« Merry Turkey day!!
Doctor Who
Zend OPCache & APC »

Arantor

  • As powerful as possible, as complex as necessary.
  • Posts: 14,278
Re: Doctor Who
« Reply #540, on April 24th, 2013, 09:13 PM »
Nah.

Remember Rule #1: The Doctor lies.

The silver ice in his heart could easily refer to everything he's done (remember Journey's End: "The Doctor, always running, never looks back because he dares not out of shame." or "I'm not innocent, Wilfred, I've taken lives. Worse, I got clever, I manipulated others into taking their own." from The End of Time) or even the comments from "The Impossible Astronaut" when 900-year-old Eleven walks in after the others have seen the older Eleven be killed and River says "That's cold, even for you"

If you're thinking of the Valeyard, technically that was distilled from the evil in his heart(s) from somewhere between the 12th and Final regenerations. And certainly there have been hints of that in recent times (the Dream Lord in particular)
When we unite against a common enemy that attacks our ethos, it nurtures group solidarity. Trolls are sensational, yes, but we keep everyone honest. | Game Memorial

Dismal Shadow

  • Madman in a Box
  • Me: Who is Arantor? Cleverbot: It stands for time and relative dimensions in space.
  • Posts: 1,185
Re: Doctor Who
« Reply #541, on April 24th, 2013, 09:28 PM »
So far I like Matt Smith as The Doctor and hopes he stays 11th, I am not ready for 12th, it's too early.


Speaking of the recent episode, I thought it was good.

(click to show/hide)
If you watched the ending you will see why the Doctor was there in the first place which ties the story between Clara.

Cold War focus on new enemy the Ice Warrior[1]and "We are all ghosts to you." scene between Clara and The Doctor.
 1. Not sure if it's a new foe but it seems that the Doctor knows him somehow from his previous incarnation?
“I will stand on my ground as an atheist until your god shows up...If my irreligious bothers you much, and if you think everything I do is heresy to your god I don't care. Heresy is for those who believe, I don't. So, it isn't heresy at all!


   Jack in, Wedge,
   EXECUTE!

Arantor

  • As powerful as possible, as complex as necessary.
  • Posts: 14,278
Re: Doctor Who
« Reply #542, on April 24th, 2013, 09:33 PM »
The Ice Warrior is not a new foe, he encountered them back in the Second Doctor days (and he does remember his previous incarnations)

That's actually an overarching feeling this season: looking back not forwards. We've had two *old* foes back this season (the Great Intelligence and the Ice Warriors)... I wonder if there will be more yet.

Kindred

  • Posts: 166
Re: Doctor Who
« Reply #543, on April 24th, 2013, 10:21 PM »
I possibly may like the uber-arc... but I have been extremely disappointed in the episodes so far.

Nao

  • Dadman with a boy
  • Posts: 16,080
Re: Doctor Who
« Reply #544, on April 25th, 2013, 02:54 PM »
I'm an absolute Who lover... Well, the 'modern' Who anyway, as I never grew up with Who, and only discovered him at age 30.
I loved seasons 5, 6 and the first part of season 7. They all had fantastic episodes.
Still.
After a very nice reboot (Bells), the following episodes were all disappointing to me.

- The Scifi episode. Seems to be a staple: whenever the Doctor gets both a new companion AND a reboot, he ALWAYS takes them to the future first: Rose went to the end of the Earth, Amy went on Starship UK. The other two companions, Martha and Donna, not being part of an attempted reboot, had to wait for an extra episode to get to the future... I'm saying this, because in Doctor Who, 90% of the episodes are spent in the past, or the present time. Future episodes are very rare, in comparison... Possibly because of the higher budgets, I don't know. Anyway: I didn't find the episode extraordinary, I still liked the two 'singing' scenes very much, but I had a huge problem with the fact that the Doctor 'shared' his memories without losing them (or his life). What makes him so different, eh..?

