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So I just watched Last Christmas (and put my comments in the forum for that episode), then re-watched it again. (DVD’s are absolutely marvellous for that sort of thing). I find I can understand a lot more, second time round, when I have a rough idea of where it’s going. Events and statements become more meaningful or nuanced with a bit of foresight. And I can enjoy them without having to devote my attention to following the plot.

I see most of the commenters (which includes most of those still here) liked it as much as I did. Sarcastic Santa and his unruly elves, what’s not to love? Even if Santa was an imaginary construct of the victims’ subconscious.

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This is my favourite Christmas episode. The Moff has pulled off an extremely difficult combination – a comedy which is also a serious and scary drama. And you can’t get more Christmassy than Santa Claus. Albeit a sarcastic Santa, with equally sarcastic elves, who unabashedly call attention to their own improbability.

With massive hindsight, it’s obvious when the dream crabs have got them – but not so, the first time around. I needed several viewings to fully follow it and appreciate the layers of meaning. There are several layers of dream in this thing, a bit like ‘Inception’, except that’s not at all apparent at the start of the episode.

But as the Doc says, you know the big problem with telling fantasy and reality apart? They’re both ridiculous.

In fact the Moff doesn’t just suggest we’re in a dream, he virtually says so, repeatedly – and we miss it! (Or at least, I did).

And this episode is a feast of funny lines, Santa’s as often as the Doc’s.
“Three words: My Little Pony” (is the Moff mocking his own ‘three words’ (3W) from Death in Heaven? Of course he is!)

Doctor: How’d you get all the presents in the sleigh? Santa: Bigger on the inside. (ta-daa!)

“There’s a horror movie called ‘Alien’? That’s really offensive. No wonder everyone keeps invading you.”

Santa is simultaneously physically ‘real’, and a fictional character who continually calls attention to his own impossibility. I love the surreal atmosphere of his episode. (In the Discworld, he’d be an anthropomorphic personification.)

Clara and the Doc finally tell each other the truth about Danny and Gallifrey respectively.

Then Clara gets attacked by a crab and goes off into her fantasy about Danny… And the Doctor comments on the realism of Clara’s dream – this whole episode is just so meta (have I got the usage right?) There’s a touching scene with Clara and Danny (the fictional Danny in Clara’s mind) from which the Doctor rescues her, helped by fictional-Danny. But then we realise everyone’s still in a dream. How many layers down are we?

Step up the ultimate fictional character, Santa, to try and save everyone. Except along the way he questions the reality of the alien Doctor in his blue phone box. Doctor: Why don’t you just go and make a naughty list? Santa: I have, mate, and you’re on it.

So anyway, Santa persuades them to hold hands and throw off the crabs – and fight their way out of the infirmary. Whereupon the Doc goes to fly off in his Tardis with Clara. But Clara protests about leaving the ‘scientists’ to the mercy of the crabs.
Doctor: There are lots of dangerous things on this funny little planet of yours, Clara, most of which you eat.
So then Clara asks the crucial question: Doctor? If Santa was only in the dream, why was he on my roof?
which causes the doctor to dive back into the fray, and rescue (most of) them – though of course the Tardis was also a part of the dream, and he has to resort to calling on Santa and his sleigh.

And all is well, they all go back to their lives – except Clara is now very old (I think this was written when Jenna was scheduled to leave the series) and we have a rather touching farewell scene with the Doctor and Old Clara – interrupted by Santa (again) who wakes the Doc from yet another layer of dream. Is this the fourth layer so far?

I just watched it yet again, and I found it easier to follow the logic of the episode. It all hangs together quite well, with the knowledge that Santa is being generated by their dream state. The only bit I’m not sure of, is the last appearance of Santa, when he prompted the Doc to go back and rescue ‘young Clara’ – which means the scene with ‘old Clara’ was still a dream. But what prompted Santa (i.e. the Doc’s imagination manifesting as Santa) to realise that?

Anyway, a (Christmas) cracker of an episode!

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Death in Heaven

Is the Moff tweaking the fans with Clara’s confident “I’m the Doctor”? She’s certainly got a nerve. … and then Jenna Coleman appears before Peter Capaldi in the titles – and I’ll swear that’s Jenna’s eyes in the sequence. Confirmed, the Moff is tugging our chain.

Cybermen can fly! (Well, Daleks now can, so why wouldn’t Cybermen?) And they can do some mystical cloud-seeding of graveyards. Okay, for some reason I’ll wear that (where I wouldn’t wear the forests suddenly growing). Because, I guess, alien tech.

The Doctor seems unimpressed by his new rank of President of Earth. To Missy: “Remember all those years when you wanted to rule the world? Piece of cake.” I’m sure the irony, that his new rank is due to Missy’s scheming, is not lost on her.

And what a pleasure it is to see Osgood (well, one of them) again. And the Doctor (a.k.a. President of Earth) implicitly offers her a trip in the Tardis – so naturally Missy promptly kills her. I must admit I didn’t see that coming. Missy is truly a psychopath.

And it was, as long suspected, Missy who was ‘the woman in the shop’ that gave Clara the Doctor’s number. Who put the Doc and Clara together because she think’s they’re bad for each other (or something like that). I think she badly misjudged the situation.

But then, she created the whole cyber army as – a present for the Doctor? Definitely deranged. But the whole complex dynamic of the scene in the graveyard with Clara, Danny, Missy and the Doctor is masterfully arranged. Finally Danny takes command of the Cyber army and defeats Missy’s plans. But we’re not finished yet – Clara is quite prepared to use Missy’s lethal device on her. Does anyone think she wouldn’t? So the Doctor intervenes – and is saved from having to do it by Cyberman Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, who the Doctor finally salutes (to the joy of old-Who fans).

And then we have a marvellously sad scene in the cafe at the end, where both the Doctor and Clara desperately need each other but, totally unselfishly, pretend they’ve found their own separate destinations – for each other’s sake. Lying, with the best of motives, but fatally misguided. An irony overload which borders on tragedy. It’s so sad, and I’m muttering at the screen “tell him! *tell* him!” As Santa says irritably at the end, this won’t do at all.

One of the best series finales we’ve seen, I think.

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Dark Water

Well now, this post is a bit late to the party, but this seems to be the place to put it…

So after the filler episodes, some of them good, some of them questionable… (KTM, Forest of the Night) – after those, we’re back on the real hard stuff. Pure 100% Moffatt, and directed by Rachel Talalay, yet. This is mainline.

And it starts with killing Danny, just like that. Well, that happens sometimes. Probably doesn’t help Clara’s equanimity that he was distracted by talking to her at the time. So, Clara being Clara, she does something about it.

Boy, does she ever. (As an aside – Clara knows altogether too much about the Doctor’s habits, like where he hides his keys). That confrontation in the volcano is electric. I would not care to try to negotiate with – or bluff – either of them. But of course the Doc is one step ahead.

And it leads to one of the most moving lines in all of Who – “Do you think I care for you so little that betraying me would make a difference?”

And, “I don’t deserve a friend like you.” “Clara, I’m terribly sorry, but I’m exactly what you deserve.” I love the Moff’s way with words.

Magnificent acting by both of them, by the way.

The Nethersphere – I have a slight problem with the geographical location of this. It’s hollow, from the curvature it’s obviously too small to be the inside of the Earth (as may have been believed in Mediaeval times), besides which, gravity. So I’ll assume it’s virtual, or a satellite (like a literal Death Star?) in orbit somewhere. But never mind, cool idea. Love the euphemistic banality of Seb. The not-really-fishtanks and their contents are supremely creepy. And the Nethersphere two-circles symbol is instantly reminiscent of – something.

And there’s some lovely ambiguous chit-chat with Missy who appears to be rather more than the interactive welcome-droid she claims to be. The Moff does loaded dialogue so well.

