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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Doctor Who: The Runaway Bride/Season 3 Discussion [PICS]

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18:39 / 25.12.06

(I think The Llama's post above might cover this, Boboss, if your question is genuine... If not, well, why worry?)

18:43 / 25.12.06

I'm not so much worried as surprised. We've seen quite a lot of 'em, after all.

You know, there's been muchly shit boring telly on this crimbo. Despite it's faults, Dr Who was a luverly breath of fun air.

21:16 / 25.12.06

It's all about the Doctor and the Daleks.

22:45 / 25.12.06

That was really quite a wonderful Christmas Day romp. It just about negated the effects of another emotionally destroying Christmas period, so hurray! I loved Donna's blissful ignorance of every invasion that has ever struck London and the rest of the world. The dialogue between the pair on the rooftop was the best part of the episode:

"A rat couldn't fit in this."

There were a lot of really beautiful character moments for the Doctor, his recollections of Rose while listening to Love Don't Roam, his final "Her name was Rose," all fantastic stuff. Catherine Tate was charming throughout, which I wasn't expecting and I was a little disappointed at her decline of the Doctor's offer to travel with him, even though I knew it was coming.

All wasn't wonderful in The Runaway Bride, however. I felt that the pacing was all over the shop, the direction was too fussy and that Rachnoss was a bit of a crap villain. I mean, she looked and sounded cool, moved impressively and had a kickass spaceship..but all she did was gesture wildly at the Doctor-Man and blink for a bit. Pretty ineffective villainry, I think. It was a waste of Sarah Parish too. If you're going to get a wonderful actress like her, please don't cake her in prosthetics and give her a handful of barely audible lines which are inevitably drowned about by Murray Gold's interesting, albeit ludicrously loud score.

The season 3 preview was certainly exciting. A cat played by Ardal O' Hanlan, pig aliens, Dalek Sec, Rhino dudes, hospital on the moon, David Tennant with even better hair, Shakespeare, Freema Agyeman not being wooden. Wonderful!

Did anybody hang around for the Torchwood and SJA teasers at the end? Looks like Torchwood will be a facing a giant goat man in the season finalé, but I'll take that down to the Torchwood thread.

22:50 / 25.12.06

Oh, two other things which are probably foreshadowing season 3 plot threads.

The Doctor finally mentioned Gallifrey by name. Could this possibly hint towards a return for the Time Lords next year.

We also heard the tank operator mention that he received orders from "Saxon" to fire on the Web Star. In Love and Monsters, there's a newspaper which features the headline:

"Saxon leads in the polls."

I'm guessing that this Saxon character is Harriet Jones' replacement, who will probably feature as the Bad Wolf, Torchwood running word next season.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

00:28 / 26.12.06

Overall I thought it was lots of fun.

But all the Doctor's lines about Rose were beautiful, and sad. Those were the bits when I loved Tennant the most.

Have we ever seen the Doctor miss a companion so much?

01:40 / 26.12.06

He didn't even miss his own grand-daughter as much as he misses Rose.

10:42 / 26.12.06

Liked how Dave was on the companion-rebound at the end.

11:19 / 26.12.06

Good spot on "Saxon". There's a poster in Torchwood 12 which mentions the name, too.

uncle retrospective

11:41 / 26.12.06

That was a very weird show, I spent the first half yelling at the telly, everything was too loud, the music was blaring (and very silly) and EVERYONE WAS SHOUTING ALL THE TIME which really got on my nerves. Then they found Torchwood and it all changed. Tennent is amazing as the Doctor when he isn't mugging it up. The "this is on your head" moment was briliant.
I'm really looking forward to season 3.

01:39 / 27.12.06

Yeah, I loved this. I squee'd so hard. Hmm, that sounds quite wrong. Perhaps I should rephrase.

'Twas amazing. The Tardis car chase, the return of the robot Santas, the pockets being "bigger on the inside," the Doctor's badass moment against the spider lady... It was a crazy, fun romp.

