Boom

[WhoHar @whohar]

A thought on Mundy Flynn:

Flynn is old Irish meaning “descendent of the red-haired one”.  River had red hair. Just sayin’

And Ruby Red of course.

Also did I remember correctly that Mundy took the Doc’s Tardis key? Must be significant.

OK – three thoughts.

[JimTheFish @jimthefish Time Lord]

@scaryb

Back to Boom – interesting image from the first scene, which is at the head of this page – a blinded (and blindfolded) soldier stumbling around with a big gun. Very metaphorical. It also reminds me of something but I can’t think what yet… It does put me in mind of the art from 1980s 2000 AD – particularly Ezquerra, Brian Bolland. Especially the gun, but there’s also something about the blindfold.

That crossed my mind too. I’m having vague recollections of a Rogue Trooper story maybe. (Wolfweed would know.)

@ps1l0v3y0u

Has anyone come any closer to ‘the moon and the President’s Wife’?

I may be misremembering but isn’t that a callback to 12 and Missy?

[JimTheFish @jimthefish Time Lord]

oh and cheers, @scaryb for the link to that Moffat/RTD interview. That was really interesting. Could listen to that two rabbit on about Who for hours….

[dwnerdfrommars @dwnerdfrommars]

How do you make a blog?

Just wondering…

[Craig @craig Emperor]

@dwnerdfrommars

Contact me. I can build anything on the web. But for a blog you don’t need my help – just a few pointers in the right direction.

My website: https://www.craigmurray.scot/

[Mudlark @mudlark]

@jimthefish

The moon and the president’s wife. As @juniperfish noted above, this references something that Missy said in The Magicians Apprentice, when she was telling Clara how long she had known the Doctor, ‘… since he stole the moon and the President’s wife …’  I seem to remember that the Doctor later disputed this, saying that he didn’t steal the moon, he lost it, and it wasn’t the President’s wife, it was the President’s daughter.

@scaryb  @jimthefish

The opening scene with Carson leading the blinded John Vater for me recalled a number of World War I paintings. The best known is Gassed, by John Singer Sargent, which is in the Imperial War Museum, but there are two or three others which depict just two soldiers, one blindfolded and the other leading, which are almost an exact match for the image, but I don’t have links at the moment.

As for how anyone could be injured in a one-sided war, Carson said something about the mines moving about, presumably self-propelled, which would present a hazard all on it’s own, and then in permanent fog, where it is difficult to see much and everyone is on edge, there is the risk of ‘friendly fire’. Compounding the problem are the Villengaard algorithms, because where combat is assumed and the weapons are programmed to make their own decisions, and where in the spread sheets only the profits from the sale of  such weapons are important, the human cost is merely a matter of acceptable levels of loss.

I’ve been pondering the question of how this war of illusion started. The Doctor gave a very sketchy and incomplete explanation but, given the context, it isn’t all that difficult to fill in the blanks. A poorly briefed advance party arrives on a new planet for reasons unspecified – possible future colonisation? religious conversion of hypothetical indigenous life forms?  This being the Church Militant in a very literal sense they arrive armed and armoured and ready for possible trouble.  Patrols are sent out to explore, and with limited visibility in the permanent fog people get nervous. Before long someone with a twitchy trigger finger starts firing at shadows. Perhaps someone is injured, but in any case it isn’t long before the machines and algorithms have taken over and after that nobody thinks to question why the supposed enemy is never seen because, as the Doctor said, they had ‘faith’-  in this case not just faith in the religious sense and faith in the church/army hierarchy, but faith in the machines and the AI which controlled them.

[Brewski @brewski]

Loved this episode.  Moffat’s script under RTD’s show-running is the stuff of legend.

I’m going on record as saying “The One Who Waits” is Susan.  (“One day I shall come back.  Yes, I shall come back.”)  When, old man, when?!!

[bunface @bunface]

I’m going on record as saying “The One Who Waits” is Susan.  (“One day I shall come back.  Yes, I shall come back.”)  When, old man, when?!!

@brewski

I’m going to agree. All kinds of twisted things could have happened…

I’m also going to suggest that Mrs. Flood is Susan, not least for the very superficial reason that Anita Dobson looks just like the young version, and if I were going to cast someone she’d be IT!