The thing about the dead feeling what’s happening to them is, we hope, a lie perpetuated by Missy and 3W. Otherwise it has very sinister implications not only for cremation, but for any organ donors, and doubtless many other burial practices like embalming. Any equanimity with which I contemplate my demise is predicated on the assumption that I’ll be out of it, and won’t even have to endure a long boring service like my surviving acquaintances.

We keep getting hints about what the skeletons actually are (‘dark water’ is a fascinating concept, by the way), so I don’t think I was very surprised when the Doctor walked through the doors with the paired circles – but still, one hell of a reveal.

And it turns out the Nethersphere is actually a ball-shaped data storage unit about three feet across, which neatly answers my misgivings about the nature of the ‘underworld’. And the mausoleum is – inside St Pauls Cathedral. (Odd, I’ve been inside St Pauls, didn’t notice any actual Cybermen, though there were a couple of vaguely cadaverous ushers hanging around). It turns out they were hidden by some Time Lord dimensional legerdemain.

So, Missy using Dr Skarosa’s organisation to create Cybermen is pretty convoluted, but I guess no more so than the Master’s usual schemes.

 

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Well, Last Christmas is one of my favourites.   It would have been a lot sadder if Clara – Jenna – hadn’t decided to do another year.  But the episodes that intermingle comedy and tragedy are often the best.

The end of ‘Death in Heaven’ where both Clara and the Doctor are lying, totally unselfishly, because they think the other has a better life life to go to without them – that I found inexpressibly sad (and also, frustrating, I kept growling at the screen “Tell him!!”)

But anyway, Last Christmas – sarcastic elves pointing out how improbable they are, sarcastic Santa (Doc: “Go make a list”   Santa: “I have mate, and you’re on it!”) – what’s not to love?   But yes, sad too, but so was Christmas Carol.   Sad is not always bad.

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@ichabod    Actually, that Q&A that you linked to (featuring the Moff with a minimalist beard) was,  from the context, recorded after the return of Russel  Davies had been announced.   So, quite recently.

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Oops, here’s the link to the Cambridge Union one

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@ichabod    Yes, the link worked!

There’s a couple of other Q&A’s with the Moff, one at Oxford Union

and one with Mark Gatiss at the Cambridge Union

so I guess I now know where this evening will have gone   🙂

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@winston    Quite coincidentally, I have just watched ‘Dark Water’ and ‘Death in Heaven’, so the next episode on my list is ‘Last Christmas’.   How’s that for timing?   (And it was completely accidental)

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@janetteb   Hi, I wasn’t even aware that there had ever been a TV adaptation of Dirk Gently until I started Googling for a synopsis of the plot.   I was a bit cynical about the TV versions but if you liked them (or at least the British one) I’d guess it must be quite well done.

Though I’d also guess it might differ substantially from the book, both because the book is so tightly plotted I don’t see how one could make a series out of it (it would have to be a carefully scripted one-off mini-series), and because DNA is famous for the variation between different versions of his works (I’m referring to Hitch-hiker of course, which was variously a radio series, a stage play(?), a trilogy of books, a TV series, and a movie, and substantially different every time).

 

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… and while you folks were trying to disentangle the cast of thousands (apparently) in The Vanquishers, I was (re-)reading Doug Adams’   Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency.    Which is, I think, quite tightly plotted, *but* it’s told in a non-linear multi-threaded way that requires (and rewards) concentration to follow.   For example, the eponymous anti-hero doesn’t even appear until Chapter 8.    And Adams doesn’t always specify exactly what is happening, or to whom – he leaves the reader to deduce it for themselves.   Although the style is quite different, it reminds me of Catch-22 in the way it weaves around.   However, it’s entertaining enough to make it an enjoyable read even when there are loose (and not-understood) ends dangling in my mind.

So after I finished the book, I looked for a synopsis of the plot and found an excellent one on the Wikipedia page.  A whole four screenfuls of dense ‘plot summary’, in fact, that cleared it all up.   Rather snottily, Wikipedia has noted “This section may contain an excessive amount of intricate detail that may interest only a particular audience. Please help by spinning off or relocating any relevant information, and removing excessive detail that may be against Wikipedia’s inclusion policy.”   Obviously Wikipedia has never read the book!   Anything less would leave out small but important plot points.

So anyway, excellent book, one of DNA’s best.

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@ichabod    I do hope you’re wrong.   Part of that video is just the young presenter’s speculation on the news.   Admittedly Sony is a bit ominous, (as would be Disney) – any of these big-bucks US networks wanting to maximise their investment by spreading the ideas thin and substituting CGI flash-crash-bang for any real character-driven action.   I hope it doesn’t turn out that way (but then I was cautiously optimistic about a female Doctor and…  um.)

RTD has done spinoffs before and – while I watched Torchwood – I never rated it quite as good or entertaining as the main show.   And it went way too grim at the end.   Somehow the Who formula of Doctor + companion(s) + Tardis + adversary-of-the-week keeps it interesting, keeps it intense enough without being too grim or depressing.    (There’s a balancing act here – how do you have dramatic and horrific things happen to your characters – getting a hole shot in them and turned into a cyberman – without getting depressing?    Somehow, RTD and the Moff managed it).     But these are characters we care about.   The only comic-book hero movies I’ve watched was X-men (the original trilogy), and there isn’t one of them I cared about as much as the various Docs, or Rose, Martha, Amy or Clara or Bill.   (The X-woman I found most interesting – hence almost cared about – was Mystique (Rebecca Romijn), and they effectively ‘killed’ her by taking away her mutant powers and making her ‘normal’ – a fate worse than death for her character).

 

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Well, after a bit of a pause, I restarted with In the Forest of the Night.  Marvellous title, too bad about the episode, I actually liked it less this time round than my first viewing.   Almost Kill the Moon levels of impossibility.   Once again, the closer an episode approaches to mundane earthly physical reality, the bigger my scepticism for supernatural events (Alien tech?  Fine.   Trees growing a thousand times faster and then somehow evaporating?   Nah.)   So I posted a review in the forum for the episode, but please don’t bother reading it if you loved the ep, I don’t really want to spoil anyone’s enjoyment.   Never mind, Dark Water next.   🙂

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In The Forest of the Night

Marvellous title, and it starts off really well. The Doctor is quite disconcerted at Maebh’s noncommittal acceptance of the Tardis interior – “I just thought it was supposed to be bigger on the inside, so I didn’t say anything”. I like Maebh, unlike the insufferable Courtney. And the Doctor’s perplexity at setting course for London and arriving in a jungle is as amusing, as the Trafalgar Square jungle is intriguing.

(Also intriguing that her name is pronounced ‘Maeve’, which means that the ‘b’ is pronounced ‘v’ – exactly as in Cyrillic (Mockba = Moskva))

Danny is being a little annoying. Also calling the kids ‘team’ which instantly raises my hackles but that’s just me. Well, some of the kids evidently feel the same way, too. Does the Natural History Museum allow sleepovers by school parties? Really?

But then it goes all weird and metaphysical. Not quite Kill the Moon levels of nonsense but heading up there. Clearing pathways through the trees with flamethrowers – will not work. Certainly not on green vegetation. All you’ll get after immense expenditure of fuel is a tangle of charred trunks and branches. “Trees control the oxygen” so they can prevent burning – is just sheer nonsense.

The eyes coming into focus in the bushes behind Maeve is a chilling moment, though I was sure they were a black panther rather than a wolf.

But as for the rest – Danny being annoying as usual, the trees arbitrarily increasing the oxygen in the atmosphere to ‘burn off’ a solar flare (how’s that work?), come to that how did the trees manage to suddenly grow a thousand times faster than usual? How did the trees know a solar flare is coming? This is Who, not the Discworld or Middle-Earth.
And we have Maeve’s appeal to the earth (just like Clara in KTM), and then the forest magically evaporates (how?) after its job is done (just like the Moon reset in KTM). And then Maeve’s long-lost sister reappears for absolutely no reason. Ah, I give up, toss this one in the bucket with Kill the Moon. At least Danny got suddenly un-annoying in the next episode.

