Thin Ice

[Anonymous @]

@winston

Mum’s not on board with that, btw. But I just feel it’s not ‘him’ -the ‘him’ is in the Box! or the vault (need a Bonkers theory). I don’t want some Valyard which could happen…..But Mum’s thinking about FurElise a lot ….I’m thinking of Buffy too, though.

Also, Mum said the first bar of Fur Elise was repeated but as we don’t really have a definitive version of Fur Elise then it could be anything. Maybe Beethoven’s in the vault. 😈

Here’s something: the Bach connection to Sherlock and the “oh, don’t play Bach like that. You don’t get it” says both Euros and Moriarty. 🙂

[Anonymous @]

sorry people, the above should be in the KNock KNock thread

[Missy @missy]

@ichabod: *snort*  Was it Red or White wine?

Two things, that have been puzzling me. I know I should mention them on the appropriate threads. But here goes anyway.

In Dark Water, when Clara threatens – and indeed does –  to  throw all seven keys into the lava. thus preventing the Doctor ever  entering  the Tardis again.  The fact that he often opened and closed  the door simply by clicking his fingers, seemed to have been missed? Clara was aware of this so I found it rather odd.

Am I the only one who thinks that Bull accepted the Doctor as an  alien rather too easily?  am I being too picky here?

Missy

 

[Missy @missy]

@thane15:   Here’s something: the Bach connection to Sherlock and the “oh, don’t play Bach like that. You don’t get it” says both Euros and Moriarty.

As in, ““Johann Sebastian would be appalled.”

Missy

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

Just re-watched Thin Ice.
This is what I wrote first time around (but don’t seem to have posted in this thread):
I have a slight problem with the scale of the monster (as shown on the Tardis map screen). It’s just too big to ‘hide’ in the Thames (how deep is the Thames at low tide anyway?) How could it ever turn round? Also (to anticipate developments later in the episode), how could a few humans per year be enough to sustain it, or furnish sufficient, um, fuel production? Problems of scale persisted right through the episode.

I’m quite liking Bill, this time round. The first time, I was suffering from Clara Withdrawal Syndrome, and no new companion could overcome that 🙂 But it’s an injustice to any companions to compare them, and invidious, I think.

The Doctor’s interrogation of the foreman at the yard is full of double entendres. But I particularly like the idea that the fortunes of Lord Sutcliff are founded on sh*t.

Um, if this is 1814, Sutcliff would have to own an ironworks, not a steel mill. (In 1814, steel was a limited-production specialty item, used only for swords and the like. Cast iron or wrought iron was the prime engineering metal. Railways did not really get going until 1825 or 1830, with iron (not steel) rails and locomotives. Large-scale mild steel production did not really get going until the Bessemer process c.1860. What held it back was not any lack of heat, but knowledge of the right chemical processes). So Sutcliff’s super (and super cheap) fuel would have helped cheap production of cast iron and wrought iron, but not steel. I think. [/Geek mode]

So, best watched for the backchat between the Doc and Bill, and don’t look too closely at the world-building.

[And this is my comments from my recent re-watching. Still banging on about the size of the monster, I see]

Minor geographical quibble. When the Tardis first materialises on the ice, with St Pauls in the background, that must be near Blackfriars Bridge. The Doctor moves it to a safer parking spot, presumably on the bridge. And the monster’s head is located directly underneath the Tardis. But the map in the Tardis shows its head as being located midway between Lambeth Bridge and Vauxhall Bridge, over a mile upstream. This is – troubling.

Um, and the adjacent ‘Freezeland Street.’ There is a Freezeland Way in Uxbridge, but the nearest Freezeland Street is in Bilston, near Birmingham. This is not good for my geeky soul.

I do like the street urchins. And the chitchat between the Doctor and Bill.

Bill and the Doctor appear to be remarkably lucky not to be eaten by the monster. And how did they surface again? Never mind, I’ll let that one pass.

‘The creature’s head is almost a mile away. I assume we’re at the other end.’ Well yes, a mile long would be a little more credible than the map in the Tardis which showed the creature to be nine miles long!

I see Lord Sutcliffe is a villain in the James Bond tradition – tell the hero all the details of your nefarious operation.

Altogether, not a bad episode. Not a great one, but entertaining enough.