Plus they can’t waste having a national treasure by not having her play against type as the villain?! Come on, the twinkle…

Flood being another version not of a river but an oncoming storm.

 

[bunface @bunface]

Really enjoyed Boom, and watched it live having just watched it on iPlayer. Having previously tried watching Space Babies over (and falling at the first appearance of the babies), it says everything that I want to see Boom for a third time already.

It’s thankfully reassured me about Gatwa, too, as my jury was out. I got the charisma and joy from the first few episodes but of course was waiting to see him deliver more shades. Loved his handling of the contempt he showed over Mundy’s ideas of faith. But then Moffat gifted him the words (at last). And ideas! Hallelujah!

Eyes tight shut going please, please, please open the big box of whooo. Not about going back so much as giving Gatwa the hand-me-down toys and seeing him take them apart to make new, strange delights.

 

 

[JimTheFish @jimthefish Time Lord]

@mudlark

You’re quite right. My apologies @juniperfish. Surprisingly fast moving thread this one…. and thanks for the Sargent info. It’s almost certain that the 2000ad artists of that period would know the works you refer to and would be more than eager to reference them in their work, I reckon….

[Mudlark @mudlark]

@brewski  @bunface

 “The One Who Waits” is Susan.

Anything is possible, and in a recent Radio Times piece Carol Ann Ford was reported as saying that if the call came for her return she would be up for it, but even if the references to her so far do herald her reappearance, I doubt that it will have such a weighty significance.

In the context of recent episodes it seems clear to me that The One Who Waits will be closely linked in some way to  Toymaker and Maestro, the pantheon of quasi-deities to which those two belong, and to the oncoming legions which the Toymaker threatened. Also perhaps to the Meep’s ‘boss’. I’ve been wondering about the significance of Henry (H)Arbinger, the boy being tutored by the piano teacher in 1925, who claimed that Maestro was his daddy, who vanished at the snap of Maestro’s fingers, and who reappeared briefly 38 years later, peering round a door at the dancers in Abbey Road studios and then quietly retreating. Maybe no more than a harbinger, but nevertheless an enigma to be kept in mind.

I suspect that we won’t know until all is revealed in the two part finale which, on the strength of the advance publicity, promises to be RTD’s OTT pyrotechnics dialled up to an unprecedented level.

One to watch might be the ubiquitous Susan Twist, who will be appearing yet again in next Saturday’s episode. Not for one minute do I buy the explanation that her recurring appearances are because of a shortage of available actors.

[Brewski @brewski]

@bunface @mudlark

I’m also going to suggest that Mrs. Flood is Susan

I have a (pointlessly) wordy post on Mrs. Flood in the Church on Ruby Road pages.  I don’t think she’s Susan primarily because she didn’t recognize (or even suspect) the police box was the TARDIS.  She only recognized it as *A* tardis (not THE tardis) after it dematerialized.  So she knows the tech, but not that particular shape.

I would have thought Susan Twist is Susan (classic RTD) but since Carol Ann Ford is alive and willing to participate I can’t imagine why they would use anyone else.

I think the “twist” with Susan is she is going to be incredibly angry with the Doctor for abandoning her and never coming back as promised.  (The one who waits).  Maybe planning some kind of revenge.  Of course, as I’ve said before, the only thing I’ve been right about so far is that I’ve never gotten it right! 😉

 

 

[bunface @bunface]

@mudlark @brewski

Yes, I guess CAF would be the obv choice for an older Susan, although at time of casting/planning it may not have been so clearcut or possible? It’s sometimes hard to keep a glove on the real life shenanigans and timeframes, always remembering it’s a fabrication we’re dealing with! Ahem.

I don’t think Susan Twist is Susan though. I have a feeling she’s a false herring in many ways, and that her name is the most significant thing about her – IE: there’s a twist to do with Susan. If anything, I think she may be a puppet of sorts, seeing as she’s replicated across the series in different costumes. I think you’re right that it’s going to come down to the devilry of the Toymaker and his ilk.