I’m a tree-hugger, I should love the idea of a ‘London Forest’. It probably sounded great as a concept, just like ‘the Moon is an egg’ did. Unfortunately, it fell down badly in the execution, there are just too many wtf? improbabilities.

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@mudlark

That was a fascinating insight into pre-electronic life.

Of course young kids don’t really notice the lack of facilities like plumbing and refrigerators, that’s ‘someone else’s problem’.

Probably the most primitive place I lived was in 1953, after our family had gone to Perth, West Australia for three years, couldn’t handle the heat, and came back – we lived for a few months in a Nissen hut in a pine wood near Ringwood. (Googling tells me Christchurch council was using old wartime camps as temporary housing). I expect my parents hated it, I loved living in a forest. Probably my liking for pine woods (all woods, really) comes from that.

Mrs D, on the other hand, grew up on a Pacific island, in a house of pandanus logs with a thatch roof. And no electricity, just paraffin lamps. (The island now has a limited electricity supply with solar panels and batteries. Enough to work refrigerators and, I think, the inevitable smartphones).

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@mudlark   @miapatrick    I do apologise so much for swapping your names!    It was entirely inadvertent and a stupid mistake to make.    I’d go back and fix it with an edit but I’m out of time for that.

Please (both of you) accept my apology.   I wish I could promise never to do it again but I’m afraid I do make silly mistakes from time to time.

Mudlark, I’ll read your interesting post later today.    Just wanted to get this apology in as soon as I could.

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I hasten to correct any implication that, because one memory was genuine, all my memories are accurate. I think the brain ‘reconstructs’ memories from a few key clues, with a generous helping of supposition and inference. (See ‘invisible gorilla’)   Though @miapatrick I absolutely accept that your brain got it right 🙂

But the fallibility of my memory was graphically proved to me once. I went to a party at an eccentric friend’s, Terry, who had a huge New Zealand flag as a bedspread. A decade later I ran into him on a bus, and I said “Last time I saw you, you were walking down the street dressed in a flag” – which he indignantly denied, though I would have sworn, on oath, that it was true. But anyway, he invited me to his wedding a few weeks later. And at the reception, at his house, there was a wall covered with stapled photos from his past – including one of *me* wearing the flag. I know what my brain did – it remembered “Terry, eccentric, party, flag, being worn” – and put it together all wrong. (And lest any cynic think “Photoshop”, this was before home computers could do graphics in more than 8 colours).

Miapatrick – your young childhood, in a house without electricity – amazing. I find it hard to really imagine (until I reflect that Mrs D, too, lived on an island without electricity until the 1970’s. But no, I still can’t really imagine it).

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It seems that some variant of the ‘what have I forgotten? – too late!’ dream is almost universal, at least among Whovians.
Since we’re doing dreams, I had a very consistent recurring dream – I was following a little path up a steep-sided narrow valley, and I came to a place where the path crossed over the stream in a little footbridge, and a big bridge arched high over the lot. Since I was a little nostalgic (not quite homesick) for England after we came to NZ when I was 14, I assumed the dream was a sort of gestalt of the Porth stream at Newquay, the stream in the park at Bournemouth, and Chewton Bunny valley at Highcliffe, Hants, and maybe the park at Hastings, where I used to drag my grand-dad for walks (though we left there when I was 3). I kept having this dream for 30 years.
(In 1921 in Hastings, St Helens Road was extended across a little stream gully in a magnificent two-arched stone-faced bridge. Since it crossed on the skew, the centre pier would have been a wall angled across the stream, damming it. So they made a little archway through the bottom of the pier for the stream to flow through. And the little footpath up the valley crossed over the stream, under the big bridge).
In 1991, on my first trip ‘back’, we visited Hastings, I bought a street map and, idly glancing at it, I saw the long-forgotten words ‘Old Roar Ghyll’ which rang a bell (actually, it was like a fireworks display going off in my head). So I just had to walk up the stream of that name – and there was the exact bridge from my dream. I was surprised and overjoyed. I had no conscious memory of it (until I saw it) – but my dreams had remembered. The last time I’d seen it, I was three years old, but it was the exact thing to appeal to my childish imagination.
I never had that dream again, but that’s fine, I now have a memory instead.

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@miapatrick    So you and Mudlark have almost the same dream as me?    There must be something deep-rooted (and probably Freudian) about that dream!

I actually found the course work quite hard (it was Civil Engineering).    I did wimp out of one option (fluid dynamics) a few weeks in, it sounded interesting but I found it was fearsomely mathematical and I concluded I could either try and pass that at the expense of every other subject, or swap to a less demanding one (Public Health Engineering, which was mostly descriptive).   No, my lingering feelings of fondness are not for the coursework, more for the ambiance of the University.

@mudlark    Ah, French.   Had it as a subject for a year at grammar school, the first subject I dropped as being utterly useless (!)     Then in 2013, touring in the Alps with some friends, I discovered I could still decipher a few words on signs.    So when I got back here, I took some Beginner’s French evening classes – the first time I’ve been back in a ‘school’ setting in 5+ decades.   The tutor was a charming French Canadienne who delighted in pointing out the quirks of Canadian ‘French’  (‘only in Canada’).   I also bought a boxful of trashy French paperbacks and started reading them laboriously with the aid of a dictionary, I’m up to #30 by now- they are dire, full of sub-James Bond sex and violence, but at least more interesting than ‘Mr Brown goes to the Bank’.   So by now I can read almost anything French  (but spoken French, or speaking it myself, is another matter).    I signed up for another French (Intermediate) evening course recently, but then our latest Covid outbreak happened.   I must check and see if it’s restarting about now.

 

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@janetteb    Hard drive failures are an alarming prospect.   Right at this moment I’m copying all the files off my T520 ‘Marga’ to my L440 ‘Clara’ which will forthwith become my primary laptop – this is because Marga was reluctant to start a week ago, and flat out refused a few days ago.   Eventually got it started using a trick I found on the Internet – pull the battery, hit the start button a dozen times, replace battery and try again – and unlikely as it sounds, it worked on the third try.   But Marga won’t be switched off until all files are copied.   Although, from the symptoms, it isn’t a hard drive fault, so if I had to I could take the drive out and hook it up with a USB adapter lead to Clara.

I have a big old tower case server downstairs with four hard drives in it and all my important data is copied to at least two separate hard drives, though on a fairly disorganised random basis.   Of course conventional wisdom is to set up a RAID array or have a preset backup regime but I’m just not that organised.    My old photos are mostly on a stack of DVDs – you can fit a lot of photos on one DVD, quite cheaply.   But DVDs apparently don’t last forever.    Probably outlast me, though   🙂

 

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@miapatrick    I suspect I must have enjoyed my student days (5 decades ago) since I quite frequently dream of being back at University.   Though usually the context is, I’m late for a lecture, and I can’t remember what room it’s in, except it’s  somewhere the other side of the campus, and I can’t find my timetable to locate it, and I can’t remember the lecturer’s name to ask somebody…

This is very odd, since that was never a problem for me at the time.

But there was something very pleasant about the atmosphere at a university, being able to wander around the campus and relax.    I don’t know if that has changed in these security-minded days.

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@winston   I still have a working VCR – probably two, but the likelihood of me finding time to watch old VHS movies is minimal (given that DVD’s are much better picture quality and more convenient and often have extras, and then there’s the Internet and books to gobble up my time).   I haven’t graduated to Blu-ray yet, I might get a player (“too many things” my conscience mutters darkly) just in case I spot something interesting on blu-ray in my rambles round charity shops…

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@janetteb    So that’s a sample of four Whovians who also have too much stuff.   I wonder if that indicates some correlation between Who fandom and hoarding?