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@dentarthurdent

My least favourite story from series 10. There are a lot of buzzwords that could be plastered over a late Georgian story with a nod to slavery. It does come over as just that: a nod. And a monster in chains. And the reason the Thames froze was the climate was very very different.

It’s an uncomfortable salad of ideas. And the critter makes the Magma Monster look critical to the story of the Caves of Androzani. I’m not sure why it’s so hard to turn important history into sensible and sensitive drama. Bill could be in real peril, rather than gaping in outrage. You don’t need a steelworks to talk about the impact of industrialisation on people. The slave trade wasn’t invented by early modern Europe but they definitely industrialised it.

Not saying it would be easy to write but what they actually produced was poor. Great series otherwise.

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@ps1l0v3y0u This was 1814, right? A year before Waterloo. The slave trade was banned in the British Empire in 1807. And slavery was never a legal thing in England. So – within the limits of the story – Bill was never in much danger in London simply because of her colour. That’s as far as I can tell from a quick Google, I’m open to correction on that.

I’m not sure what ‘important history’ you’re referring to. Climate change? (I’ve got no problem with the monster causing the freezes – for the purposes of science fiction). Industrial revolution? Slavery? Colour prejudice? They’re all historically important things but why should Doctor Who be obliged to deal with them in a 45-minute episode? Chibnall’s episodes tried dealing with socially relevant themes (me: groan) and look where that got him.

I know I ranted on about Sutcliffe’s steel mill but that was just me being trivially uber-geek. It didn’t spoil the story for me the way physics pulverises Kill the Moon. I think stories should fit the facts reasonably well, for their own credibility, but that doesn’t mean they have to go into a detailed examination of all the circumstances.

Um, the monster being in chains was another little glitch – how did Sutcliff’s predecessors ever chain it up? And the diving suit exploit was – improbable (I’d guess impossible), without a support crew on the surface. So the story was a bit loose in places. I just didn’t take it too seriously.

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@dentarthurdent

1807: slave trade act – abolished the trade into the colonies

C16th-18th status of slavery not recognised in English common law and finally made illegal (not in the colonies). Indentured service was used as means of paying debt.

1833: the institution actually abolished in the colonies

Desperate people driven to the towns to perform badly paid piecework is as much a part of the Industrial Revolution as any number of fancy technological innovations.

The story is a mess of these ideas and seemed to concluded that a bad man had chained a ‘creature’ in the Thames. Boo!

Yes WHO is sci fi. Yes you would struggle to handle these themes in a ‘history’ story even where there is a consensus. No wonder WHO doesn’t do history stories.

So, why go there? It was tone deaf. Almost as if the awkward stuff had been chalked off. Done that! Now what about the Ice Warriors? (btw that was a story I really liked)

 

[Mudlark @mudlark]

@dentarthurdent

the diving suit exploit was – improbable (I’d guess impossible), without a support crew on the surface.

Perhaps there was more to the diving suits than was apparent. For a start, the design was anachronistic – more 1890s than 1814 – so  they were presumably supplied by the Tardis and could therefore have incorporated Time Lord technology. Certainly the Tardis seems to have a preference for retro design, as seen also in the space suits worn by the Doctor, which doesn’t mean that they are as primitive as they appear.

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@ps1l0v3y0u Okay. I don’t think we disagree on the circumstances of this one. Except you found the social background more of a distraction to the story than I did. I usually don’t want Who to get into contentious or ‘heavy’ moral questions.

For example, ‘Extremis’ – excellent episode IMO. I’m quite willing to debate the Vatican’s long history for good and bad on other forums, but preferably not on Who – and Extremis didn’t raise it, it just used it as background for sci-fi, which suits me fine. I could probably also mention Let’s Kill Hitler – how could it *not* deal with the entire theme of Nazism in the late 30’s? Well, it didn’t. It just used it as a backdrop, as thousands of other dramas have done. (I loved the Tesselact, by the way).

I actually don’t want Who to get heavily into difficult questions. I’m a rampant Greenie but the heavy-handed environmentalism in ‘Praxeus’ turns me right off what could otherwise have been a decent story.

The Ice Warriors – good in Cold War (which, again, just used the entire Cold War as background); but I always thought Ice Warriors were pretty lame and that Empress of Mars was one of the weakest episodes. Too Indiana Jones for my liking. I’m afraid we’ll just have to disagree on that one.

