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Doctor Who Season 3 UK (No Spoilers)

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Our Lady Has Left the Building

19:12 / 23.06.07

sleazenation By the by, I thought the Doctor said he locked the co-ordinates so the Tardis could only travel back to where it had come from (which means that the master landed in modern Cardiff...)

Heh heh, but actually the Joneses live in London.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

19:13 / 23.06.07

Nobody, as far as I can remember, has ever said that speculation is verboten

The topic summary?

Spaniel

19:15 / 23.06.07

Indeed.

And I'm not sure that's what Sleaze was saying.

Feverfew

19:15 / 23.06.07

Rushed? Yes.

Music at the end provoking annoyance? Yes.

Everything else? Oh Yes.

Ah well.

Spatula Clarke

19:15 / 23.06.07

Well, yeah, but I've no idea where that came from other than a misreading of the original conversation about spoilers.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

19:18 / 23.06.07

I don't think it was what sleaze meant either. Hmm. Off to the Mod Requests thread, because it should probably be changed.

Spatula Clarke

19:24 / 23.06.07

I took it as 'speculation leads to spoilers, because spoilerish people respond to it either with comments along the lines of "ah, wait and see

" or with speculation based on knowledge gained from elsewhere (trailers, specfically)'.

I'd like to say, just so it's clear, that I loved the John Smith episodes and the second half of last week's, even though I consider each to have its own problems. I'm just starting to feel like all I do in this thread is complain about what's wrong with the episodes, and that this is making it look like I've not enjoyed any of them.

Feverfew

19:43 / 23.06.07

Can I just add that the "Come home, Martha, it's me and your dad, we've decided to give it another try and get back together" part was horrible? (Designed to be so, of course, but still...)

Our Lady Has Left the Building

20:06 / 23.06.07

What about the stick of dynamite attached to Martha's TV? Just the Master preparing for the possibility of the Doctor somehow managing to find his way back to the present?

sleazenation

20:08 / 23.06.07

Heh heh, but actually the Joneses live in London.

Well, yeah I figured he'd managed to get a train from Cardiff... but yeah, that doesn't explain the whole when did the Master find the time to set up his whole political career?

Regrettable Juvenilia

20:47 / 23.06.07

It was explained in the episode. Jack asks if what the Doctor did would send the Tardis back exactly where and when it had last been (Cardiff, just after the season finale of Torchwood), and he admits it might vary by as much as 18 months. At about the same time in the episode, the journalist tells Mrs Saxon that Saxon's "real" career/life began 18 months before. So he starts off by hyptonising a few key people face to face, getting appointed to Minister of Defence, at which point he gets his Archangel network up and starts manipulating everybody.

The whole point of the Houses of Parliament being in this episode is the connection between the Doctor's previous meddling in UK politics and the Master's success. As for the present day thing - this series has made me realise what I suppose I should have always known, which is that it's all about how well it's done, not where it takes place.

A fall of geckos

21:00 / 23.06.07

I'd guess the teletubbies scene was a reference to this.

Spatula Clarke

21:36 / 23.06.07

As for the present day thing - this series has made me realise what I suppose I should have always known, which is that it's all about how well it's done, not where it takes place.

It's a fundamental difference of opinion, then - I've not particularly enjoyed any of the present-day stories across the three series. The references and jokes that RTD's shoehorned into the episodes will date them very quickly and have, imo, felt awkward and out of place. Compare and contrast them to something like Father's Day, which is almost present-day, but doesn't allow the jokes about big hair and duff clothes to get in the way of a decent story or spike the pacing.

Axolotl

22:41 / 23.06.07

I think you're all missing the fact that UNIT has a fucking helicarrier! How cool is that? Faults aside that made the episode for me.

sleazenation

22:51 / 23.06.07

I think you're all missing the fact that UNIT has a fucking helicarrier! How cool is that? Faults aside that made the episode for me.

No, I don't think we are forgetting the UNIT helicarrier ...

Our Lady Has Left the Building

06:33 / 24.06.07

Wouldn't it have been cool if Martha's Dad's girlfriend from 'Smith and Jones' had turned out to be the secret services agent from '42' and this episode?

Imaginary Mongoose Solutions

06:54 / 24.06.07

I find I'm INTENSELY aroused by the Master's Companion. Srsly. That little dance she does when the Paradox Engine cuts on and the music kicks in? That REALLY does it for me for some reason.

Also: UNIT Helicarrier.

Also: John Simms as the Master's answer to the Doctor. (You know, when he regenerates, he's all "hey, the Doctor gets to be young, why can't I?". Doesn't that lend credence to the theory that the Regenerations can be somewhat controlled? I seem to recall several theories that Ten regenerated without some of Nine's angst.)

Also: Gah... sorry, it's on Earth, there's pop music and dated in-jokes but I love every goddamned minute of it.

Sibelian 2.0

07:29 / 24.06.07

I can forgive the mobile phones, although they are becoming increasingly annoying (there have been *other technological developments just as interesting since the original series, RTD) and I can forgive the annoying pop music, but I canNOT forgive the "comedy" screaming. As a Who fan.

That being said, I must say, not as a Who fan, but as a fan of this strange new television series which seemingly bears little comparison to its identically named predecessor, I thought the comedy screaming was extremely funny, the pop music was quite scary, actually, and the way they've been using mobile phones in this series is actually quite clever, perhaps a teensy bit cleverer than the original series was.

Also, this Master isn't grand or sinister, he's an in-yer-face evil, giggling bully of a sadistic wanker. My Who-fan self says "Noooooooo!" My New-Who-fan self says: "OOOOOOOH! He's really NASTY! MORE! MORE!"