By the way, it’s a marvellous feeling when the house is finally paid off.   All of a sudden you’re rich!   (Or at least, have a bit of spare cash left over after paying the bills…)      I’m not sure I’d trust anyone else to pack everything if I had to move.   But then, if we did move, it would probably be to a smaller house so I’d have to really  grit my teeth and get rid of a lot of stuff.   To be honest,  my current struggle with the piles of … stuff…  is partly prompted by my conscience – if I dropped dead or went gaga tomorrow, Mrs D would be financially okay, *but* the thought of her trying to deal with mountains of my junk is too painful for me to contemplate…

 

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@winston    Don’t I know the feeling!   Every pile of paper I try to dispose of is full of significance for me.   To quote a tagline I once saw, “Nobody who can read is ever successful in cleaning out an attic”

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@ichabod – (I don’t know why but I’m having trouble postuing this. It seems to sink without a trace) – what a coincidence. I’m a born hoarder (I still have a couple of cartons somewhere in a dark cupboard that haven’t been unpacked since we moved in in 1984). Just recently I’ve been making desperate but futile attempts to reclaim some floor space in my ‘den’ downstairs so I can actually see patches of carpet. I have an estimated 1500 books. I’ve just sorted out about 200 of them to dispose of so hopefully all my books can now fit on bookshelves instead of piles on the floor.

I also had about 500 VHS tapes – which became totally obsolete with the progress of DVD. Getting rid of them was painful. At least the books have, potentially, a future use. (Of course I had plans to transcribe them all to DVD and of course I never found the time).

My computer storage is a bit different. I have gigabytes of files but at least they occupy minimal physical space. Actually, I’m currently shifting all my recent files from my Thinkpad T520 “Marga” to my L440 “Clara” because the T520 has proved reluctant to start for the last couple of days – I’ll try and diagnose it but I’m being cautious.

The 57 copies of ‘Piper to the End’, now, are a bit different – after I’ve figured out the best couple of versions, I can just delete all the rest and painlessly recycle the electrons 🙂

The Tardis probably just archives everything – or sends it to the Library. (I’m trying to work in a reference to L-space, Terry Pratchett’s librarious phenomenon. “L-space was a mystical dimension connecting all libraries that allowed time-travel, and was only accessible by the most senior Librarians. It supposedly contains all books that have been, are, will be, or even <i> could</i> be.” (From discworld.fandom.com). I could use a bit of that.

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By coincidence, I just watched ‘Doctor No’, which was a classic Bond movie, including an island which was the evil lair [grin].

It was also probably the closest to the original book.   I did notice a couple of glitches that weren’t in the book – Crab Key had (in the movie) a river with waterfalls – no way, not in a cay.   And No’s mine in the book was guano or phosphate (very credible), Bond ‘got’  him by burying him under it; in the movie it was bauxite – highly unlikely I think.

Also one thing I previously *thought* was blatantly wrong, the casting of Honeychile Ryder – in the book, she was a half-caste, no way could Ursula Andress ever have been a half-caste.  However in the movie, Honey Rider’s ancestry (I forget the exact details, but her father travelled the world) wasn’t local at all.   So, not mis-cast.

Tomorrow Never Dies – one of my absolute favourite Bonds, and Jonathan Price is probably my favourite Bond villain – he manages to give the impression of being utterly amoral, and just barely in control of himself.   Far more unpredictable and dangerous to anyone around him than a master criminal like Blofeld.

Personally, I thought the Bourne movies were excellent, very convincing and grounded in the details.   I wouldn’t compare them to Mission Impossible or Die Hard.     Many of the later Bonds just got a bit too sci-fi for my liking.   But I think I lean towards the idea that Bond should be more stylish, suave and polished than Bourne.

But I do like the exotic locations.

 

 

 

 

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@janetteb   Yes, I got that feeling – that the show had potential as you say – from the last 3 stories (which are the only other Seven stories I’ve seen).   Certainly from what I’ve seen of con footage, and from the commentary to Remembrance,  Ace and Seven (that is to say, Sophie and McCoy) seemed to get on really well together.     I may try and pick up some more Seven stories in the near future.

@dentarthurdent    (This is just a test to see if the Forum sends me a copy –  I just changed laptops & I’m not sure if I set all the mailserver settings right)

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

I must have seen a favourable review of the 7th Doctor’s episode Remembrance of the Daleks, because I ordered the DVD – arrived a couple of days ago in the mail.   Two disks, one devoted to Davros, the other to the episode, complete with a commentary.

There doesn’t seem to be a forum for this episode, so I’ll put my comments here…

Remembrance of the Daleks

I watched the ep last night, now just listening to the commentary, with Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred. (That’s how commentaries *should* be, with the stars, not just some nominal make-weight with the wardrobe assistant and one of the supporting cast who got killed in Part Two…). So this is a sort of combined impression of the episode plus the commentary.

Sophie does have a lovely light clear voice (in the commentary) – maybe not quite right for a tough teenager, but I’m not complaining. Ace does look very – young, but this was the first full episode she appeared in (I think). She got more assured in later episodes.

I was surprised at Ace’s perplexity at Old English Money – what planet is she from? I hadn’t realised decimal currency came in so long ago…

That Bedford van! – column change, brings back memories (and not good ones!) And (bit later) there’s a Morris Commercial! Which Sophie thought was antiquated even when they made the episode (it was!).

And then we have a Dalek at last. Lots of Daleks, in fact. The Dalek budget for this episode must have been quite generous.

Sophie waxed indignant at the reputation of Who for ‘wobbly sets’ but as McCoy pointed out, that was mostly much earlier Who. (And besides, if any series had a trademark in wobbly sets, it has to be Blakes 7). And Sophie has evidently read Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, I’m happy to note (ref Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters).

And now we have – the first time ever (McCoy just confirmed it) that a Dalek can climb stairs. (And I thought that was a new thing in ‘Dalek’). Apparently done with a couple of stagehands behind the ‘wall’ dragging it up on a rail. I had assumed it was hung on wires, but of course CGI wire removal wasn’t a thing in those days.

And Ace gets her hands on a anti-tank missile (both that, and the various rifles, looked pretty authentic, I assume they were the correct period). And Sophie actually got to fire it (I presume it was a dummy round, but the rocket part of it worked). It certainly looked impressive.

The floating casket with the Hand of Omega in the cemetery looks very two-dimensional – the limitations of early CGI.

McCoy delights in pointing out production glitches, like scripts poking out of the Doctor’s pockets.

Big fake-out of the black Darth Vader-like Dalek commander who we assume is Davros…

And we have Ace enthusiastically whacking the daylights out of a poor unsuspecting Dalek. (The wrong Dalek, as it later turned out).

Then we have the egghead Dalek – what Sophie aptly called the ‘roll-on deodorant’ but reminds me of Marvin the Paranoid Android from the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy movie.

And we’ve had black Daleks and white Daleks, and now grey Daleks. No shortage of Daleks in this episode. (And Ace and the Doc hiding behind a Ford 100E Prefect. No that couldn’t possibly be a nod to Doug Adams…?)

The ‘time controller’ plasma globe still looks impressive, even though it was turned into a popular toy shortly after. Of course Ace goes to grab it and the Doc has to swat her hands away with his hat – it’s this sort of by-play that makes this Doc so entertaining. And then he does a genuine conjuring trick with a playing card – nice! Re-watching it several times, I can see how he does it – but the first time, I thought it was a trick jump cut.

And yet more white Daleks. And… the Special Weapons Dalek. Now that thing really looks like heavy artillery (which of course it is).   Most impressive.