- The U-Boat episode... Oh, my. It had David Warner in it, so I was excited, but he didn't have much to do in it, except exhibit a Walter Bishop-like personality (slightly mad, very smart, unable to do stunts, and very much in love with old music. Well, new music for him, obviously, as it's set in the 80's...) The rest, err... Well, seriously, did this episode have ANYTHING interesting going on..? No, I don't think so... It's just a boring remake of The Thing, or SomeThing Else. I've always noticed that Mark Gattis's episodes always lacked originality. None of his episodes I ever really liked. I guess, I much prefer him in Sherlock, either playing Mycroft, or writing The Hounds of Baskerville for instance... ;)

- The Ghost episode... It started out as really, really boring. Just like in Cold War, I spent most of my time browsing my S3 while keeping an eye on the TV. Well, it got a bit better when the Doctor started going through all eras, it was a fun moment, and his rescue was nice as well. Okay, I thought, not a bad episode this time... Phew. Except that for some reason, the writer decided it would be really, really smart to cram everything he could think of into the end of the episode, so we have: (1) a Tardis who speaks for the first time since The Doctor's Wife, but NOT to say anything remotely interesting, (2) a Tardis that refuses to go into the pocket universe (when was the last time she jumped into one of those..? Ah, yes, The Doctor's Wife...), but suddenly makes the jump without any issues, and then later in the episode does it AGAIN, long after the first time, even though she said the universe was going to disappear any moment now... (Don't tell me she went back to the past, it's a cop-out.) (3) a monster that, for no reason whatsoever, is separated from his wife, or girlfriend, or whatever, but nothing is explained about how it went into the pocket universe, or why the other monster is in a castle wing, or even why nobody noticed that before, except for the Doctor of course... (4) a time traveller who keeps doing uncomfortable smiles, and a doctor who never, ever points out that he's going to take her back to her time... Actually, does he even plan to do that..? Or does he intend to leave her be, with, err... Her ancestor..?! (5) That's all I can remember, but I know there were more, when I watched the episode...

So, overall, I find these to be the weakest three episodes in a row, since the early seasons. Very disappointed, as I said. Hopefully, next week's episode will be a bit better, at least, the subject is interesting, if anything...
But really, I'm waiting for the last two episodes mostly -- Neil Gaiman's episode, forever in love with your works man!, and Moffat's episode, especially because of the episode name...
Re: Doctor Who
« Reply #545, on April 27th, 2013, 11:54 PM »
Any good? Will watch this Monday as usual...

Arantor

  • As powerful as possible, as complex as necessary.
  • Posts: 14,278
Re: Doctor Who
« Reply #546, on April 27th, 2013, 11:59 PM »
I dunno. There were some interesting ideas, some serious callbacks for the fans if you have been paying attention.

But we had half an hour of build-up and a massive mash-up of stuff at the end that didn't entirely make sense combined with what amounts to Deus Ex Reboot at the end. Basically about par for the course for this season.

Kindred

  • Posts: 166
Re: Doctor Who
« Reply #547, on April 28th, 2013, 04:11 PM »
I agree with the I09 review, completely

additionally...
This season has been terrible.\
Moffat is a terrible writer
Matt Smith's doctor is just plain mean and dislikable.

Arantor

  • As powerful as possible, as complex as necessary.
  • Posts: 14,278
Re: Doctor Who
« Reply #548, on April 28th, 2013, 04:19 PM »
So far Moffat wrote: Asylum of the Daleks, The Angels Take Manhattan, The Snowmen (the Christmas special), The Bells of Saint John and will write the season finale.

I've not *disliked* any of the episodes we've had, as such, but I have felt a little let down by them. We have another Mark Gatiss episode, then the Neil Gaiman episode, then the season finale, with the 50th anniversary episode in November. (I thought season 8 was going to run up to the 50th, but apparently not, the 8th series is supposed to start filming in September)

Moffat is a great writer when he's not trying to be too clever, cf. Sherlock, the Silence in the Library, Blink. But this... I don't know where this is going and it's repeating season 6 - a season of disjointed items that don't make a lot of sense on their own but make much more sense when tied together.

Eleven is certainly getting darker and there was a moment when he just turned bad-ass in this episode. I have never seen him do that kind of blackmail on anyone, even immoral characters. Certainly, Seven did some similar stuff but not like that.