08:40 / 27.12.06

Hmm. Scouring my memory for stuff in old Who linked to Saxon times, I remembered the Meddling Monk. Could it be that the Doctor is not the last of his race after all, and that the Monk has been hanging around for 950 years, having avoided the Time War? Ah, no hang on. He reappeared in Dalek Master Plan, didn't he?

[This is fanwank, rather than anything spoilery, btw]

13:18 / 27.12.06

I've been trying to think of what figure from the Doctor's past Saxon could be. If they're going for a return of the Timelords plot arc next year, which is beginning to seem increasingly likely due to mention of Gallifrey, the Time Lord symbol seen in the preview and the Genesis Ark from Doomsday, then Saxon could very well be a Timelord. I don't think they'll go for the Monk, though. The Rani has been under speculation for a good while now, with rumours that Zoe Lucker had been cast (which were later denied). Saxon could be the Master, and although it's claimed that classic series DVDs aren't timed to coincide with the return of old characters, the release of the Return of the Master boxed-set could prove significant. Remember, Sarah Jane's last story was released around the time of her return to Doctor Who.

Of course, Saxon could be a totally new character, not remotely Time-Lordish. He could be a human, abusing his power just waiting for the Doctor or some other force to take him down. We have seen that with Harriet Jones and Torchwood already, though.

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

14:45 / 27.12.06

David Tennant with even better hair

I. Hate. Being. In. The. States.

18:28 / 27.12.06

Re: The Daleks.

I flet pretty much that season two's finale was an affirmation of them as the big baddies of the series. The were the big classic villain of the first series, popping up midway and then having the S1 finale based around them. Things seemed to be following suit with the Cybermen until the Daleks show up bringing this whole load of proper ongoing Time War story with them.

I see that as pretty telling. We'll get a big old classic turning up each season, but really this story is about The Doctor, The Daleks, Gallifrey and the Time Lords. Goes double when the Black Dalek time-shifts away at the end, and if I'm not mistaken, it looks like the same wee bastard in the Season 3 preview.

Regrettable Juvenilia

19:05 / 27.12.06

I liked what this episode has to tell us about being newly single:

1) It's especially shit at Christmas.

2) It makes you down with the genocide again.

3) At the end of the night, you'll probably end up suggesting to someone like Catherine Tate that she could always leave with you, and she'll say no. Ouch.

4) But soldier on and there'll be a Freema Agyeman in your future! Yay!

Regrettable Juvenilia

19:08 / 27.12.06

Also, Saxon = FACE OF BOE, eh, who's with me? Who is with me?

19:37 / 27.12.06

Just a small thing, however, that I wondered about;

Even if the Doctor wanted to 'Stop!' and show some mercy while flushing the Biggest Spider down the Biggest Plughole, how exactly could he stop tons of water from the Thames flooding through the hole(s) he just blew open?

Maybe running up to the barrier and shouting "Cracks! Brilliant! You're just so... Cracky! Yeah!"? (Sorry. I'm actually growing to like the whole "Humanity? Brilliant!" thing more and more, strangely, as I see more and more of Tennant as The Doctor, but still).

I understood what The Bride meant; you've done so much damage, now you're just being vindictive, but how exactly could he stop? Or am I just being dozy and misreading rhetoric?

Regrettable Juvenilia

19:47 / 27.12.06

I maintain - and this argument never really takes on Barbelith, but - I maintain that sometimes the emotional point of a story is more important than the technical details.

20:55 / 27.12.06

Llama wrote:

>> the Time Lord symbol seen in the preview

I missed that, whereabouts was it in the preview?

Regardless of the symbol, the face of Boe suggests something very important will come up regarding the Doctor. cant wait to see the next series

21:04 / 27.12.06

I maintain - and this argument never really takes on Barbelith, but - I maintain that sometimes the emotional point of a story is more important than the technical details.