I’m now just thinking about Amy waiting too, so little girls, abandoned… I think angry is right. All the companions left behind, which hasn’t been properly resolved, even by Fourteen, surely? Maybe the One Who Waits isn’t just one person, and maybe there’s a big old guilt trip coming to get the Doctor, just when they think they’ve got away from all that!

[bunface @bunface]

@brewski

Oh, I remember reading your flights of fancy now! All the better for their ‘wrongness’, right? 👍 Apologies, I don’t retain anything beyond the next adventure (other than some odd detail that probably means nothing and the general mood), so I’m going to study Flood and ponder.

Also have difficulty with more than one conversation at a time so I’ll be like one of the more annoying companions 🙃 Better try to stay quiet most of the time and run when instructed!

[bunface @bunface]

All the companions left behind, which hasn’t been properly resolved, even by Fourteen, surely? Maybe the One Who Waits isn’t just one person, and maybe there’s a big old guilt trip coming to get the Doctor, just when they think they’ve got away from all that!

Oh, all the abandoned children, presumably, too. Which would tie in with Space Babies (a phrase oft repeated in that ep, and which all the Doctor’s children would technically be) and the Dad theme in Boom.

Which would also go with the whole Toymaker/Maestro fantasy, bent reality tripping, kids make-believe feel etc? Disney on acid.

I do hope so, anyway!🤞 Surely RTD has that kind of edge and viciousness? That makes me happier with the musical elements, if I think they’re used to negotiate a black theme. That’s what musicals do best, show us our rottenness by awful contrast.

Sorry, will shut up now!

[Juniperfish @juniperfish]

@bunface and @brewski and @mudlark

@bunface – hmmm your avatar has recalled Stooky Sue from The Giggle for me, in relation to all three of your speculations about the return of the Doctor’s granddaughter.

Stooky Sue = Susan foreshadowing?

Stooky Sue had three Stooky babbies – so it seems the Doctor’s progeny is definitely a thread to pull on.

[bunface @bunface]

hmmm your avatar has recalled Stooky Sue from The Giggle for me, in relation to all three of your speculations about the return of the Doctor’s granddaughter.

@juniperfish

Coincidence?

Actually it’s Stooky Peg, from Night Terrors. But let’s face it, dolls are all cut from the same creepy bit of wood (and therefore sonic proof and likely to crop up and cause much bother).

Yes, yes and yes, those progeny are proliferating! What fun…

[Brewski @brewski]

@bunface

Oh, I remember reading your flights of fancy now! All the better for their ‘wrongness’, right?

Just waxing prosaic.

Oh, all the abandoned children, presumably, too. Which would tie in with Space Babies (a phrase oft repeated in that ep, and which all the Doctor’s children would technically be) and the Dad theme in Boom.

This makes a lot of sense.  I think you’re on to something.

Off to watch the next one now…

 

 

[VickyMallard @vickymallard]

Here we go. I think this is my favourite episode of 15 so far! I loved the tension and “simple” setting, almost the entire episode took place in one place.
There was a lot in it: the Doctor trapped and not able to work his usual magic (apparently the Sonic Screwdriver is no good for defusing landmines). The cruelness of landmines in general and the pointlessness of war. The economic background of it all – who benefits from a war?

I loved the Doctor in this desperation. I loved the tension that even the slightest change could trigger that mine. I mean, I obviously knew that both the Doctor and Ruby would survive, but there was so much action and running/falling/driving towards him, that I was really wondering wether someone would set it off. Brilliant. Although I was a bit surprised that these hooks from the “ambulance” had no effect here.

What else was there… faith and what effects it can have. You believe what your faith – and the algorithms – tell you. So you can fight a war on a deserted planet with an enemy no one has ever seen because it isn’t there. “And suddenly you need proof?!” What a sentence.

When the hologram kept repeating that simple phrase when first appearing – I forgot what it was, sort of “Hey, what just happened” – I was immediately reminded of the Vashda Nerada (“Hey! Who turned off the lights?”) Which I thought fitted in quite nicely, because the things you are afraid of are the things you cannot see. The enemy in the mud, or the fog. On the other hand, believing that someone is not dead, but just gone to heaven was quite a positive view on the “faith” subject. A bit like Gridlock, maybe.

