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25 December 2017 at 13:07 #62726
Happy new Doctor Who episode day everyone!
And Christmas offcourse.
I have an obscene amount of Gin, I suspect a plot to get me passed out drunk before Who is on so they can watch something else. So just for now, I’m sticking to whiskey in spiced tea,
26 September 2017 at 15:34 #61979Bluesqueakpip – that article… I can buy they somehow forgot and sent the notice out to one of their non-English store (Don’t think it turned up in my local branch but then, I’d hardly know). Love they way they try to pass ‘must speak English at all times when they are at work’ as poor phrasing of ‘health and safety briefings must be carried out in English’. Plus, any reason why they can’t have the briefings in both languages?
26 September 2017 at 15:28 #61978Thank you and sorry to @wolfweed, @craig, @Bluesqeekpip, @jimthefish @rorysmith @Bleckonstopthebrave @nerys @winston @missy and @whisit (and anyone else I missed, I did make a list) for you kind words and no responding before.
My stepson spent most of the summer having a succession of mental crises (I did, to be fair, mentally implore him to at least wait till I finished my degree before he went off the rails again, and bless him, he did), and now he’s started college and seems to be turning into a little swot (that might be my boy). Now he wants help with essay writing and references. Noooooooo!
20 July 2017 at 18:02 #61172@genek1953 – disregarding for present several Joss Whedon characters…
there’s one more now!
20 July 2017 at 17:09 #61169@pstrong seconding @mirime here.
I do get it when people are saying what made the Doctor a great male role model ‘kind, non violent and somewhat unconventional’ is rather well put. He didn’t fall into the category of many male hero roles. He’s a professor, he uses his words not his muscles and so forth. It’s a good version of what being a man can be. And I think a good male companion is absolutely essential now to continue showing this good version of a man. Rory was a good example also, both a nurse and The Centurion, he’ll provide compassionate emergency care and blow the heck out of a cyber fleet to get his wife and baby back…
But the Doctor also has a kind of power and authority, a little arrogance (sometimes a lot), can get a little out of hand and needs raining in. He’s a member of a powerful elite who has thrown is lot in with so called ‘ordinary people’. Or people, as he calls them. He is usually kind and non violent, though there are exceptions, and it’s usually a great portrait of someone dealing with their privilege and responsibility. The Doctor’s status and struggles are not of the kind confined to men. To have him for ever as a male, mostly being reigned in or taken down a peg by smart women still plays into a lot of stereotypes. Having Rory and Danny challenge him felt interesting, something of a shift. Having a female doctor is an even bigger shift.
I hope boys can still take the Doctor as a role model. Many men end up with female mentors at some point: teachers, university tutors, female line managers and bosses. Accepting a female role model at an early age can be excellent practice.
There is still a lingering sense that for a female child – or woman – to have what are perceived as ‘masculine’ traits is more acceptable than vice versa. It’s something that needs to fade out. It’s unfair to males with so called ‘feminine’ qualities, its unfair to females who resent the implication that it’s fine for them to seek a ‘promotion’, but not for men to seek the ‘demotion’ of a ‘feminine role’.
For this reason, please let the Doctor continue to park the Tardis with the breaks on and retain her tendency for occasional Hubris. The doctor has often had traits that could be considered ‘feminine’, I hope she keeps the ‘masculine’ traits she has as well and we can all get on board with the idea that regardless of your prefix, a person is a person, flawed, with a varied character.
20 July 2017 at 11:18 #61159Hi @cloisterbell, wellcome to the site!
The most negative comment’s I’ve heard from pro-female (or indifferent to female) Doctor have been about it being a safe choice or mentioning other women allegedly in the running who they would prefer. By and large I think that people who don’t object to the idea are reacting to the tantrums, not by any means always but frequently hateful that have accompanied the casting. Whittaker is an actor of proven ability as well. In a way she is quite a safe choice for this bold move.