It doesn't take as an argument because there's not really anywhere very interesting to go with it. It's like the "but music is ultimately a matter of personal taste, it's neither inherently good nor inherently rubbish" argument; it's a truism, but a slightly dull one. More fun, perhaps, to appreciate the emotional point of a story and nitpick the technicalities, the two being by no means mutually exclusive.

Regrettable Juvenilia

21:35 / 27.12.06

Bum.

Regrettable Juvenilia

21:35 / 27.12.06

Bum leakage.

21:45 / 27.12.06

Emotional bum leakage?

23:22 / 27.12.06

I maintain that sometimes the emotional point of a story is more important than the technical details.

I'll see your thesis and raise you an ABC Family Channel.

00:11 / 28.12.06

A Very Special Doctor Who.

Regrettable Juvenilia

05:38 / 28.12.06

Sorry Ganesh, I shouldn't try to be concise when I've been on the Christmas sauce. I don't really agree that there's nothing you can say about emotional story arcs - in this case, I think the idea that the Doctor's sense of pity/mercy is in danger of going missing when he doesn't have a decent companion about is pretty interesting, and potentially really complicates some of the differences between Doctor's Nine and Ten that people have previously commented on. And while you can have a balance in terms of the amount of attention paid to either that or plot mechanics/holes, I also don't think that that balance is generally found on Barbelith - it's a subjective preference, but I find the extent to which threads of almost any Film or TV turn into obsessing about how people don't quite understand how details of the ending work exactly pretty... I dunno, unbalanced.

In summary: yeah, maybe the Doctor couldn't actually have done anything else to the Rachnos and so had to stop there - but that's not the point of that scene, is it?

07:27 / 28.12.06

I think it kind of was the point of the scene, and there really was nothing he could do to stop it. The only thing I can think (and I was kind of fuzzy at the time, so I may have to watch it again) is that she meant he had to stop enjoying it.

10:49 / 28.12.06

>> the Time Lord symbol seen in the preview

I missed that, whereabouts was it in the preview?

It was the large blue symbol, on a white background. It looked like a ring of planets. It turns out that it's the symbol for Laz Labs, the organisation that Mark Gatiss' character apparently works for/runs. Perhaps the de-ageing device that Gatiss' character has discovered is part based on Time Lord technology--regeneration?

In other news, David Tennant is rumoured by the Sun to be leaving the show during season 4. The BBC have denied this, but the Sun's report says that they have been in talks with two actors concerning the role. Robert Carlyle (urghss...) and David Morrissey (hurray!).

Our Lady Has Left the Building

12:50 / 28.12.06

Ummm, where was that established as a Timelord symbol?

14:01 / 28.12.06

That's not the Time Lord symbol.

Leaving during the fourth season? So we'd get a new Doctor partway through?

15:22 / 28.12.06

The report seems to indicate that his departure story would be filmed half way through the filming schedule, December/January. Rose's departure was filmed at the same time last year, and the Sun similarly reported that she'd be leaving mid-season.

I know that it's not the Rassilon Time-Lord symbol that was featured occasionally in the classic series, but it's very similar to the symbols that can be seen on the Doctor's monitors in the TARDIS and stuck on little post-it notes on various bits of the TARDIS console. It's visually similar to the Time-Lord writing that the new series uses..circles in varying sizes, arranged in a ring.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

16:08 / 28.12.06

I don't really agree that there's nothing you can say about emotional story arcs

Neither do I. I'd rather debate those than technicalities, to be honest.

16:53 / 28.12.06

I think we're missing out on Tate's character's perspective, too. To her, the Doctor must seem as though he can do just about anything. She's there without a frame of reference for him. So it's not unreasonable for her to ask him to stop, even though there's no way he can. The Doctor, however, knows exactly what he can and cannot do, and made his decision based on knowing exactly what would happen.

17:05 / 28.12.06

I have not got much to add about the Christmas episode, I loved it.

Nobody has mentioned 'The Master'. Season one gave us 'The Daleks' and season two gave us 'The Cybermen'. If the third season is going to continue in the same way and introduce a classic bad-guy it can only be 'The Master'!!

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