So Ruby is how old exactly? Several thousand years? Well she has been a bit of a mystery so far, so I’m curious what we will find out about her. I didn’t really get the bit with her being almost dead – or actually dead? – and what were the two soldiers trying to do? Keep her alive enough that she doesn’t get scooped up by the ambulance, which will only “heal” her if the quota needs to be fullfilled? I’m not entirely sure how or why she came back to life either, but I’ll just “blame” the brilliant hologram dad who finally put an end to the madness. Lovely. I generally liked the “Dad” theme in the episode. Talking to the hologram “Dad to Dad” – and I guess from the Doctor’s POV, that was not restricted to biological children. I liked that.

I also loved the “fish fingers and custard is my favourite” reference (even though I haven’t seen any 11 episodes yet). And the opening image of the episode, with the injured and blindfolded soldier. Says it all, really.

Looking forward to the next one!

[syzygy @thane16]

In rewatching S10 episode 6, ‘Oxygen’ -with 12, it’s very similar to Boom.

But there’s no song.

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@thane16

Who knew Villengaard also made spacesuits?!!

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

Now this is more like it. This one grabs you from the get-go, and it doesn’t let go. Don’t you just *know* that an ambulance is not going to be good news? “The Villengard Corporation would like to extend its deepest condolences on your upcoming loss. Thoughts and prayers”. The Moff’s irony has an edge on it that could cut steel.

These are, I guess, the same militaristic churchmen as in The Time of Angels.

And – that was intense. The Doctor just spent 40 minutes standing on a land mine trying to trick it into not going off. And the irony – that the soldiers were fighting nobody and being killed by their own defensive weapons – that was trademark Moff. Does that make the Vilengard Corporation more evil than Skynet?

That was definitely up to Moff’s standard. The interaction between the Doctor and Ruby was deftly handled (by the script and by the actors). And NO signs of anything having been Disneyised or cutesified in this episode.

And if my comments are brief, it’s because I was too mesmerised watching to stop and note anything down.

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@dentarthurdent

Ok tonight I rewatch Boom. I have been studying Smiley’s People, wondering where Lacon got the General’s keys, but tis the season to get Whoish.

Couldn’t really be bothered with Babies or Chord. They weren’t THAT bad. Maybe I’ll get back into it. And the 14 Specials.

Boom of course hearkens back to Empty Child/Doctor Dances and ALL that FILTHY innuendo. tsk, shall I ever be clean? So Rogue… no surprise surely?

Still think it’s all a (Gallifreyan) Matrix stylee recap, chaps and chapesses.

[janetteB @janetteb]

@dentarthurdent. I was looking forward to reading your review on this. We had to persuade some family member to keep watching after “babies” and “chord” and this was the payoff. After this episode they were back. It has everything I want from Dr Who, good story, good acting and a dash of politics thrown in.  It is the kind of story Moffat does so well, small, intense but  not end of the universe stuff.

Cheers

Janette

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@ps1l0v3y0u    Be interesting to see your observations.

@janetteb    I’m flattered, but slightly abashed that my comments were so brief.   Yes, it’s a classic Who story in the Moffat genre.   I think I might re-watch tonight and see if I’m impelled to fill out my comments a bit.

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@dentarthurdent

This is a difficult watch… for the right reasons. And that sounds a bit trite. I commented at the time that the story was ‘timely’ and I put that in quotation marks, not because I’m quoting myself or anyone else but you wonder why a soft sci fi show should be our conscience. For today. At the time, I thought/hoped certain on-going events would be resolved by now. And there you are.

So, this is no way Moffat’s fault. The story harkens back to numerous elements of the Moffat legendarium: militant Anglicans, bad stuff in the mud, malfunctioning tech, and Villengard.

It’s uncomfortable because the story takes the probably not apocryphal recruiting panel question ‘what would you do if your_____ was_____ by the____?’ and replaces it with ‘what would you do as a father?’ Then Moff invites us to surrender, like 12 in Mummy on the Orient Express. Well, would Gandhi have surrendered to Hitler? Dylan wrote both ‘Masters of War’ and ‘When The Ship Comes In’ remember, but not Culture Club’s ‘The War Song.’