To be the point of girls having someone to look up to ties into your comment about growing up with all male role models yourself, Girls are good at that, yes, and used to it. And do, in fact, nowadays, have more female role models than at many times in the past, as you point out. Boys on the other hand tend, it seems, to relate to role models of their own sex. Couldn’t this become a disadvantage at some point in life? Less practice relating to a person of the opposite sex can effect empathy with the opposite sex. It can, in some cases, of course not in all, make it harder for grown men to take a female boss/company superior as a kind of role model and learn from them. Little girls, and little boys, should be able to have both sexes as a hero, and an example.
When you make the point that people you admired as a girl happened to be male, that makes me think. What were the qualities that appealed to you? Did you find a shortage of female figures that had those qualities? And does the fact that you were drawn more to your male heroes indicated that these qualities were not, after all, integrally ‘male’? And might it be beneficial for children of any sex to see people with qualities they admire and aspire to of any sex. It’s good for children to see Doctor Who, see when he is wise and strong and kind and think they would like to be like that. As well as see when he makes mistakes, and learn from that. As I said, girls can do that with male figures, and it seems, more easily than boys can with female figures. Having a hero like the Doctor, who changes form and personality, played by both sexes helps underline that these are qualities anyone can possess. In my opinion.
I do think there is a difference between being drawn to and being repulsed by a series for casting a female in the lead role. The people saying they will start watching now might suffer from the lack of imagination that enabled them to see a male doctor as a role model; all the better for the children watching it now.
And yes there are plenty of string female characters who could have been used. Romana returned, River Song (with Timelord genes). There’s the Doctors Daughter- though someone pointed out, for the Doctor to have a female clone strongly indicates the possibility of gender change in TimeLords. And we are going to need some strong male characters now. Rory was, in my opinion, fantastic. I liked Danny more than a lot of people. But we probably need a male character with the significance of Donna, Bill, Clara, Amy, Rose or Martha, and preferably the dynamic of Donna or Bill.
18 July 2017 at 19:04 #61039@holly110 – which country?
The problem is, I think, that what you’re saying just isn’t constructive. ‘I don’t like the decision, I’m done with the show, I’m selling my toys’ certainly isn’t worth as many posts as you’ve devoted to it.
Just as people have the Doctor that they love, ‘their doctor’, people often have the Doctor that they hate. It’s usually Collin Baker, though he’s actually great in the audio’s, and seems a lovely man and was fantastic in ‘The five-ish doctors’. Whittaker might be the Doctor you hate, but A: maybe give her a chance and B: don’t take it out on your toys.
And if the casting really has ruined the show for you, why hang around a fan site? This isn’t a place that revels in negativity. It’s for critiquing more than complaining. It was founded in part out of a desire for somewhere people can discuss the episodes and arcs of Doctor Who without relentless Comic Book Guy cameos.
18 July 2017 at 18:45 #61033Just accepted my <b>Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Humanities, First-class Honours </b>from the Open University. Six years, where I rescued in total 21 dogs with health or emotional issues (one of them is ‘David the dog’ in Coronation Street now), moved house (which meant keeping a house with eight dogs in it viewer ready, moving into temporary accommodation than moving all the way to Wales), cared for a boyfriend with a degenerative condition, cared (for the last year) for his son who has mental health issues, and helped my friend set up a recruitment agency by doing the copywriting (so if anyone ever asks you what you do with a degree focusing on ‘imaginative writing’ as my degree information has it, that’s one thing) So I would have forgiven myself pretty much any classification. However, I like this one, it’s pretty!
And the OU was great, gave me full funding, two cash prizes, and more dyspraxia support than I, eventually, felt I should accept, but bless them, they kept offering.
And @bluesqueakpip, thank you for the help with my creative writing modules. I am eternally grateful.
And thank you @craig for this sight, and @everyone for being on it!
17 July 2017 at 10:13 #60866@jim4 – what about mums, and indeed, non parents?
I’m also confused about your monsters comment. One thing you can say about Moffart, he’s created new monsters. Lots of new monsters. More perhaps than any single writer for Doctor Who.
Just look at the last season. Daleks are compulsory if they ever want to use them about, but they were used sparingly, and weren’t the monsters of the episode. Two Cybermen episodes to tie up at the end. Other than that, Heather/the pilot was pretty scary at the start. We had the Monks. We had a big creature under the Themes, (though the real monster was a Victorian Businessman – is that what you mean by pink liberalist agenda? You must hate Dickens…) we had robots killing people for being sad. We had zombifying space suits – of course, the real monsters were capitalists of the future.
