition succeeded but either people failed to account for the time discrepancy or the all clear message got intercepted/sabotaged, which means people on the lower deck are coming up with desperate drastic solutions to a non-existent problem. Using an imaginary threat and an imaginary tragedy to trick people into destroying themselves is the sort of scheme The Master dreams about.
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Jun 25, 2017 23:21
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