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@mudlark Thanks! That’s quite a good rationalisation and I always like it if a loose end can be neatly tied up. That also takes care of the minor issue of where they got them (i.e. did they rent them? steal them? buy them?) and when did Bill learn to use a diving suit (I don’t think they’re just ‘put on and hop in the water’). Obviously Tardis suits would be quite user-friendly and wouldn’t need the hoses, lifelines and air compressor ‘up top’ and all the other clutter.

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@dentarthurdent

I didn’t think we disagreed exactly. My point is, if you’re not prepared to do the past honestly, then why go there? To plaster a monster or alien over an events kids and adults should know or be informed about can be potentially dubious.

Mind you science stories can also suffer from this. Earth’s large satellite would seem to be a fascinating and significant anomaly; you really want to make it into a space bat?? Carrington events and understanding paleo atmospheres are both really important; Forest of the Night doesn’t have a monster, unless the trees are monsters, but the result is at best glib and in any case nonsensical.

Thin Ice is the worst example because it painted a society where Sutcliffe seems like a repellent Millwall supporter who wants to argue about Brazil/England 1984. In fact, 50 years later, Lord Palmerston had to read Uncle Tom’s Cabin 3 times cover to cover (not making this up) before he realised he couldn’t act like a Whig grandee anymore: in fact it might not be very smart to intervene on the side of the Confederacy.

On the other hand, The Shakespeares Code or the Fires of Pompeii seem acceptable. Vincent and the Doctor is slightly disturbing. Cold War gets better with time; I have learned to tune out David Warner’s Duran Duran tape. I thought The Empress of Mars was magnificently bonkers. The Eaters of Light reminded me of Alan Garner…

I have heard spirited defences of Let’s Kill Hitler but, aside from Moffat’s admirable chutzpah, I don’t buy it and not just the mysterious case of the disappearing Reich.

The Tessalecta torture ‘bad’ people just before they die? Presumably they’re a Star Trek stylee temporal commission; can’t change the past so they get in just before the defendant would snuff it anyway. Er… haven’t they got the wrong year? Or was Hitler meant to die in 1938 and Rory preserved him so he could destroy Europe when he locked him in the cupboard?

Then they decide to improvise on River. Oh. Maybe they’re not bothered about time paradoxes at all!

I think the idea got away from him.

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

What was dishonest about Thin Ice? If you’re going to go to the past at all, then you’re either going to have to ‘take it as it comes’ and treat it just as background, because you can’t turn every past ep into an in-depth social documentary.

Well, Kill the Moon was the absolute worst of NuWho (IMO). Worse than anything of Chibnall’s. With Forest of the Night a pale second for the season.

What made KTM so bad? Well, just about everything. Let me count the ways – and this is pure elementary physics –
the Space Shuttle could only reach low Earth orbit, it was never Moon-capable
the cargo hold on the Shuttle was never pressurised and was structurally incapable of that
there would be NO gravity inside it before it crashed into the Moon because –
it’s just a dirty great glider, it needs air to land – if it tried landing on the Moon, there would be a brand new crater
the Moon was allegedly increasing in mass, that’s straight violation of the law of conservation of matter
you could never have ‘high tide everywhere at once’ – more violation of conservation of matter
the Mexicans ‘didn’t find any minerals on the Moon’? Rock is *made* of minerals! That includes Moon rock
no way could the spiders be a ‘unicellular’ life form! Did the writers get carried away with their ‘bacteria’ analogy and a science dictionary?
when it hatched, the dragon flew away using wings – there’s no air in space
and its tail was ‘wagging’ with an acceleration of about 170,000 G – what’s it supposed to be made of?
the dragon left a same-sized egg in its place – law of conservation of matter violated *again* – how can a freshly-hatched ‘thing’ lay an egg as big as itself?
50 (?) h-bombs could never disintegrate the moon
And if they did, the bits would just continue in the same orbit, there would be NO relief to Earth. But if some pieces were slowed enough to spiral in to Earth then the damage previously caused by the wild tides would be as nothing to the devastation that resulted from the impact
And aside from that –
The Doctor, who feels protective towards Earth, just buggers off and leaves Clara and Courtney the menace to decide Earth’s fate and potentially commit suicide (suicide bombing?) Really? Is this in character? This is the Doctor who went through billions of years in Heaven Sent just to rescue Clara?
Clara decides to take a ‘vote’ of Earth – how would that work? (The side opposite the Moon doesn’t get to vote anyway). But we know exactly what would result from such a message – total shambles and confusion. Which didn’t matter anyway since Clara then completely ignored the result. (Where have we seen that recently?)
And just as the icing on the cake, there’s this nod-and-a-wink at the abortion ‘debate’.
And most trivial point, Courtney the Menace could never be President of the US because she wasn’t born in the USA.