So if this last series had used the same ‘bug eyed monsters’ created 50 years ago, you might not have been so het up by the politics. The politics came with the new monsters.
Politics came with the old monsters too. Daleks: Nazi’s. Cybermen: assimilating and de-indevidualising people.
And even if it did over rely on the same old monsters, why would that bother a ten year old? Are you complaining that it’s changed or that it hasn’t changed?
17 July 2017 at 07:28 #60853Interesting – and I love the bingo card! already filled it yesterday just browsing on my phone…
@doctor2222: thing is, while an argument could be made about the sex of the Doctor in terms of change in dynamic (which in my opinion wouldn’t necessarily follow, but probably will) there is no valid argument regarding race. Nationality, yes, he should be British, Mcoy’s doctor was actually a groundbreaking change by making him noticeably Scottish, and broadening the Doctor to British rather than English. But not all British people, not all English people are white, and to insist on linking an alien to a specific British ethnicity is, by definition, racist, In fact, the Doctor being British doesn’t really make sense, why is he not only obsessed with Earth, but with this/these particular country/s? But it’s a British institution. Aliens are generally obsessed with the USA in their Sci Fi.
Personally I think it’s great. Men and boys haven’t lost a role model. If girls could draw inspiration from both male doctor and female companions, boys can do the same. Look how popular Frozen is with male children.
@exfan, do give it a try. Decades ago fans were blindsided by the concept of regeneration. And a very wise fan once wrote movingly of his initial reluctance, as a child, to accept a new doctor, and how he overcame it. This is not as big a change as that was. And I think we needed a big change.
3 July 2017 at 14:39 #60272@nick, I don’t really mind her saving Bill. She’d already stalked her across time and space. And turning her into a creature like herself was fine, better than being a cyberman – much better, but she still retains the loss of her human body.
I suppose the problem with establishing depth to the relationship is Bill’s wide eyed and delighted enthusiasm wouldn’t work in the context of losing an absolute girlfriend. ‘I really liked you’ worked pretty well. So how do you balance Heather as an expectable return to save Bill, at least, with the demeanour they wanted from Bill throughout the series?
I suppose also this makes Heather being able to reassemble Bill as a human necessary. We last see them off at last for their first proper date. Bill has the option of returning to her human life if it doesn’t work out. Or indeed, to the Tardis as a human being, but preferably as a human being, not a creature as powerful as the Tardis.Could Heather have come into some other episodes? The simulation and monks reality perhaps? I don’t really know. But I’m glad she got a happy ending, and that we don’t know how it all pans out.
3 July 2017 at 14:13 #60268@serahni – yes, I caught a look on his face when he said that.
Regeneration isn’t just getting a new body. It is a kind of death. Memories are still there, maybe there is some trace of consciousness within the Doctor, but that personality doesn’t get to live any more.
I’ve wondered before if the twelve regenerations limit is for psychological reasons? We now know that more regenerations can be granted, why is the limit set at twelve? What is the effect of carrying so many sets of memories in your head? What is the effect of carrying so many deaths in your head?3 July 2017 at 14:03 #60266And once again the cry of ‘Deux ex machina’ echoes across the battlefield. That is, the Guardian comment’s section.
Missy was magnificent, and acted ‘without hope, without reward, without witness’.
Of course the master isn’t dead. Something was passed between her and the Doctor.
I had a horrible moment when Bill woke up in the barn, apparently restored to her human shape. Followed by the relief of the truly horrible moment when she discovered she was a cyberman. I don’t know about her being turned back into a human ‘it’s only atoms’ – I don’t think that power has been established for Heather/pilot, nor can it be as easily extrapolated as the idea that, being a creature who can travel anywhere in time and space, she can drive the Tardis. So, Tardis flying yes, turning Bill human, not so sure. But if there is a chance she can stay on as companion, she can’t really do it if she’s as powerful as Heather…
‘We don’t need a doctor’ is that the most terrifying thing about the Cybermen? They don’t need a doctor, they don’t need the doctor, and they can cure the rest of the universe of this need.11 June 2017 at 15:49 #58914re: Missy’s concern- could it be her version of ten with Harriot Jones? ‘Don’t you think she look’s tried’?