Perhaps Moff is saying there are few genuine zero sum games, and nasty people can take up strong negotiating positions. What are you actually going to do? Is it that can’t negotiate with an algorithm? Or is the problem that you find negotiation distasteful?

This sounds like I have an agenda, but personally I haven’t got past the last point.

This story is actually bigger than Who. Difficult.

Best bit… ‘sharp scratch!’ And ‘thoughts and prayers’.

Significant elements:

the Snowflake… yes I connect that with the Snowmen.

Munday Flynn… Sunday, Monday, Tuesday (Marti from 73 yards) are the days of Who when exiled from Saturday. Of course the Christmas episodes have been every day of the week.

October 5th. Didn’t spot that first time round… 3 DW stories were broadcast on Oct 5th and NOT Boom: Mindrobber, Paradise Towers, and Remembrance of the Daleks.

 

 

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

Okay, this is the verbose version.   You have been warned   🙂

Phones implanted in hands, that’s new. But then, we had hand mines (and don’t tell me that idea didn’t start off as a bad pun, which duly turned horrific in Moff’s fertile imagination) in The Witch’s Familiar. Speaking of mines…

Battlefield scenes seem to be a theme with Moff. He (and the Who producers) do them very well, though. Mines that migrate – with what we find out later of Villengard’s MO, I guess that would be a way to increase casualties. The apprehensive way the soldiers react to the threat of an ambulance tells us all we need to know about the way this war is being fought.

I have to applaud the deft way an information dump is handled – quite painlessy to the viewer – by the two soldiers talking to each other. Interrupted by one of them stepping on a mine and the other being terminated by the ‘Ambulance’ as uneconomic to save. An extension of the theme in Oxygen, and as echoed more faintly by RTD in Space Babies. In this episode, Moff gives it a cutting edge – “The Villengard Corporation would like to extend its deepest condolences on your upcoming loss. Thoughts and prayers.” (I know I quoted that before, but it’s so savage I couldn’t omit it). Vater seems almost resigned to his imminent termination – resistance is futile. Accountancy as a war crime. (This of course isn’t new, the first instance I can recall was in an early sci-fi by George Lucas, THX 1138, where the protagonist attempts to escape a Logans Run/Blakes 7 – like society in a stolen police car, and the pursuing android police are about to capture him when the budget limit for his pursuit is reached and they are forced to break off. In that case of course, the result was beneficial.)

Enter the Doctor, and at 5 minutes 50 into the episode he steps on a land mine, where he will be stuck for (most of) the rest of the episode. Roll credits. THe sound of the Skye Boat Song in the devastated burning landscape is magnificently incongruous. Ruby is a girl with remarkably pragmatic reactions – “Why hasn’t it set off already when you stepped on it?” I thought the rationale for the flashy lights on the mine was a little bit stretched – ‘look good in a showroom’ – but if that’s the worst nitpick I can raise then this episode is solid. Villengard ‘supplying all sides in all conflicts’ is nothing new – Maxim. Vickers. Browning. Oerlikon. And so on…

(At 10:12 there appears to be a curious glitch in the editing – aerial view of the crater, with the Doc on his mine facing us, Ruby climbing the path on the right behind him, but left foreground there appears to be a man standing, looking on. I can’t account for this.)

I don’t know if it’s a good idea for the Doc to tell Ruby that the curiously heavy thing (minor nitpick, it doesn’t look that heavy to me) she’s holding is actually a compressed dead body. I have to say her reaction (or lack of it) suggests a great deal of sang-froid. (6.7 kilograms – okay, that’s realistic, I could hold that in one hand). “Are you getting scared, because you’re just babbling now”. “Okay, it’s exactly 6.732217 kilograms. I was trying not to show off.” I’m loving this dialogue. Gatwa and Gibson are marvellous in this exchange. All they’re doing is talking, but it’s mesmerising.

And Moff still has room for some funny lines – “Blindness isn’t fatal.” “You literally just said that to a dead blind guy.”