I may have missed a couple of minor points there.
The one half-way okay thing about it was Clara’s incandescent rage with the Doctor at the end.
‘The Moon is an egg’ probably sounded like an intriguing concept, but it should have been dropped like a hot potato when the difficulties became apparent.

Forest of the Night was moderately bad but pales into insignificance beside KTM.

Thin Ice – I didn’t see any misrepresentation (so far as I know). Sutcliffe was a caricature and I’d aver – given what we know of the status of the very few black people in society around that time – that most gentry would have been at least polite to Bill. But I’ll certainly accept that many might have been prejudiced. BUT I am absolutely fairly ignorant of social matters in that period. (I don’t understand your Millwall reference btw, since my full extent of knowledge of soccer is that ‘Manchester United’ is probably a fair bet to answer any trivia questions with).

Shakespear Code I liked. Fires of Pompeii was okay. Vincent and the Doctor also, and I did like Bill Nighy’s cameo as the Curator. In fact it was an online comment about that the re-ignited my interest in NuWho. Eaters of Light was great though the monster was a slight let-down (always better when you can’t see them).

Let’s Kill Hitler was just fun. I didn’t have any qualms about that, and anyway, hasn’t the Third Reich been ‘done’ a thousand times by now? (And when I say a thousand I’m not exaggerating). I loved the Tesselecta though its premise seems a bit morally dubious, but also somewhat inadequate, wouldn’t it be better to go back and zap the baddies before they do their evil deeds? (Yes I know, time paradox).

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@dentarthurdent

Ok, agree to disagree then. But some historicals are better than others.

As far as science is concerned Kill the Moon is as bad as almost anything CE, though I’ve not watched Flux. Spyfall made me want to scream. And not in a good way.

Forest of the Night was just an unhappy collision of interesting ideas. There was also the plea against the chemical coshing of neurodiversity, which I would applaud, but even that was simplistic.

I suppose it’s a bit mean to criticise writers for riffing on their favourite obsessions, and Moff never exercised the same editorial grip that RTD exerted in his first run. The problem is before you know it Anthony Stevens has submitted half a story based on his observations of the birds and gastropods in his garden (after his typewriter had liberally blown up) and the only man who can finish it is Eric Saward.

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@ps1l0v3y0u You’re geeking me out now. 🙂 Which episode was it started by Anthony Stevens and finished by Eric Saward? Writers can certainly ‘riff on their favourite obsessions’ so long as the result is entertaining for a general audience (obviously) and fits in with the ambiance of the series, I think.

I can assure you KTM was far worse than anything in the Flux, so far as science is concerned. That is to say, Flux was all sci-fi and probably physically impossible, but I can readily accept that, just as I accept that the Tardis can time travel. The more fantastic (i.e. removed from everyday physics) something is, the more readily I can accept it. The Flux’s main drawback (from my point of view) was that I found the plot confusing and galactic disasters tend to be far less satisfying than more focussed stories.

However, when an episode focuses on ‘real’ physics and mechanics as KTM did – the Space Shuttle, the Moon causing tides and so on – then it had better get those things right, or ‘explain’ why they differ from normal reality. KTM seemed to go out of its way to get everything gratuitously wrong.

Forest of the Night was maybe a bit more mystical so – although the outrageously fast plant growth and the bit of woo about the spirit of the Earth or whatever it was, caused me to raise an eyebrow, it didn’t raise my hackles like KTM did. Besides, the traffic lights in a forest were kinda cute 🙂

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@dentarthurdent

Anthony Stevens’ story was the infamous ‘Twin Dilemma.’ And the quote was his typewriter exploded ‘literally’ NOT ‘liberally.’ Fortunately neither Anthony nor Eric had to contend with predictive text.

When it comes good science, I would like someone to try making explosions in space silent.

 

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