And the roll-on deodorant can turns out to contain Davros. Somehow it looks too ridiculous to be sinister.

So anyway – not a bad episode. At least when the monsters are Daleks, they don’t suffer from the common rubber-monster failing of looking absurd. Davros is the only rubber monster here and he’s passably convincing. Would still be nice to see the episode with modern levels of special effects.

 

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@craig I’m a relative newcomer, I arrived here following a remark in the Guardian comments section, at a time when the site was fairly dormant (no new episodes). It was surprising to find that some of the inhabitants had been here ‘forever’ – but they’re a friendly lot. I have no idea how I’ll find JW’s third season – I’ll probably get that far about the same time RTD takes over again. But meanwhile, it’s been a great place to discuss all of Who in a mostly positive fashion, and a lot besides.
So what I’m saying is, thankyou for this site. As the others have implied, if it closed tomorrow, it will have been a great experience, but I really do hope it continues for a long time yet. Allons-y!

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@ichabod  (I wrote a reply and it sank without trace, try again)    I never did iTunes, but Youtube is marvellous for rediscovering 60s – 80s bands that I could never keep up with before.   For example I just discovered a ton of Mark Knopfler post-Dire Straits.  (Mention of a ‘surfeit’ – I decided to find the best version of his ‘Piper to the End’ to put on my pocket MP3 player – a rash idea, he’s been playing it at concerts since 2010, I now have 57 (yes 57) versions on my hard drive.   Fortunately for me selection is made easier by those audience members who think their cheers and whistles improve the performance.     I have no idea how many versions of Dave Gilmour’s Comfortably Numb there are out there.)

But the pact – I feel revitalised already!    Oh, and Remembrance of the Daleks  DVD arrived in the post today, with extras like a commentary by McCoy and Sophie Aldred, and another disk on Davros – doubtless it was felt safer to confine Davros to his own disk.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@janetteb   I loved Capaldi’s entrance in Magician’s Apprentice – could *anything* be more anachronistic than the Doctor riding in on a tank, blasting out chords on an electric guitar?    (Somehow, Tennant or Smith doing the same just wouldn’t have had the same impact).    I’ll be interested to hear some of his music.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@ichabod    We’ll make a pact then – we’ll survive to see RTD’s new Doctor.    And anyone who breaks it – will never see the next Doctor.   How’s that for an incentive?   😉

Meanwhile, I can’t help feeling that modern times (particularly with the Internet) are far kinder to lovers of fiction than our young days.   If I miss something the Doctor said, I can just back up the DVD.   Or check the transcript on Chrissie’s site.   And if I want to know who the actor was who played, say, Tasha Lem of the Papal Mainframe,  I can go to tardis.fandom.com and search for the episode synopsis.    And I can discuss it all with like-minded fans in a forum like this.

(And the same goes for music.   I’ve rediscovered all the musicians I would have liked in the 60s – 80s, if only I had heard more of them, but all I could catch was snatches on radio stations (buried under tons of DJ babble), or spending too much time and money in record stores.   And now I can find them on Youtube, including songs of theirs I never heard before.)

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

Wow, this thread is full of – old people! Yet you all seem perfectly normal to me. 🙂 Gives me hope for the future. In case anyone was wondering, I’m 74 and I’ve got used to being prehistoric compared with most people I meet. I can remember steam railway engines that weren’t actually preserved.

@ichabod, I do agree with you about the Doctor. Capaldi was the best ever, both the acting and the writing, I just can’t imagine anyone doing the Doctor better than he did. Which is not to say that a different Doctor couldn’t be good.
As for a female Doctor, I was quite open to the idea, but I’m afraid JW, as written by Chibnall, very isn’t it. Oh, and with a Tardis that didn’t look like a neolithic sex toy.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@davidwho   Don’t worry, you won’t spoil me.   I watched right through to the end of Jodie W’s first season, last year.   Now I’m repeating it, from Eleventh Hour onwards, currently up to Flatline.

I don’t know so much Old Who, though I did see the first episode when it first aired (I’m nearly as ancient as the Doctor, dammit).   Troughton was my favourite Doc of those days, I thought he looked the part.   After that, I sort of lost touch.   Back then, you watched it when it was screened, or the repeat a week later, or never.   And as a late teen, sci fi was just not cool anyway, we were into cars and girls and stuff.

(A decade later, I made a bad impression on the boss, sprinting out of the office at 4-30 on Thursdays.   I only got dirty looks, he never actually said anything, so I couldn’t point out that I happily worked a few minutes extra on other days.   And as a young engineer, there was no way I could explain that some prat had scheduled a re-run of Blakes 7 at 5-30p.m.   All except the final episode, which they screened months later unannounced at 9p.m.    All TV schedulers should be sent to Skaro and used by the Daleks for target practice   🙂

 

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@miapatrick My sympathy for your loss.
You said ‘we’ so I think you have someone with you – I hope so, it would be a bad time to be alone. Hopefully Who can provide some distraction, though (I know the feeling) you can watch an episode and realise at the end that you never took any of it in. As you said.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@davidwho     Well, Capaldi is my all-time favourite Doctor too.   He just fits the role so well, complete with his slightly-eccentric mannerisms (mostly courtesy of Steven Moffatt).    I’m currently working my way through the Capaldi era of nuWho and thoroughly enjoying it.

As to the Doctor’s full name being some sort of password or key, yes that’s quite a good theory (IMO).   It would explain why the Silents were so insistent that his name should never be spoken.    And there’s a long mythical and fantasy tradition that names have power, for example naming some entity could summon it into existence.    So the Name of the Doctor could well have significance way beyond Trenzalore.

But I’m not an expert on Who lore, it could well be that someone with more geek cred than me will blow that out of the water.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@nerys   Almost 4000 miles – that is a long trip.   I can’t really match that – in NZ one tends to run out of land.   The furthest I can go is about 1000 miles (and that needs a ferry crossing), then I have to turn round and come back.

But yes, from what I can tell, (and I only know North America from reading and a liking for geography and landscape), you ‘chose’ a scenic region for your trip.   (I say ‘chose’, maybe ‘had it furnished by geography’ would be a better way to put it   🙂

 

 

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

So I just posted a longish screed on the Flatline thread.   This is an absolutely delightful episode, even better than Mummy (in my view).   And the logic of the episode hangs together well, I can follow it even better on subsequent viewings when I’m familiar with the plotline.  Just a joy to watch.

The exchanges between the Doctor and Clara are fascinating, both from the Doctor’s sarcastic in-Clara’s-ear comments, and the reversal of roles where Clara is unavoidably in the driving seat.   I guess people who think Clara (or any companion) is too important will hate this ep, I’m perfectly okay with that aspect of it.    And unlike Kill the Moon where Clara’s reluctant prominence was forced on her by some completely out-of-character behaviour by the Doctor, in this episode it all happened perfectly naturally and credibly.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

Flatline

Now we’re cooking! Right from the off – in the first 60 seconds we’re right into the action, man pulled screaming into the wall.

And after the credits – oh Clara, you liar (hint: don’t talk too much when you’re making outrageous lies, it’s a dead giveaway). But the Doc’s too preoccupied to notice, his readings are – ish. Clara:  Don’t give me -ish.   And then we have the shrunken Tardis door and the oh-so-cute mini Tardis. This is delightful.

I love the exchange between a testy Clara “Yes. I get it. You’re excited. When can I go home?” and an intrigued Doctor “Could you not just let me enjoy this moment of not knowing something? I mean, it happens so rarely.”

So Clara goes off to look around and runs straight into a missing-persons mystery.

Riggsy manages to be a surprisingly sympathetic character, while still convincing as a juvenile delinquent (or whatever they’re called these days) – or at least a graffiti artist.

And – I can’t help laughing along with Clara at the adorable baby Tardis. And the lifesize Doctor peering out of the doors is – weirdly disconcerting.

