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"There's always a doctor standing around watching while the nurses do all the hard work." I'd rate that as pretty good, not great, but a solid start. Gatwa is as charming a Doctor as ever though I agree he shouldn't have been so cavalier about Alan's death even if the little poo poo deserved it and Belinda is fantastic. It definitely felt like it was an episode that was envisioned as being longer and got cut down for time (which, in fairness, describes quite a lot of television). It kind of simultaneously needed more and less editing, somehow. POLISHPOLISH spinoff when
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Apr 12, 2025 21:43
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| # ¿ May 22, 2025 16:19 |
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The one thing that makes me think they're at least thinking about the Doctor's behavior is just how appalled he is at himself when Belinda calls him on his poo poo at the end Another random thought. The aesthetic of the robots (straight out of a '20s pulp magazine cover to an extent that even Doctor Who rarely goes to), particularly when the same story could have been written with Daleks or Cybermen without changing much and given how much the planetary battle scenes looked very much like the way Skaro has been rendered in the past, makes me wonder even more if we might be in for some Land of Fiction shenanigans this year. As for spoiler tags, I like erring on the side of caution, and I will always favor making my posts look like a redacted document when given the chance, and besides, I like to click on the things clicky
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Apr 13, 2025 13:38
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Open Source Idiom posted:The Eighth Doctor has so many dalek stories, what do you mean. They (technically) were in the TV movie even!
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Apr 14, 2025 16:53
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The one I'd kind of love to see is Seven and the Brigadier in The End of Time, mostly because I want to hear Sylvester McCoy all BACK TO HELL WITH YOU, RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRASSILON
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Apr 16, 2025 16:10
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I mostly object to the idea that the Doctor has been a romantic figure for decades because OH GOD THE TV MOVIE WAS HOW LONG AGO?
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Apr 17, 2025 20:11
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I kind of hit the reverse of my usual opinion arc with some stories. Normally I come away all "that was really good" and then over the next day or so my brain pokes a bunch of holes in it. This time I was not terribly impressed at first, but the more I thought about it and some of its implications, the more I appreciated it. In particular, I didn't really like that Lux was, while occasionally frightening, never really a credible threat. And then I realized that might be the point. As a story about despair under a shiny exterior, and the ability of hope to triumph even under those circumstances, it really works. The Doctor's line about how sometimes he topples worlds and sometimes he lives in them and shines was fantastic as an overall thesis statement for the episode. Lux as a shiny fun cartoon guy (and the literal god of light) being a depraved gluttonous monster and ultimately being defeated by actual sunlight was good, if a bit silly. (I was, in retrospect, kind of hoping the whole 'trapped by what he was pretending to be' would pay off a little more and he'd undergo a transformation similar to the Doctor and Belinda did and end up as an ordinary person rather than either cartoon or god. But I think what happened has better thematic resonance even if the storytelling's a bit clumsy.) I'm kind of tired of meta stuff, though, almost as tired as I am of every threat being a threat to the world or the galaxy or the universe.
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Apr 21, 2025 16:44
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I liked that a lot. I don't know if I liked it better than the original Midnight because they were two very different episodes telling different (similarly horrifying) stories. This one felt more like an old-school scary base-under-siege Who episode. I think that's a good way to hook into the previous story though, because I'm not sure how you skew closer to the original story without just remaking the original story, and I'm glad they didn't do that. Dabir posted:Thinking about it, I don't think I liked the ending. It reminded me a bit of that one Joseph Lidster-written story where the ending is the monster coming back and going "jokes on you I was only pretending to be dead, and now the Doctor has left and he's never going to come back and save you, muahahahahaaaa" I definitely thought of that but it didn't seem as mean-spirited as any of that writer's horrible twist endings, even though it was a dark ending to a dark episode.