If she could convince Nardole and Bill there was something wrong with the Doctor, that could create havoc.10 June 2017 at 22:23 #58870<p style=”text-align: left;”>@soundworld – ‘warrior’ wasn’t it? But mine too.</p>
<p style=”text-align: left;”>@pedant @nick – the tardis said she ‘always takes you where you need to go’.</p>
<p style=”text-align: left;”>Why did the Tardis need to take Nardole away? When he is clearly not as good as his former boss at driving it? So he had to fetch Missy?</p>
<p style=”text-align: left;”>I wonder, is there a River ex machina? Is that why Clara could still see her when the Doctor was unconscious?</p>6 June 2017 at 10:56 #58625@missy- but he (in the simulation at least) plugged his brain into a device that would temporarily restore his sight at some great cost he knew not what- further regenerations, maybe. So his sight was pretty important at that point. (Before it occurred to him to use text to speech on the laptop). And then in what we can assume was the real world nearly got blown up because he was blind. And Bill surrendered the earth to cure his blindness. It’s hard to think, with all this, that having his eyesight back wasn’t a big enough reason to use regenerative energy, but testing Bill, when he even noticed that using it was ‘a bit much’, and by the time he did it she had already ‘passed’ his test by shooting him, was.
6 June 2017 at 10:46 #58624Having quite an interesting conversation on the Guardian thread, about the misstelling of the frog and scorpion story – though someone has pointed out that there are other versions of the story – and the similar but different old woman and the snake story. Is the Doctor actually the old woman, taking in a freezing snake that begs her to save its life, only to get bitten when the snake recovers. ‘You knew when you took me in I was a snake’.
I wonder if Missy is more a scorpion or a snake? The scorpion makes a promise not to sting because if it did, it would die too, but because of its nature, it stings the frog. The snake makes no such particular promise, not does it die because of it’s betrayal. The punchline in both is that the other party should have known what would happen, they knew what they were dealing with. The difference is whether the scorpion knows or has the choice…
6 June 2017 at 10:39 #58623@tardigrade- yes to me too. I know Moffart doesn’t control all the information that comes out before the episodes. But I can’t really see any reason for the regeneration scene other than to make us all think- if we saw it there the first time or already knew about it- that he’s going to regenerate. The jokes more on us than Bill. And so avoidable, Bill could have clearly shot him with real bullets, one of the soldiers had real bullets after all. He’s on a fresh cycle of regeneration. But the idea he did it on purpose as part of the test then joked ‘too much’ when we had no reason to think it would have meant anything to her… alternatively, we could have seen her learn about regeneration. And her logic could have been, I’ll make you regenerate, maybe the next version will be free of the Monk’s control, it’s worth a shot (so to speak). Which would have changed the contrast between ‘I’ll kill the doctor so he can’t do any more harm’ and ‘I won’t kill Bill even to save the world’. But is that a bad thing?
5 June 2017 at 10:00 #58562@RorySmith- you’re right. Pearl was amazing. They all were, this was fantastically acted. I have some issues with the pacing and conclusion of these three episodes, but it is a good story done well and the dynamics playing out between the Doctor, Bill, Nardole and Missy are fantastic. Just as with the Smith area, one can always find flaws, but the point with Moffart has always been the emotional storytelling and the sense of mystery and he’s sticking with that, for his final series, and so he should.
5 June 2017 at 09:52 #58561@wolfweed- good point. In an episode in which he helps the Monks in the attempt to convince them that they’ve convinced him and he’s had a change of heart- Missy helps him, and even starts crying. Remorseful Missy is about as unlikely as willing propaganda stooge doctor.