Clara is making the most of her promotion – “I’m the Doctor” (Doctor – inside his Tardis – “Don’t you dare”) And it’s fascinating listening to Clara talking to Riggsy with interspersed sarcastic comments by the Doctor. I love that Clara virtually introduces Riggsy to the Doctor (“Doctor, Rigsy, Rigsy, the Doctor.” “Hullo, barely sentient local”)

So then she *really* has to introduce Riggsy to the Doctor. (Doc: “You really do throw your companions in at the deep end, don’t you?” – and I’m absolutely unsure whether the Doctor is talking to himself about Clara, or talking to Clara about himself as the companion, or talking to Clara about Riggsy, or all of those…)

And just when we thought every bit of mileage had been extracted out of ‘Bigger on the inside’ –
RIGSY: It’s bigger. On the inside.
DOCTOR: Do you know, I don’t think that statement’s ever been truer.

The whole scenario is rich with possibilities and this episode uses them to the full. As when Danny rings up –
DANNY [OC]: Who was that?
CLARA: Er, that’s just a guy on community support and I’m helping him find his auntie. [Oh Clara, that was brilliant]
DOCTOR: Nice. Not technically lying.

A disconcerting moment when the charmless Fenton fails to see anything in the psychic paper.

Then it turns out the mural in the subway – wasn’t a mural at all.

The nice lines keep coming – CLARA: I just hope I can keep them all alive. DOCTOR: Ah, welcome to my world.

Then we have a good bit of classic sci-fi where the Doc tries (via Clara) to figure out how to communicate with the 2-D creatures. But then they pick off another victim. So it’s retreat to the tunnel (did anyone not see that coming? 🙂

Then things get really tense, with the 2-D’s finding out how to materialise themselves into 3-D. And the obnoxious Fenton is turning from an obstacle into a menace, grabbing the baby Tardis from Clara and dropping it down a shaft.

The Doctor has to put the Tardis into inert ‘siege mode’ to avoid being squashed by a train. Clara, Riggsy and the appalling Fenton climb down into the tunnel and Clara stops the next train. And here’s a nice bit of detail I never noticed until now – as Clara is talking to the driver about ramming the obstruction, Riggsy trots back and climbs into the train. So then Riggsy gets to drive a train! And Clara gets creative with her hair band and the drivers’ control handle. Nice bit of heroic problem-solving there. But the creatures 2D-ise the train into the tunnel wall.

So then Clara finds the Tardis siegemode cube and has the brilliant idea (despite the obnoxious Fenton’s derogatory comments) of getting the creatures themselves to energise it, courtesy of a 2-D decoy door painted by Riggsy. Well deserving the Doctor’s verdict: I don’t know if you’ll ever hear this, Clara. I don’t even know if you’re still alive out there. But you were good! And you made a mighty fine Doctor.

Then we have one the better ‘I am the Doctor’ speeches, delivered as only Capaldi can: I tried to talk. I want you to remember that. I tried to reach out, I tried to understand you, but I think that you understand us perfectly. And I think you just don’t care. And I don’t know whether you are here to invade, infiltrate or just replace us. I don’t suppose it really matters now. You are monsters. That is the role you seem determined to play. So it seems I must play mine. The man that stops the monsters. I’m sending you back to your own dimension. Who knows? Some of you may even survive the trip. And, if you do, remember this. You are not welcome here. This plane is protected. I am the Doctor. And I name you The Boneless.

The final scene is beautifully written. (Never mind the obnoxious Fenton, as the Doc said, maybe the wrong people survived). But the verbal fencing between Clara (who knows she did well) and the Doctor (who is reluctant to feed her ego) is delicious.
CLARA: Yeah, but we saved the world, right?
DOCTOR: We did. You did.
CLARA: Okay, so, on balance
DOCTOR: Balance?
CLARA: Yeah, that’s how you think, isn’t it?
DOCTOR: Largely so other people don’t have to. [Nice line, Doc!]
CLARA: Yeah, well, I was you today. I was the Doctor. And, apparently, I was quite good at it.
DOCTOR: You heard that, did you?
CLARA: Yeah, but the power was going off so I suppose you were delirious. You didn’t know what you were saying.
DOCTOR: Yes? (The Doctor’s ‘yes’ is ambiguous)

And the final exchange is classic – (Even if the Doc stole the last line from Mae West, as chatokeya’s transcript points out)
CLARA: Come on, why can’t you say it? I was the Doctor and I was good.
DOCTOR: You were an exceptional Doctor, Clara.
CLARA: Thank you.
DOCTOR: Goodness had nothing to do with it.
Clara’s reaction is beautiful to watch.

And a final shot of Missy, watching with approval, which adds another layer to the episode. I love these multi-layered stories.

This is an absolutely delightful episode and a joy to watch all the way through. I’m perfectly happy with Clara being pushed into acting-Doctor-for-the-day, but this is a far more natural and in-character situation than the out-of-character shenanigans of Kill the Moon. And this episode hangs together well (given the 2-D monster premise). The biggest nitpick I can find is that Riggsy and Clara wasted too much time just chatting in the cab of a DMU that was steadily accelerating when they should have been jumping off before it gained too much speed – which is surely tiny.

 

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@nerys     Pleased to hear your trip went OK,  I seem to recall you were quite anxious about the prospect before you went.    To tell the truth, I often get slight feeling of trepidation when setting out on a long trip, even though I know a fair bit about my cars and have done almost every mechanical job on mine at one time or another.   But there’s a big difference between fixing something at my leisure in my garage with all tools at hand, and trying to troubleshoot on the roadside at night in the rain with a storm going on   🙂    Once I get going the uncertainty disappears, at least until the reassuring noise up front develops a hiccup.

Anyway, pleased to hear you were fortunate with mechanics and nothing disastrous happened.

Um, Florenceville, N.B.     (I won’t Google yet but – N.B. ?     New Brunswick?    (Can’t think of any US state with those initials).

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@missy   Of course, the Doctor was equally prejudiced about Danny.   But I personally was inclined to give the Doctor a pass on that, he tended to be equally rude about almost everybody – in a quirky alien way that helped make his character intriguing.   Call it a double standard on my part, I don’t really care.   Show’s called Doctor Who, after all.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@missy I never liked Danny very much. His first introduction military-drilling the kids counted against him (first impressions and all that) albeit it was quickly made clear that he was a maths teacher. He was starting to get very prickly in Listen, and I actively disliked him by The Caretaker, I felt he was being altogether too possessive and demanding on Clara and slandering the Doctor. He really should have either accepted Clara on her own terms or backed off. He did seem a lot more accepting (and acceptable) at the end of Kill the Moon. And shortly after that he rehabilitated himself by getting killed, and it’s hard to really dislike dead people. He was a lot more likeable dead, I felt.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@janetteb Thanks! Interestingly, I didn’t feel that argument was contrived, I felt it was inevitable (given the admittedly unlikely events of the episode), I would have been disconcerted if it hadn’t happened. That seemed to be the only in-character part of the episode, to me.
Even the start of Mummy on the Orient Express felt false to me, until it turned out to be (presumably) some time later when Clara’s fury had cooled down to something less than white hot, and the outing was intended to be a farewell event.

 

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

Hi @janetteb    I also haven’t started watching the new series (or in fact the one before that.   I have yet to acquire the boxset).   I’m used to coming late to the party though.

Oddly enough, I was just reading some of the comments in the Mummy on the Orient Express thread (I just posted my comments on the episode, then I went back and read some of the thread).    There was quite some discussion on Clara’s then-current attitude and much speculation about whether she was going to settle down with Danny and leave the Doc, or whether she was embarked on a destructive downward course that would End Badly…   foreknowledge adds a distinctive ‘edge’ to the discussion   (a bit like the scene in the diner in Hell Bent, where what the characters are saying has overtones they don’t know about).     I had a strong urge to grab a handy time machine, go back seven years and post in the middle of the discussion, “You guys have not the slightest idea what’s going to happen    🙂 ”

 

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

Arbutus’s review  (posted 7 years ago now!) was, I thought, very good.