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Apr 26, 2025 22:26
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Yeah, the more I think about it, the more I love the episode for what it is, even if what it is is not so much a direct sequel to Midnight as another story set on that planet. Like it could have been tightened up a little, mostly by clarifying a bit what actually being lethally "behind" the monster did and didn't mean but I sure didn't mind in the moment and I only kind of minded afterwards, because I'm honestly now not sure if we were meant to notice "oh poo poo the monster didn't attach to the Brigadier Stand-In after all" or not, or that it did but there's another one, or what. (I have a feeling they intended to make Aliss's inability to hear significant to why the monster wasn't doing its past tricks with her and then they either cut it for time or just didn't, but I honestly think it's better left unaddressed, partly because I'd much rather a person with a disability were allowed to simply be, rather than be a plot point. Like it wouldn't have offended me if they had, but I'm very okay that they didn't.) Very much my favorite of the three this season so far, and yeah, one of the best in a while. e. Midnight was a very specific sort of story (namely it was kind of a Monsters Are Due on Maple Street riff where everything iconic about the Doctor was turned against him) and in those terms was fantastic, but I'm kind of glad they didn't feel the need to go to that well (lol) a second time (and there was plenty of opportunity around the Doctor's very loose cover story falling apart at the worst possible moment). They told a different story this time and they did it well. docbeard fucked around with this message at 20:31 on Apr 27, 2025 |
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Apr 27, 2025 20:25
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Actually my baseless speculation about the fictional technology of a space military 400,000 years in the future is the most accurate. (I personally think "the creature that spent two stories loving with people was loving with them" makes the most sense)
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Apr 29, 2025 18:51
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Silver2195 posted:It's a pity because the ending, with Clara calling the Doctor out on his condescending attitude and manipulative behavior, is quite good. It deserved to be the ending to a better episode. This is about as good a summation of Kill the Moon as I can imagine.
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May 1, 2025 04:15
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Dabir posted:"I knew that eggs don't destroy their nest." Well of course he hasn't, it's racist (xenophobic, lol) propaganda! I really don't think the argument that the episode is meant as a pro life allegory hold up (though I guess I can't rule out it being an extremely bad and poorly thought out allegory), since it's so much more clearly an example of "would you kill one innocent to save billions" and one of the few interesting things the episode does is make Clara's answer "no, not even if those billions are begging me to save them". But the episode is indefensible in like thirty other ways so it hardly feels worth arguing about. It's a serious contender for worst of Capaldi's run, saved only by Lie of the Land and In the Forest of the Night existing, and I actually think it edges past both of those thanks to the Doctor's uncharacteristic callousness and outright cruelty. It being followed up by (and being arguably necessary setup for) one of the best of Capaldi's run (certainly the best up to this point) is just bonkers. ("abort" is the standard term for ending the countdown to an explosion and it would have been weirder if they'd used another word, sorry just had to get that out of my system)
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May 1, 2025 13:00
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Very Love and Monsters, this episode. Very good first half, kind of annoying second half. Conrad's constant reinventing of his own truth felt familiar in an uncomfortable way. I've known people like that before, and it was an exhausting experience even when they weren't also raging assholes. And yes, felt very much like a response to the times in a very clumsy way (and one fun thing I saw pointed out elsewhere was that this is perhaps the worst possible time to release a 'actually you SHOULD trust authoritarian government entities to have your best interests in mind' story, though it might not have felt that way when the episode was commissioned). Least favorite of the season so far, probably my least favorite of the new Davies run, though I'm not sure I'd go so far as to call it actively bad, just sort of blah. At least the episode knows Kate went too far (and did so in a very public way, that, even though Conrad got his comeuppance, might come back to haunt her?) Less infuriating than Kerblam! though.
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May 4, 2025 22:25
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Open Source Idiom posted:Uhhhhh at what point in history was this a good moral? It's not, obviously, but it hits a bit different when the horrible extremists are the ones openly in charge rather than the ones on the outside claiming that I can't decide whether Kate's actions a deliberate way to make the politics of the story more complicated or just a bit of clumsiness in the message. Davies Who is not often at home to nuance and McTighe isn't someone I'm inclined to extend much credit to in that department, but I honestly think it's a better story for it, either way. Not sure why I'm spoiling beyond *clicky* but I was half-convinced the reveal was going to be that Kate or the Doctor had negotiated with the Shreek to set it free offworld if it were willing to give Clarence a good scare first
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May 5, 2025 13:46
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Wolfechu posted:I did like the line where the Doctor sniffs the air and goes "definitely in London!", and Belinda's looking at the Millennium Eye right across the street. "Yeah, I got that, thanks" Another callback to a similar gag from Rose! The callbacks have got to be deliberate at this point, right?