4 June 2017 at 18:54 #58519@MissRori- good point, although it’s hard to see the rational for the fake regeneration, given that Bill doesn’t, as far as we know, know about regeneration, and even if she did, her shooting the doctor was the point…
It’s weird with this episode. One of A three parter, but so much shorthand necessary. I almost wonder if they could have made the first two of this arch shorter, and this one longer- it is an argument for the shorter episodes. Suppose the simulation episode ended early and the rest of the time slot had the set up for pyramids, and that ended about half way through or so of that 40ish minute slot, and this episode began and had about 60 or so minutes to do everything it wanted to do. Even the two parter episodes nowadays seem to feel they have to finish this part of the job between beginning and end. With episodes of about 20 minutes no one expected so much of a beginning, middle and end4 June 2017 at 17:55 #58512Just rewatched this because I was at a friend’s house last night for drinks and apparently it is ‘widely anti-social’ to disappear into the living room to watch a tv program half way through the evening. Went onto vodka redbulls at one point so I could stay and watch it when everyone else went to bed, but unfortunately this morning I discovered a flaw in this plan…
Scene at the end- I’ve always assumed that Moffart is a fan of/as a writer quite similar to Whedon, and this confirms it. And not only that, but the master/missy is more of a Spike than an Angel, a monster made not born which to be fair was pretty much hinted with Simms’ master. I’m a little concerned at the idea of the master’s reformation taking place while they are in a female regeneration, because if there is one thing more lacking than strong, powerful female heros, it’s strong powerful female villains. (In fiction at least.)
I do wonder sometimes if Moffart is being intentionally misleading in trailers, and it can lead to disappointment because the trailer after last week suggested to me a couple of interesting plot lines that didn’t happen. But that’s Moffart, he provokes ‘theories more insane than what is actually happening’ (in fiction at least) then tends to go for Occams razor. The Doctor knows, he’s faking it. He’s encouraging people to report on people they know while he’s faking it, and that’s a rather pragmatic choice that Missy might have liked to be aware of when she was arguing with him. Of course, the memory of Bill’s mother isn’t a deux ex machine, it’s a pay off.
I think the conclusion of this little arch is more satisfactory than The Sound Of Drums arch, but it does miss the slow build up that arch had. One thing I love is that in a way he did double down, and make Bill, for this time, The Most Important Person In The World, but in a different way to the girl who waited and the girl in his timestream. Her importance is, in a way, quite ordinary. And it focused on her mother, not on him, there really is no such thing as an unimportant person. And there is a level of normal, devastating human grief in this conclusion, love for a parent she doesn’t know, built out of photographs gifted partly out of embarrassment at an unexpected Christmas present.
Bill turns her anger at the charade that made her shoot the doctor on Nardole. Understanding this doctor’s emotional limitations, or is it just easier to be angry with a kind of brother figure than a father/grandfather figure?
30 May 2017 at 10:25 #58260@steffstaff, @missrori @thane15: re: regeneration. There is always a sense of the idea he might not regenerate. That he has regenerations left was made explicit (if anyone had missed the episode where he was gifted them) by his comments about the sight restorer.
(and I repeat, this episode would have been a great time to have the sight restorers on him.)When Davidson’s doctor died he was worried he wouldn’t regenerate, and Bakers doctor came back- troubled at first. When River died it was because she knew he wouldn’t regenerate in that blast. The executioners last week seemed to be going for overkill, so to speak. Stop both hearts, cut off all three brainstems, and then lock the body in a box for a thousand years. They might just have been too fancy to execute via a big massive explosion. And, to be fair, it was the master.
But also, as people have pointed out, if he’d just said ‘don’t worry, I’ll come back with a different face body and personality but I’ll have all my memories and be broadly the same sort of person, I do it all the time’ could she believe him when he’s just be lying for (we don’t know how long) about being blind?
considering her feelings for him. How long was he acting as her tutor before he took her travelling? I agree with thane15, they have a complex relationship, she is a complex person. She lost her mother before she could know her, and still talks to her. She has an uneasy, sometimes, relationship with her foster mother, who, nonetheless, worries about her, and still has her, at 26, living with her, and even worries that Bill will end up in the bad choices with men that she herself seems permanently enmeshed in. Which is also pretty funny because Bill’s all shrugs, and well, I’m into women, no danger there, and here she is in a complicated relationship with a dangerous man who’s lied to her! Her responses to the places he’s taken her have been of wonder, quickly followed by fear and distress.I also see no reason to think the monks would have given up. That particular doomsday scenario was averted. But I can’t think they would have simply thought, oh well, century after century of planning down the drain. They’d think, our biggest obstacle is either dead or disorientated for a while, lets hang on for the next one. True, they’ve exposed themselves, but they’ve killed everyone (but Bill) to whom they’ve openly communicated.
