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Doctor Who, Season Four, Non-spoiler Thread

 
  

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Whisky Priestess
13:11 / 04.05.08
Whoa! Only the other week I was musing that it would be great if the Doctor had a daughter. Let's hope it will be.

And I was a leetle bit annoyed by the IMHO unnecessary sacrifice of Mark Zuckerberg - I get that he was being heroic and all, but what if he'd just pressed the button then instantly teleported out there? Not so smart now, Boy Genius ...

But apart from that, yes, I really enjoyed it. Some great back refs and some even greater Cribbins - although my toes still curl rather when Catherine Tate does her "sincere emotion" face.
 
 
Kali, Queen of Kitteh
13:35 / 04.05.08
Yeah, in hindsight, I too am bothered by Genius Boy's sacrifice. A bit unnecessary for Who. You want to live in a world where the villain lives and learns his lesson.
 
 
All Acting Regiment
17:45 / 04.05.08
I dunno, I think he made a split-second decision - probably didn't have time to work out a way of teleporting himself out too.
 
 
Lama glama
21:49 / 04.05.08
The minute Rattigan enthused about enjoying it when Atmos drives its victims into water, he was signposted for redemptive death. It would have been nice if something unpredictable happened to him, but evil children never come out of things well in Doctor Who.
 
 
Whisky Priestess
22:36 / 04.05.08
Poor evil children. I blame the evil parents.
 
 
Kali, Queen of Kitteh
22:42 / 04.05.08
I blame the evil siblings.
 
 
Lama glama
22:59 / 04.05.08
It's all very well blaming evil relatives, but what about evil society?
 
 
Whisky Priestess
23:54 / 04.05.08
Or the evil government?

BORIS JOHNSON PLEDGES CRACKDOWN ON EVIL CHILDREN

is a headline I would not be surprised to see ...
 
 
Not in the Face
09:11 / 05.05.08
Or the evil government?

BORIS JOHNSON PLEDGES CRACKDOWN ON EVIL CHILDREN

is a headline I would not be surprised to see ...


I beleive he has already made that promise, although the crackdown is in the form of losing their free bus pass rather than sacrificing themselves on an alien starship. But I suppose now in power he can thrash out these minor details
 
 
Dead Megatron
11:19 / 05.05.08
I wonder if the Doctor is going to go to Peru any time soon.
 
 
All Acting Regiment
13:47 / 05.05.08
I hope Boris Johnson's election is part of an elaborate Doctor Who viral trailer campaign, and that he'll be shot in the face. As part of the campaign or just generally.
 
 
Kali, Queen of Kitteh
15:30 / 05.05.08
Yikes.
 
 
Feverfew
18:16 / 05.05.08
I did like the idea that Cribbins - or Cribbins' daughter - keeps an axe under the bonnet, though. Now, nobody will mess with Cribbins.
 
 
Kali, Queen of Kitteh
18:22 / 05.05.08
I don't think anyone could be that stupid.
 
 
raggedman
19:38 / 05.05.08
she kept it in the house
that bit made me yearn even more for a mum's united, can't think of a villain Jacqui, Sylvia and Francine couldn't take down

maybe that's where this series is building, Team Doctor
like Batman with his Bat family or the Paul Jenkins Hellblazer story were Constantine's mates stopped being just cannon fodder
all the companions and their families (in the widest sense) transformed by the refining fire of the Doctor kicking it to the big bad across time
Doctor looking at the Master sadly 'This is the new timelord empire...'
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
01:13 / 06.05.08
Smug kid should have suffered more.

Cribbins should have got free ice cream. And maybe pie, too.

I'm starting to like Donna.

Martha should take over Torchwood, because she's clearly less shit at, well, EVERYTHING than Jack.

The Doctor?

... the Doctor was in it as well? Blimey, I really wasn't paying enough attention, was I.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
01:14 / 06.05.08
SRSLY he was kinda cool though.

I liked it.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
01:32 / 06.05.08
I too am bothered by Genius Boy's sacrifice. A bit unnecessary for Who. You want to live in a world where the villain lives and learns his lesson.

Oh yes. I want to live in that world. But I don't want my entertainment world to be the same as the one I live in. In my entertainment world I want smug fuckers to suffer and die.

In the real world I want them to be a bit embarrassed because their trousers split when they were bending over or something.