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May 6, 2025 01:00
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BSam posted:Yes, we know what's to come.
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May 7, 2025 14:04
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I hear everyone's criticisms and acknowledge many of them are valid but this was my favorite Doctor Who episode in a very long time.
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May 12, 2025 19:26
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DoctorWhat posted:When a movie is over the characters cease to exist; nothing matters then either. I watched O Brother Where Art Thou the other day, Great movie, but nothing that happens in it "matters" more than 73 Yards. As Doctor Who is a TV series, and not a movie, you'd not be unreasonable to expect characters and situations to persist between episodes. Though honestly, while I have many problems with 73 Yards, it not 'mattering' isn't really one of them.
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May 13, 2025 16:31
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Albino Broccoli posted:Yeah personally I am fine with the doctor being irrational and then being able to step back and apologize and come to a middle ground with the person who hurt him. It's way more interesting having him be like, an actual character with feelings and poo poo rather than this all important messianic figure the previous incarnations had for him. It occurred to me that, for all that it's been happening offscreen (and almost certainly had to had to given the realities of production) that the Doctor looking for a home where he can just exist for a while in between adventures makes a lot of sense post Joy To The World. Him feeling hurt and betrayed when someone he thought of as just his friend needs the Work Version Of Him makes perfect sense to me, and also serves to mirror the way Abena reacts to his earlier treatment of her as Fugitive. Sure you could write a story where he's cold and aloof and above it all and doesn't need or want connections with humans but that's (a) a rubbish story and (b) not really in keeping with who the Doctor has ever been, even if 15 is a bit more extreme in the "wants ties to people" way. I do wish we lived in a world where we could have had a multi-episode arc of his growing friendship with Omo but sadly we get 8 episodes a year right now and maybe only three more ever (tho probably not). As it is, might as well complain about the Doctor's kickass story about how good a nurse Belinda is being out of left field because we haven't had twenty episodes of her starring in a hospital drama on the side. The Story and the Engine is an episode that draws things in broad strokes and trusts you to make connections between them, but it still tells a complete story that more or less makes sense (and where all the emotional beats absolutely do), which is where it works when (imo) 73 Yards kind of doesn't.
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May 13, 2025 17:23
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My take on 73 Yards has generally been that everything in it is happening inside her mind/soul and so it's all shaped by her self perception. So the takeaway is that she believes she pushes people away, not that it's necessarily so.
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May 13, 2025 22:26
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I at least have an excuse in that I've never seen, um, sorry, slipped my mind, what episode were you talking about again?
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May 15, 2025 12:51
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Fil5000 posted:Those people are wrong because once she stopped being a puzzle to be solved she was the most interesting companion in ages. Yeah, while I don't think that "the Doctor and Clara have a toxic relationship because they're too much alike" storyline quite worked in the end, it was for sure an interesting approach
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May 16, 2025 21:08
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flatluigi posted:honestly i think it worked extremely well and she rocketed to being my favorite companion, but i liked her since the first time the actress was on screen That's fair, and there is a lot I do like about that storyline (like the Doctor enduring all the torture in Heaven Sent to protect the person who killed his closest friend).
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May 16, 2025 23:21
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Dabir posted:For Ghost Light to have a message, it would first have to have a plot You mean just one plot instead of the seven or eight intertwined ones going on in it?
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May 21, 2025 21:33
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| # ¿ May 22, 2025 16:19 |
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Liked the episode, a bit underwhelmed by the Mrs. Flood reveal but that's probably just because of it turning out to be the obvious choice after two years of speculation which isn't really the show's fault. Love Archie Panjabi though so I'm looking forward to her. Not sure what to think about the Susan flashes though seeing Carole Ann Ford on the show is great.
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May 21, 2025 21:37
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