But at the end of the day Bill would have lost someone who took a fatherly (grandfatherly) interest in her. Who saw her potential when she was serving chips and crashing lectures, who punched out a racist for upsetting her (when he specifically said he didn’t want any of that going down) who took orders from her in Thin Ice. And what was her choice there? Free the beast, and deal with whatever comes after. The Doctor risking his life and losing his eyesight is the kind of decision he makes, not the greatest strategy, but he put her first because he felt responsible for her. There is enough in their relationship now for her to act out of love, and besides, there was love for the planet there as well. ‘You’d better save my planet’. Somehow this counted as a pure motive and not strategy or fear.
28 May 2017 at 09:59 #58141@blenkinsopthebrave, @cathannabel, @mudlark, @whisit thank you- would have replied earilr but I premitvly took @pedants advice and indeed did ‘drink drink drink’ and now its a bank holiday weekend, when will it all end…
@bluesequeekpip thanks again for your help with the creative writing modules. You were a big factor in getting my overall scores high enough to give me a decent chance at a first. (but then I think back to my final EMA and shudder. Ah well, what will be will be.@thane15, ‘taking hours and hours to do something well’ is the best way to do it. When I was young I seem to have had a fairly glib ability to throw something together and get a good mark. That’s not a brag, I became lazy and unmotivated when it came to any work I found difficult and was one reason I dropped out of university as quickly as I could. Now I don’t know how I ever did that. So I work more slowly, though mountains of notes and drafts. I go from a flush of excitement that I am about to write an amazing essay. My tutor will use it as a teaching guide. She’ll suggest I polish it for publication, I’ll get fast tracked into a Phd stream. I can’t emphasise enough how good the essay is going to be. Then I write it, and panic, and I hate it, and polish it, and rewrite it, and submit it in a mood of absolute despair. There is still a part of me that feels, if it’s difficult to write, it just isn’t going to be any good. So I’m still dealing with a terrible work ethic I built up at school. It sounds as though you have a much better grasp of just… working hard, putting in the effort. Which is fantastic and very promising for your future. The fact you are clever shows in your posts, the fact that you’re willing to put the work in bodes extremely well.
thanks to you and your mother and everyone for your kind words.
27 May 2017 at 22:06 #58105<p style=”text-align: left;”>@steffstaff- well the book talked of a demon wanting to take over the world by creating a shadow world, so they had the gist.</p>
<p style=”text-align: left;”>but yeah, though I suppose he was on higher alert. Could he have done something before he got tardis-napped? He was talking to Missy. Possibly the next episode will show some payoff. The monks knew he knew their plan, maybe they were hoping to just sweep in and offer to help.</p>
<p style=”text-align: left;”>We’ll have to see I suppose. Maybe the main point of the last episode was just to tie Missy back into his story.</p>27 May 2017 at 21:23 #58095Incedentally got a slight gnostic resonance. ‘You are corpses to us’, the simulations running with people personalities and no body. Finding freedom in death. How tangible are the monks?
27 May 2017 at 21:20 #58094@steffstaff- true, good point.
still, one thing the monks don’t know is how people would fight them in real life. Everyone who read the book killed their selves. No one tried to fight them- because that would give them information and because, what’s the point?
So they haven’t see anyone do anything after finding out the monks plan do anything but take themselves out of the game.
other than call in a timelord.
do the monks know about Missy? Does the vault keep her out of their range?
27 May 2017 at 21:00 #58091@missrori- ah but he didn’t agree. He would rather have died. But then they would have just waited for the next crisis. Bill had a point that wasn’t entirely sentimental.
Frankly this would have been a good time to plug in the temporary sight restorers, I’d have thought. Was that actually an invention of the monks?