At the risk of being superfluous, I scribbled some comments on the episode, I might as well post them here.

This starts with a bit of a surprise – Clara and the Doctor behaving as normal. What happened about the meltdown at the end of Kill The Moon? Well, it transpires that this is the farewell trip. They manage to evoke some of that slightly melancholy ‘last time’ feeling.

This episode builds quite slowly. Danny (on the phone) seems to have accepted Clara’s relationship with the Doctor, even as Clara has decided to end it.

Perkins, who initially seemed to be about to attack the Doctor, turns out to be an ally. The other characters are quite well sketched in, even Quell, who turned out more sympathetic than we’d expected.

The sarcophagus was a neat bit of misdirection, I was sure the Mummy was going to come out of it.

The climactic scene moved surprisingly fast. The Mummy’s fingers coming out of the Doctor’s face were a uniquely horrid scare.

‘Gus’ sounds remarkably similar to Max Capricorn from Voyage of the Damned. The Doctor was shockingly clinically cold-blooded as he proposed summoning Maisie so they could observe her assassination by the Mummy. Even worse, he recruited Clara into lying to her. And it turned out he was expecting trouble on this trip (without telling Clara) which almost prompted another showdown. And then the Doc took the ‘curse’ off Maisie onto himself. Which allowed him to utter the immortal words “Are you my Mummy?” In between fascinating asides to Maisie (“By the way, you weren’t being paranoid. She really did poison your pony….. Oh, and your father. Sorry.”)

And he solves the riddle of the Mummy by surrendering. At which point the weaponised old soldier no longer has any function and just – stops.

However, the real enemy, Gus, hasn’t stopped – “Survivors of this exercise are not required.” Nasty.   The identity of Gus is a mystery for the future – but I don’t think it was ever taken any further.   Just a thread that was never developed, I guess.   But that’s okay, not everything has to be accounted for.

Clara was really lying rather recklessly to the Doctor at the end of the episode. Still, nice to see she’s reconsidered her decision to leave. I think she’s addicted to her travels with the Doctor, which is a good omen for the future.

 

 

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I’m not so much a fan of original TV western series (because they rapidly ran out of ideas and just started repeating the same plot, just shuffled) but I do quite like most ‘western’ episodes of sci-fi series, because they all bring their own flavour to the genre.

And they’ve just about all done a western at some point, from The Prisoner to Red Dwarf to Farscape, with varying degrees of success.   Doctor Who’s version is, I think, one of the better ones, helped by the fact that the Tardis can arrive at any time and place in history or legend  (so the western setting isn’t an anachronism in the series).

Also, as in A Town Called Mercy, the desert settings always lighten the episode visually.   (As they did in Impossible Astronaut, Hell Bent and others).

@winston liked the Doctor losing his temper  (I know what you mean, it’s an unusual event and quite dramatic when he does).   I liked it that Amy actually drew a gun on the Doctor.    Not that she knew how to use it properly and she let off a couple of accidental shots, but nevermind.   She had got a lot better by The Wedding of River Song.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@oochillyo

Hi Declan    Thanks for being so broadminded.    I tried not to get too carried away with my criticisms (though I’m not sure how successful I was there).    Actually I was breaking an unwritten rule of mine which was, don’t get too negative (I hope Craig will forgive this one occasion   🙂     I know Craig founded this site because the Guardian’s comments section was getting too toxic (did I get that right?) and I echo that sentiment.

As I said, I did like the confrontation at the end between Clara and the Doc.   Is that perverse? – liking a row between two of my favourite characters?   I don’t think so.

Now I didn’t like the confrontation between Danny and the Doc at the end of The Caretaker.   I thought Danny was being insulting and he had no right to be rude to the Doctor on his own Tardis.    I think the difference between that and Clara’s confrontation at the end of Kill the Moon is, that Clara did have standing.   She has a long history with the Doctor.   What could be more dramatic than a furious confrontation between two people who have done huge things for each other including saving each other’s lives on several occasions?

And for the first time, I liked Danny Pink in this episode.   Instead of being demanding and trying to control Clara like last week, this time he was understanding and perceptive – and not judgmental.

So for me, this ep ended a lot better than it started.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

So I just posted a massive (and uncomplimentary) screed on the Kill The Moon thread. If you loved KTM then please, don’t go and look. 🙂      I don’t want to retrospectively spoil any one’s enjoyment.

I was almost dreading coming up to KTM in the sequence. I sort of overcame my reluctance by writing down my impressions as I went. There was a lot more than I remembered.

Why did it fail to impress me? Too many impossibilities. Yeah, I know, I accept time travel, sonic screwdrivers and bigger on the inside, but they’re well established elements. Other factors – like, say, the bubble universe in The Doctor’s Wife – all take place far from Earth in a suitably fantastic part of the Universe. But gravity magically changing by itself, the Moon causing high tides ‘everywhere at once’, a Space Shuttle (which is a great big glider) landing on the airless Moon, and a dozen other things that I know are impossible – just causes “impossibility overload.”

A bit like McGyver – I could never watch a single episode of that, because every ‘clever’ trick seemed to have been made as gratuitously ridiculous as possible. I suspect the producers’ legal department had issued a diktat – “make it so it can obviously never work in case someone tries it and sues us”.

Also, Courtney was annoying. And I don’t think it’s in this Doctor’s character to suffer fools gladly. But then the Doctor (who in various incarnations has saved the Earth more times than I can count) decides this is the moment to faff off and leave ‘humans’ to figure it out for themselves? Sort of undercuts all the other times he’s helped, I think.

Never mind, Mummy on the Orient Express next.

 

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

SPOILAGE WARNING – I really didn’t like this episode. If you loved it, don’t read this, it can only retrospectively spoil your enjoyment.

Kill The Moon, how do I hate thee. Let me count the ways…
(this is therapy) (also it’s going to be long)

Courtney is just plain annoying. Also, stupid. Steals the Doctor’s psychic paper and uses it as a phony credit card. Then tries to blame her bad behaviour on the Doctor failing to massage her ego. (Like, the Doctor and the rest of the world). And Clara seems to sympathise with her. The stupid, it is catching.
Courtney is only ‘special’ in the worst way. The idea that the Doctor could be coerced into telling her comforting lies is an affront to the character of this Doctor.

‘First woman on the moon’ – in 2049? That’s being a bit bold, it assumes nobody else makes it in the next 30-odd years.

“Where’s the gravity coming from”. Yeah, lampshade it, where *is* the gravity coming from? The Space Shuttle can’t be ‘flying’ since there’s no air on the moon, so should be in free fall. And then it ‘lands’ – how? It’s a glider and gliders don’t work in a vacuum. Even with normal Moon gravity it should hit like a meteorite. And then we find the Moon’s got Earth-like gravity which just made the Shuttle’s vaporisation-on-impact even more inevitable.

“How can the moon put on weight?” More lampshading. The Doc suggests a number of sci-fi-ish things (gravity bombs) that might work, if they were the product of an advanced sci-fi-alien tech. But it’s *never* explained.

And Earth’s solution is to plant about 5000 megatons of nuclear bombs on the Moon (assuming 50 megatons per bomb). For comparison, the Krakatoa eruption in 1883 was equivalent to 200 megatons. The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake released 9 gigatons. It is not apparent to me that 5000 Megatons would do anything other than make a large hole. Even if it did crack the Moon, all it would leave would be a Moon-sized pile of chunks in the same orbit with the same tidal effects on Earth. And if it did shatter the Moon enough to actually make a difference, isn’t there a risk that some hefty chunks might lose enough orbital velocity to eventually intersect Earth? Next bright idea?
Oh, and the Shuttle’s payload could carry – about one bomb. (Thanks BadWulf in the original discussion for that).
Next?