Shiny: Well Over Thirty

07:40 / 24.06.07

John Simms as the Master's answer to the Doctor. (You know, when he regenerates, he's all "hey, the Doctor gets to be young, why can't I?". Doesn't that lend credence to the theory that the Regenerations can be somewhat controlled? I seem to recall several theories that Ten regenerated without some of Nine's angst.)

I think it's always been the case that other timelords could control there regenerations in a somewhat more controlled manner than the Doctor ever could - I'm sure I remember Romana having absolute control over her regenerations, and I don't think it was ever stated she was unusual in this. Much as I don't really like the half-human business from the TV movie, it could explain quite neatly why the Doctor is a bit crap at regenerating compared to other timelords.

Seth

09:24 / 24.06.07

I think it's possible that the Troklaphane are the humans who made it to Utopia

I thought this too. Who Jinx!

sleazenation

09:47 / 24.06.07

Six billion seems too large a number for the utopian humans being as it is the approximate population of the Earth today...

Our Lady Has Left the Building

11:25 / 24.06.07

Doesn't explain why they seem so childlike, it's why I'm starting to tend towards them just being 'an ancient enemy of the Time Lords' or however they were explained in this episode and nothing else.

Maybe.

And I have sympathy for E Randy Dupre, I've often been critical of RTD scripts, I still don't like that Slitheen two-parter from s.1, but I did enjoy this, and I can see that this new Master has all the key points of a RTD bad idea, but I think John Simm just about manages to save it, for me.

Shiny: Well Over Thirty

12:55 / 24.06.07

Doesn't explain why they seem so childlike

Do they all seem particularly childlike though, or is that just the main spokeshpere? If they are survivors from the last episode that one is probably the young child that the episode made a point of showing us.

Regrettable Juvenilia

13:17 / 24.06.07

I'm hoping the shrinking device* the Master used to have comes into play - thinking about it, it's the only way to make the Troclaphane the Utopians** without having that fact be irreversibly depressing. If they're shrunk and hypnotised, they can be unshrunk and deprogrammed and the fact that they were murderous murderers is forgiveable. Presumably the Paradox Engine thing is designed to create the massive hole between the end of the universe and now, and/or stop it from destroying all of time and space in the process (depending on whether this is what the Master wants).

*Oh, okay, it's called a Tissue Compression Eliminator.

**The big clue is one of the Troclaphane talking about how they need to escape from the coming darkness, surely?

Lama glama

20:39 / 24.06.07

Didn't the TCE kill all of it's victims immediately, though?

iamus

23:14 / 24.06.07

If they are survivors from the last episode that one is probably the young child that the episode made a point of showing us.

I think it's worth bearing in mind that this seems to be very much a three-parter. I'd be surprised if there wasn't payoff to a lot of the stuff set up in the previous episode, particularly the whole Utopia thing. There's an expectation there as to what's happened to all of the humans, and it would also make a very cruel and tragic twist if we find out that Yana, for all his noble intentions had been dooming them all along.

If it is them (and it might not be) then The Doctor's gonna have to redeem them all somehow, or the Human Race dies a horrible wee death at the end of time.

Martha's still got a lot to prove here too. Bit of a legacy to live up to.

Seth

00:33 / 25.06.07

Now you're going to have to change your name to wee death. And yes, you can choose my next fictionsuit (again) and I'll put off reverting to Seth for another month.

Seth

00:33 / 25.06.07

YO!

Regrettable Juvenilia

07:41 / 25.06.07

Martha's still got a lot to prove here too. Bit of a legacy to live up to.

Dunno what you're on about! I thought the end of the last episode was a nice inversion of the end of 'Bad Wolf': instead of the Doctor telling Rose "I'm coming to get you" we have Martha saying "I'm coming back" - the companion gets to do the saving for once.

iamus

11:08 / 25.06.07

That's kind of what I mean. She's been in Rose's shadow for the whole season and she's got to do something big if she wants out of it. The Doctor saved Rose from the Daleks, but it was her that really pulled his arse from the fire in the end.

What's Martha's brother up to again?

Now you're going to have to change your name to wee death

La petite mort!

Also, I totally think that when he discovered the hacked-up Tardis, The Doctor should have cried. The real Doctor would have cried.

The Strobe

11:12 / 25.06.07

I remembered the other thing that made me smile: the Master using "decimate" correctly. The smug git.

iamus

11:13 / 25.06.07

I also find it interesting that The Doctor said in Family of Blood that everything that makes up John Smith is present in him. That Smith is really just an aspect of his personality.

If that's true of The Master and Yana, maybe there's more regret about his people and the Time War in there than he likes to admit.

Saveloy

11:39 / 25.06.07

Please someone tell me there are stills of the Master's happy & angry faces up on the web somewhere.

Regrettable Juvenilia

11:45 / 25.06.07

Funny.

Not funny.

penitentvandal

12:17 / 25.06.07

Didn't the TCE kill all of it's victims immediately, though?

It didn't kill Death's Head when the Seventh Doctor used it on him in the comic, so presumably either

(a) there is a non-lethal setting, which the Master just never used (the Doctor does make a point of saying he doesn't really know how to work it), or

(b) as long as the humans of the future are twenty feet tall, made of metal, and have bizarre speech patterns, they'll be fine, yes?

I think it has to be the future humans, somehow, though - the degree to which the Doctor cares for humanity has been stressed throughout this series and the last two, so that can be the only thing that would 'break the Doctor's heart.'

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