I do see a flaw in their plan though. Last week the doctor observed that they wanted to see, specifically, what people clever enough to work out they were in a simulation would do. But here’s the thing: people in the simulation knew the best thing to do is stop providing them with information. So that source of information immediately dried up. They didn’t show the monks what they would do in the real world because they knew they weren’t in it.
the only person who did anything different was the doctor. He called the doctor. Well that’s fine, they think the real doctor has no doctor to call. And he doesn’t. But what did he actually do? He called a time lord.
The simulation s flawed because the biggest threats to the monks were operating in extremis when they knew they were in a simulation. They would respond differently in the real world.
24 May 2017 at 21:20 #58000Just rewatched, one thought… before the bombs go off, the scientist says they’re ‘saving the world’. Obviously this isn’t something the ‘real’ Doctor will see. But before she pixilates, Bill says ‘save me’. And every time someone says this I think of the original Moffat library episodes. She’s says save me, not help me.
and the doctor did/was, he saved everything he saw and sent it on.
one other thought: the doctor has a device that will temporarily save his sight, for a few minutes, at potentially great cost. He’ll probably use in before the end of the season to save the world. It will be called a deus ex machina by people who don’t understand the term.
24 May 2017 at 21:04 #57999<p style=”text-align: left;”>Just submitted the final assignment for my OU degree after six years of study. Think a drink is in order?</p>
22 May 2017 at 08:50 #57825@countscarlioni yup! he went full Moffart. I’ve enjoyed the sequence of new episodes, but I was pretty sure/hoping the whole seasons wouldn’t carry on that way.
I’m interested by the fact that River would not approve of the Doctor killing Missy. I remember Martha getting angry when she saw ten getting ready to forgive him, it seemed like a moment where she really realised, much as he loves us, he’s not human. That the life of this one Gallefrayan would be so precious to him. I can’t imagine Amy or Clara going for it. Saving and forgiving someone is different from executing someone, sure.
The Master seems a little like Spike in Buffy in a way: evil plan, evil plan, evil plain, wait, I don’t actually want to live in a hell dimension, quick side switch. I’m sure I remember a pre gap episode where he suddenly switches.
20 May 2017 at 21:46 #57726@rorysmith- don’t use’ I could write better’ as an insult then. It signifies lack of ambition! Why would being better than Moffat be ‘sad’?
Your novel sounds very interesting.
20 May 2017 at 21:09 #57720@rorysmith- if cheeto has done one good thing, it’s making ‘sad’ as a sign off unacceptable.
Saying you could do better is something that really ought to be accompanied with a script or at least a synopsis. Not as good as you’d found yourself taught to expect is quite a different matter.
people loved Shakespeare not for his brand new invention- I think he only wrote one completely original story- but to see what he did with existing story’s. The modern focus on ‘doing something new’ is doomed to fail. Shamalan is an example of this.
20 May 2017 at 20:50 #57718@Craig- I know, right?
sad.
20 May 2017 at 20:32 #57714@rorysmith you can easily outwrite Donald Trump at least…
20 May 2017 at 20:21 #57711Is it wrong that my first thought was: well, what I would do is find a way of convincing everyone on earth they were in a simulation’?
Otherwise: scary Narnia.
the doctor would never kill the master.
19 May 2017 at 20:04 #57667I like that Nardole remembered his ex’s name when Bill asked him to ‘shut his girlfriend up’.
And also, Ganymede? Rosalind’s choice of the name makes contextual sense, why would a company use that name? Just th connection to Jupiter?
19 May 2017 at 19:51 #57665Also, I seem to recall someone talking about the fluid link being in a pre gap episode. Do we know that the ‘you’ who gave Nardole his orders is twelve?
19 May 2017 at 19:48 #57664Hang on, just rewatching this episode and:
‘you’re missing it arn’t you.’
‘Competition.’
‘space.’
one of the masters must be in the vault.
also, a bigger build up to the space station than I remembered. Did the male astronaut hack in at the start?
14 May 2017 at 13:46 #57454@MissRori- me too, which is why I prefer the idea of the road to hell paved with ‘indifference’. To say it’s ‘good intentions’ is to imply it might be best to do nothing. Indifference.