Then Splice turns up and Ruby and the Doctor are desperately trying to hide from her, the fact that her father is dead. I find moments like this far more moving than actors standing around crying and sobbing. The actors hold it in and let the audience feel the emotions for them. Just like true tension consists of waiting for something to happen rather than violent action. And then Vater’s hologram activates and Splice rushes in (doesn’t she realise he’s a hologram and dead? Maybe holograms are so common they accompany phone calls, or something). And I think, with most writers, we would be fairly sure that this wasn’t going to blow the Doctor (and Ruby and Splice and all) up, but with Moff you can never be sure, after all, didn’t Blue Idiot Guy blow a big hole right through the middle of Bill? But maybe not this time.

But no sooner has Ruby managed to wrestle Splice away from the Doctor (and his landmine) than Mundy turns up, all protective and threatening to shoot the Doctor. In fact Mundy turns out to be stubbornly stupid, in the way that only a military mind trained in correct procedures can be (in my biassed opinion). And no sooner has the Doctor persuaded Mundy that making him drop Vater’s remains would blow up half the planet, than the Ambulance rolls into view, attracted by Mundy’s shots, and shoots its probes into the Doc. This is not his day. So Ruby has the brilliant idea of grabbing Mundy’s gun and firing shots to distract the Ambulance, and Mundy redeems herself by telling Ruby to shoot her in the arm (on a low setting, which is presumably why she didn’t blow the Doc’s arm off, nice consistency there) as only actual injuries will attract the Ambulance. Which Ruby is about to do when Canterbury turns up and shoots Ruby for real. The Moff is really piling on the chaos now.

The snow is a puzzle – obviously foreshadowing something, which we will presumably find at the end of the series. The Ambulance is as useless as ever – ‘432 seconds. Patient non-ordained. Treatment withheld.’ Not a very Christian approach to things, but then it’s a product of the Vilengard Corporation, not the Anglican marines. Canterbury seems to have come to his senses rather quicker than Mundy did, reconfigures the Ambulance to revive Ruby. But the mine is still counting down…

So, the Doctor, realising the Anglican marines are fighting only themselves, tells them to surrender. (It worked on the Mummy on the Orient Express). But this lot don’t have the authority to surrender. So the Doctor has to _prove_ to them that they’ve been fighting an illusion. He sends Vater as a digital signal through the Ambulance into the network. Canterbury is reprogramming the Ambulance when it backfires and kills him. And then a swarm of Ambulances roll up chanting menacingly ‘Thoughts and prayers’ and the Interface declares that Vater has been declared a virus and deleted. And the landmine announces a ten-second countdown. And then, of course, at the last second, the mine switches off as the Vater virus gets really mad and wipes the Vilengard algorithm. And then the Ambulance revives Ruby – presumably reverting to its default programming.

Nice closing shot of the spectacular skyscape, with the four survivors lined up, Splice and Mundy clutching their respective significant cylinders. No, whatever the Doctor says, Vater and Canterbury are dead, and no amount of AI holograms can bring them back. But maybe Splice and Mundy take whatever comfort they can. And I’m pleased we got a few seconds of pleasantness at the end to unwind.

This episode finally made buying Season 15 worth it. To echo previous comments, I’d rank it as second-level Moffat, but that still makes it very good. A lot of the elements are ones that Moffat has used before, but I don’t see that as a defect – given the volume of Moffat’s previous contributions (and, indeed, the sheer volume of Doctor Who stories to date) it must be almost impossible to generate an all-original, novel, yet coherent story. And Moffat manages to rearrange the elements in the kaleidoscope so the story feels new even if similarities to previous episodes cross our minds. This was a ‘bottle’ episode, but then many (if not most) of the best episodes have been ‘bottle’ episodes. Cut down to a few characters and their interactions, which Moff does supremely well.

 

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@ps1l0v3y0u    If you’re referring to current political events (like, the US elections/Ukraine/Gaza) I sympathise, they can be very – distracting.   Though I find I can usually switch off my real-life awareness and just immerse myself in the story.   Whatever happens in Real Life (TM) in the next few weeks, or four years, ‘Boom’ and the Doctor and Ruby will be unchanged, it will still be the same story, frozen in time, when 2024 is just a bad and distant memory.