Kindred

  • Posts: 166
Re: Doctor Who
« Reply #549, on April 29th, 2013, 12:27 AM »
angels take Manhattan had more of that silly "time as magic" crap.

Asylum was pretty good... the Clara in that episode was cool...   and she was even cooler in the Snowmen.
I dunno...  Looking back, I don't think I liked the Bells very much at all.

All in all, I dislike what they have done with Clara as a permanent character.
I dislike what they are doing to the doctor (intensely!)
I have not liked the episodes themselves.... I think I see where they are going with the uber-plot... and if I am right I have only a partial acceptance of the crap they are paving the path with.

Nao

  • Dadman with a boy
  • Posts: 16,080
Re: Doctor Who
« Reply #550, on April 29th, 2013, 06:54 PM »
Entertainment-wise, I found last weekend's episode to be much nicer than the crap before it. It was a bit closer to the Bells episode, which still remains the best in this half-season, which says a lot about the overall quality... :-/

However, once you leave entertainment aside and start considering the story, and the 'logic' behind it, it's an absolute mess... It tends to contradict itself, and indeed I think it's unfair that the Doctor keeps saying it's impossible to rewrite a timeline and/or meet his past self, and then do it very conveniently when he's trying to right his own wrongs... (What did these bros do to him, really..?!)

Arantor

  • As powerful as possible, as complex as necessary.
  • Posts: 14,278
Re: Doctor Who
« Reply #551, on April 29th, 2013, 07:09 PM »
He didn't rewrite his own timeline. He already visited it to start with. But when you have a hole in the TARDIS, anything's possible anyway.

Nao

  • Dadman with a boy
  • Posts: 16,080
Re: Doctor Who
« Reply #552, on April 29th, 2013, 08:59 PM »
Doesn't change the fact that it lacks logic to me...

I'm a sucker for time travel and stuff; I should have loved this episode, in fact I only liked it. Probably because, if I wanted to watch an 'episode about travelling inside the TARDIS', I'd rather re-watch The Doctor's Wife a hundred times...

Kindred

  • Posts: 166
Re: Doctor Who
« Reply #553, on April 30th, 2013, 04:30 AM »Last edited on April 30th, 2013, 06:38 AM
Yes!

The Doctor's Wife had many of the same things that this episode (or this 1/2 season) had.. but was 10,000 times better written, better acted and better done.

We had a TARDIS who talked, running through hallways in the TARDIS with weird things happening and the halls and time misbehaving, and no silly need for a time-hole.

And WTF... why would anyone ever have a "basic mode" with the shield turned off?   Doesn't that scream "ultimate user mode" to you?
(actually, why would the tardis had a basic mod anyway? Idiots like turlough learned to fly the tardis just fine.... (well, at least as well as the doctor))

Also... do you notice that they seem to have completely forgotten about the whole "the tardis was in the repair dock when I borrowed her, and I've never quite gotten around to fixing it"


-edit- fixed some typos noticed in the quotes. :)

Arantor

  • As powerful as possible, as complex as necessary.
  • Posts: 14,278
Re: Doctor Who
« Reply #554, on April 30th, 2013, 04:38 AM »
Quote
And WTF... why would anyone ever have a "basic mode" with the shield turned off?   Doesn't that scream "ultimate user mode" to you?
Debug mode.
Quote
Idiots like turlough learned to fly the tardis just fine.... (well, at leats as well as the doctor))
Turlough wasn't human and was intimated on more than one occasion to be much closer to Time Lord intelligence than human intelligence anyway.
Quote
lso... do you notice that they seem to have completely forgotten about the whole "the tardis was in the repair docs when I borrowed her, and I've never quite gotten around to fixing it"
The extent of 'required repairs' has never been entirely established, though intimated to be 'for the dodgy chameleon circuit' for the most part. I'm not sure how old the Third Doctor was, but certainly he was trying to do more repairs than just fixing the chameleon circuit, albeit with limited knowledge due to Time Lord intervention.


I think part of the problem is that they have more flexibility in terms of what they can do now. It's well known that having constraints to what you do makes you get more creative in solving them.
« Merry Turkey day!!
Zend OPCache & APC »