The entire point to the doctor is that he meddles. But I do love that the show doesn’t shy away from the fact this is also problematic.14 May 2017 at 09:48 #57443@pedant- thank you! I was having a lovely time as well, was a little upset when it all vanished. It’s another problem with threads, really.
13 May 2017 at 23:22 #57418Oh also, the ‘it’s not my fault’ and the idea that this eliminates ‘what can I do about it’.
Is the road to hell paved with good intentions or indifference?
13 May 2017 at 23:19 #57417@mudlark oh I loved that.
But, bloody he’ll! ‘I love space. I miss space. Lovely, leathal, boiling freezing to death space. Let’s go to space. Not there. Let’s go to dangerous space.’
‘it would be a worry’. What’s in the vault?
I’m dealing with an emotionally unstable 20 year old right now, so my own life might be fueling a ‘hmmm’ regarding the Doctor. But he’s red flagging a lot.
13 May 2017 at 22:59 #57415OK we’ve had persistence of consiousness (the pilot/Silence in the Library) tiny creatures that turn you into a skeleton (smile/Silence) the setting, within days and metres of one of River and the doctor’s dates (thin ice/a good man goes to war) it’s not right to be kept in a shadow of real life plus ‘I talk to a dead person'(knock knock/damn I can’t remember, the one where Clara jumped into the time stream) and now, corpses in spacesuits (silence again).
Part of me would love this ‘fresh new start’ to be a bluff and Moffat’s going to go full last season of Sherlock on us. Bill looks like Riverside. Her mother looks like Clara. I think it’s just returning themes and here have some headcannon.
but still… River asked Clara to think why Clara could still see her… ‘spoilers!’. Her ex employee is working for the doctor.
Ten got a full sob farewell tour. Eleven got a vision of Amelia and Amy. (Rory should have been there).
The final Moff episode should be the Moffary Moffartest episode ever. Like Sherlock playing violin with Euros.
13 May 2017 at 20:08 #57400Nardole was fantastic in this. Matt Lucus that is. In fact everyone was fantastic in this one.
the doctor is blind. He’ll never be able to look at anyone ever again? Clumsiest line in the whole episode has to mean something.
He means twelve right? This personality. I’ve always felt regeneration is a death. (Just as you get such different personalities in Dali Lamas)…
so yes, he made an oath to himself and gave orders, and gave himself backdoors.
another monster that isn’t strictly evil (the company behind them though…)
6 May 2017 at 21:05 #57171I lived the brief exchange in iambic pentameter.
I’m scared/ don’t be/ why not/ it doesn’t help.
30 April 2017 at 10:06 #56915Has anyone seen the Guardian thread? So much positivity! People really like Bill. I do. What are the chances she’ll get a second season? I really think she’d be a great transition into a different Doctor and showrunner.
I wouldn’t change the last few seasons, but I like the idea that Moff is producing a straightforward, classic who season here. I mean, obviously, what’s in the vault. But again, after doubling down with Sherlock, I’m intrigued with his approach on this season. Maybe its a transition for people like us. It’s still Moffat who, but not quite the Moffatie moffatist Who he’s ever done.
Though it might have the unfortunate effect of taking any shine out of a back to the basics RTD/classic style that follows him leaving…23 April 2017 at 07:54 #56592@thane15- The Girl Who Waited, when Amy got left behind- the most horrific thing is that she didn’t age faster or anything- she was just stuck there for that long!
22 April 2017 at 21:43 #56569Interesting context on Moffart saying he deliberately wanted a companion who wasn’t white…
Noted Nardole and not ‘slaving for a human’. Now robots and their interface as indigenous species… and an all white Tardis crew wouldn’t fully work with such a story line. Or all white colonists…
Incidentally, the emoji thing started off very Black Mirror. And ended rather IT crowd. British TV at its finest.
Nice subtle arc building up. There is a vault. What is behind it is very important and needs protecting. When the doctor said he ‘promised’ he wouldn’t do it, this might be to do with the vault. That said, ‘friends’ programing on a door lets Bill in, before she knows anything. The Doctor is not supposed to leave. He’s being a bit of a teenager about it.18 April 2017 at 17:57 #56446Oh I’ve not seen the pilot then- I hadn’t realised they reshot.
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