So I tend to be fairly oblivious to ‘messages’ in the text, and in particular, I’m opposed to taking specific ‘incidents’ and widening them into generalised moral imperatives.   In this specific instance, the Doctor realised he was standing on an Anglican Marine landmine (even though programmed by the Villengard Corporation) and the way to switch it off was for the Marines to surrender.      That was entirely pragmatic; whether Gandhi would/should have surrendered to Hitler has nothing to do with it (IMO).    On the other hand, that war is often pointless and usually bad, and benefits mainly the military/industrial complex that Eisenhower warned of in the 1950’s, that is a generalised message (and one I personally agree with).    But the world is complex.    Witness the Doctor’s attack on the pointless ‘faith’ that kept the Marines fighting and occasionally dieing for – nothing, yet he acknowledged at the end that ‘faith’ was a good and sustaining thing for Mundy and Splice in their personal circumstances.

 

 

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@dentarthurdent

US Election/Ukraine/Gaza…?

Moffat reworks his favourite themes… of course he does… but while this was being written it was Ukraine that was hot. What does the west contribute to the Ukraine war: tech. When it was broadcast, Gaza made the story particularly erm… poignant. More relevant than ever. Especially the faith element.

Why is Gaza so brutal? (beware simplifications but…) This is Putin’s model for urban destruction: Grozny, Syria, Mariopol. We’re going to see more of this. Perhaps, in the end, we may choose to sanction our ‘errant friend’… because their enemies are probably worse.

Will we really kick the door in and watch the Russian barn collapse? History says not. It’s not ‘the economy stupid,’ because Putin doesn’t think he needs much of an economy while he still has fear. Of course the end game might be Putin’s death, but not because Joe begged someone to kill him. I winced at the time, but really, where is a sensitive bloodsoaked tyrant supposed to look?

I could go on about US isolationism and indeed the Monroe Doctrine but, if you’re squatting on the really nice bit of like a WHOLE continent, why throw stones at someone else’s slum?

If Moff had built negotiation rather than surrender into the narrative, it would have been even stronger. That’s what happened with Smile. Boom is a good story though.

Any thoughts re October 5th?? Worth a rewatch just for that bit.

 

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@ps1l0v3y0u     Well, I don’t think this is really the forum for political discussions, so I’ll keep my views to myself (not that I think they’d surprise anybody.)   You do have a good point, that the US and Europe was supporting Ukraine with military tech.   (Vastly to the benefit of the military/industrial complex, by the way.)    But a quite different circumstance, I think, from the situation in ‘Boom’, where there was no local population resisting.   That’s part of why I’m leery of reading too much ‘message’ (other than the vaguest generalisations) into specific sci-fi episodes.

I’m not sure of the significance of October 5th?

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@dentarthurdent

Fair point on political discourse. Though I don’t buy that this is a very different scenario anymore than Dylan’s insistence that his hard rain wasn’t atomic (been watching Don’t Look Back dontcha know)

October 5th… The Doctor, free from the DNA landmine declares the day as October 5th… presumably 23 something something AD… has anyone worked out the date from Ruby’s age?

This has been dismissed online as just a date… like June 26th 2010, though that was the date The Big Bang was broadcast.

Who on October 5th:

Mindrobber… seems relevant, complete with ‘a’ Master

Paradise Towers… never seen it. Mel. Screaming. I understand Richard Briars was awful in it. Some significant child actors though, maybe… can anyone help me?

Remembrance of the Daleks… full on Cartmel Plan story… soon followed by Silver Nemesis… working title ‘The Harbinger!’

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@ps1l0v3y0u     Well, it’s my personal choice to avoid reading too much into a story, since I can get quite enough political insanity from watching the news, and I like my fiction to be escapist.   And also, I find such interpretations are frequently able to be skewed to suit the preferences/prejudices of the viewer.    (Having said that, I just  watched  ’73 yards’ and the similarities between Roger ap Gwilliam  and a certain orange idiot were unmistakeable (and I’m not talking about Bojo)).

I can’t see that October 5th has any great significance, and I think – in general – the screening dates of various Who episodes are too obscure to be a plot point.    Google tells me that on that date  ‘Dr No’ (the movie) was released, also Monty Python’s Flying Circus first aired.   Not sure if they had any significance, but since there were no references to ‘joined the choir invisible’ or ‘nobody expects…’, probably not.

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