There are flames coming out of the Shuttle. On the airless Moon. “A thingy thing for a thing” – Courtney continues to underwhelm.

“That’s when the trouble began back on Earth. High tide everywhere at once.” No, not possible. Not simultaneously. Record high tides alternating with record low tides would (probably) cause far more damage anyway. Never mind…

Okay the Mexican base is adequately creepy.

“They didn’t find any minerals at all.” Huh? The Moon is made of rock. Rock is made of minerals. Utterly impossible not to find any minerals. Even (jumping ahead) eggshells are made of some mineral. And the spider crabs imply that other heavier elements – if terrestrial, iron for example – must be present.

Standard nitpick, how can Henry hear the scuttling noises with no air?

The spiders are certainly creepy enough. Kind of absurd and anticlimactic that Courtney manages to kill one with a domestic cleaner spray – I think this is just wanting-Courtney-to-be-less-useless-than-usual plotting.

So then Courtney wants to go home and the Doctor leaves her in the Tardis with an instruction to ‘not touch anything’? Has he caught the stupid too?

Clara is absolutely right to reason that she’s been to the future and the Moon is still there – so what’s the problem. The Doc’s explanation that events are somehow changeable is a bit shaky.

So now we find the Moon is an egg. Ooookay. This is getting a bit too Discworld-esque for Doctor Who (in my estimation) but oookay.

Courtney is bored. What a surprise. The Doc is supposed to be a super-intelligent alien and out of a whole school full of potential Clara replacements he chose – Courtney? (Serious question).

And now we find the Moon is about to hatch. BUT – where is the extra mass coming from? An egg does not change in mass between laying and hatching. An egg is a perfect example of conservation of mass. Why would a Moon-sized egg even *need* to change its mass?

Oh, and the egg/dragon is the only one of its kind? How did it get there then?

And then we have a cringe-worthy half-assed pseudo-theological debate about whether to kill the thing, predicated on its hatching might be disastrous for Earth. But – it’s the size of the Moon, would it even notice 2000 Megatons? If it is killed, will its gravity magically return to normal? How? The only line in the whole exchange that I like is when Lundvik says to Courtney “Anyway, you ran away. It’s none of your business.”

But then the Doctor brings Courtney back. Worse, the Doctor decides to go AWOL. This is the super-intelligent alien who’s protected the Earth from innumerable hazards over millennia and now he’s leaving it to Lundvik, Clara and Disruptive Influence.
Clara: “Don’t you do this to make some kind of point”. But he does anyway. Lundvik: “Oh, what a prat”. Yeah.

So then Clara and Lundvik have more theological argument, with unhelpful interjections from Courtney. There could have been a really tense character-based scene building on the fact that they are going to have to commit suicide to save the Earth, but it all gets swamped by the pseudo-ethical argument and later reduced to Lundvik’s one-liner, “I didn’t expect to survive anyway.” Completely underplays the tension of the moment.

And then Clara makes a broadcast to Earth asking for advice. “We can kill this creature or we can let it live”. (Earth (in my imagination): Creature? Wot creature? How the hell would we know?) And she expects the half of Earth that she can see (the other half don’t get a vote, nor those under cloud cover) to decide and take unified action in a few minutes flat. And amazingly all of Earth is listening (really?) and does unanimously decide, instead of (as would almost certainly happen) the result being confused and undecided.

And then Clara does what she wanted to all along anyway.

At which point the Doc reappears and takes them to Earth to watch this thing hatching. And it’s a dragon that can somehow fly in space. With wings. And the tip of its tail is moving at about one Moon diameter in 2.4 seconds, which is 900 miles per second (mean velocity) or 3.2 million miles an hour. Peak acceleration of 1600 km/sec^2 or 170,000 G – what material is thing made of? And the shell magically disintegrates – like, really? (Then howcome all the samples the Apollo astronauts brought back were made of, like, real rock?)

So then, somehow, this causes humanity, which had lost interest in space exploration, to start doing it again, for no apparent reason. “It looked out there into the blackness and it saw something beautiful, something wonderful, that for once it didn’t want to destroy.” But it quite clearly and decisively DID want to destroy it! Was the writer not watching his own episode?

And then somehow, the dragon thing laid another egg the same size as itself. How? Where did the mass come from? Have we never heard of conservation of mass?

The thing about Courtney becoming first woman President of the US is just icing on the impossible cake. Did Courtney ever show the slightest sign of intelligence or perspicacity? (Umm, okay, Dubya, Donnie, that’s maybe not the most relevant criteria). Did they change the Constitution so non-US-natives could become Prez?

But then comes the *only* memorably good bit about the episode, the ferocious strip that Clara tears off the Doctor. And which he very richly deserves.

Oh, and also – for the first time – Danny is actually supportive and not annoyingly trying-to-control Clara. I like him in this.

So, to sum up: Kill the Moon goes tramping all over the minefield of the abortion debate, which is just plain stupid. It is chock-full of gratuitous scientific impossibilities – most of which could have been avoided. And it does not show the Doctor or Clara in a favourable light.

I think it probably arose from an idea – “The moon is an egg? Cool!” Along with The Last Space Shuttle, and Clara Broadcasts to Earth. Memo to producers – not every ‘cool’ idea works out in practice.

I’ll quite happily accept sonic screwdrivers, bigger-on-the-inside, and time travel as sci-fi elements.
But mundane mechanics had better not be violated without some reason being offered. We know the Moon is made of rock (because the Apollo missions took samples), that Space Shuttles need air to land, that objects cannot magically change their mass. It just gives me incredulity overload.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

Is this really the only comment thread on A Town Called Mercy?   (Not minimising Declan’s comment but there should be lots more).    I didn’t think that Jex flip-flopped too much.   He was a prey to conflicting emotions – he wanted to be a good guy.   He had done terrible things in the past and wanted to atone.   He also (like all of us) wanted to stay alive.   I thought that was quite well done.

I obviously wrote some comments and posted them somewhere (can’t remember where) because the file’s still on my hard drive.   Here’s what i said:

A Town Called Mercy – I really like this episode. Had some nice dialogue.

Why would he want to kill you? Unless he’s met you. – Amy (to the Doctor).

I speak horse. He’s called Susan, and he wants you to respect his life choices. – The Doctor.

Everyone who isn’t American, drop your gun. – The Marshal (to Amy).

Frightened people. Give me a Dalek any day. – The Doctor.

There was real tension when the Doctor faced off Walter (the 18-year-old) with a gun and talked him out of shooting. Marvellous scene.

I hardly recognised Bill Browder (Crichton of Farscape) as the Marshal, but he was a really good character. I was *not* expecting him to get shot half-way through.

What I liked was that nobody was simply malicious or evil, not even Kahler Jex or the gunslinger. All their questionable actions – the Doctor trying to throw Jex out of town, Walter and the townsfolk wanting to do the same, Jex trying to avoid the gunslinger’s attentions, the gunslinger wanting to kill Jex – were all based on either self-preservation, wanting to protect themselves and their families, or a desire for justified retribution. The gunslinger just wanted Jex and absolutely didn’t wish to hurt innocent people (in that way Jex had programmed him well). Jex’s terrible actions in the past – creating killer androids – he made a powerful argument that they were prompted by patriotic motives in a terrible war. And Jex redeemed himself at the end by blowing himself up.

He behaved with honour at the end. Maybe more than me. – The gunslinger.

As Western episodes go, this was a really good one. Well-written, and the motivations of all the characters were entirely convincing. And visually striking.

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