It is somewhere in the gap between these two worlds that I am a terrible, terrible person. Who dies with a smile on his face.




...ooh look! Doctor Who! Cool!





AND WHEN DOES CRIBBINS GET A PROPER GO??? CRIBBINS AND JACKIE. DREAM TEAM.

SRS.
 
 
sleazenation
05:51 / 06.05.08
I saw Boy Genius's death as a failure of imagination - of the show's makers as much as of the boy himself, but cruicually I think that the boy's lack of imagination was entirely in character.

He thought he was being clever and imaginative, but all he was doing was playing the same old game.
 
 
sleazenation
05:55 / 06.05.08
Contrast that to UNIT's capability for imaginative solutions with the Valiant being used to clear the skys somewhat...
 
 
All Acting Regiment
13:12 / 06.05.08
I do like the Valiant.
 
 
Lama glama
13:55 / 06.05.08
Having watched the episode again my favourite bit has to be when Rattigan's screaming about how he's cleverer than all of his students.

Then, dejected, he returns to the Sontaran ship and general Staal, obviously aware of his failure says:
"Perhaps they were more clever than you thought, boy."

Ouch!
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
20:04 / 07.05.08
Hah, says the clone that hasn't learnt yet to cover up his weak spot.
 
 
Seth
03:15 / 08.05.08
DOCTOR WHO!
 
 
All Acting Regiment
18:02 / 08.05.08
From where did the Sontarans originate?
 
 
All Acting Regiment
18:22 / 08.05.08
I mean, Sontar, obviously, but they can't always have been clones. Who were they cloned from?
 
 
Dead Megatron
19:23 / 08.05.08
From a guy who was called Sontar (Sonny?) 50,000 year ago, I suppose
 
 
DavidXBrunt
10:54 / 10.05.08
Fargo Sontar I suspect.
 
 
Triplets
18:16 / 10.05.08
Ep was a snack. Tasty but it didn't even touch the sides.

Ending was painted entirely by numbers. Execution fake-out, the post-poned regeneration, etc. All of it telegraphed so much that Carl August Steinheil knew about it.

Did like that the Doctor's hand sensed Jenny before she was born, thus creating Jenny.

Anti-war message was obvious and incredibly boring. I felt, during and for some time after the credits, like I was being beaten about the face by a fist made of ham.

Liked the Hath-Jones Hath. He was alright. Poor bugger. However, like my brother pointed out: he was wearing a fucking breathing apparatus. Drowing would be slightly alleviated I reckon. And wouldn't he be alright once that oil-much got terraformed?

Also: the TARDIS' translation widget not working this episode. Shouldn't we have heard Hathlish?
 
 
Feverfew
18:44 / 10.05.08
Re: the breathing apparatus - I happened to have the subtitles on at that point, and it did have "Glass Cracking" on the screen, which may explain that.

It was a little bit Timesplitters, though, wasn't it? (Substitute FPS of your choice, naturally.)
 
 
Spatula Clarke
19:27 / 10.05.08
Really liked it, but felt it needed to be split over two episodes, with the script fleshed out quite considerably. Yes, the death scene was shit, because it was painfully obvious that it was coming right from the off, but the very final scene got me all WOOMOTHERFUCKINGYES and teary at the same time, because I'm like that with the enormously optimistic, heroic stuff, and Jenny was fucking ace. Only, I didn't go WOOMOTHERFUCKINGYES out loud, just inside my head and heart, because I'm terribly restrained like that.

And the music when she took off at the end was totally a homage to Blake's 7. Far too close to be accidental.

Tennant pretty great this episode, bar not totally selling me on the "I'm THE DOCTOR and by chucking this spehere thing on the floor, even though it's, like, your version of Jesus' bellend or something like that, I shall initiate GOOD TIMES PARTY TIMES for you and your children, and your children's children. PS no more shooting" line. Georgia Moffett FUCKING ACE. Tate kind of wasted.

Bring on the hate from the Barbelith miserable machine.

Incidentally, I was all WOOMOTHERFUCKINGYES and teary when they did the trailer at the end of the previous episode, revealing the whole "She's my daughter," "Hello dad " bit, just beccause of the sheer audacity of it.
 
 
johnnymonolith
22:21 / 10.05.08
Good episode; if Jenny (who was brilliantfantastic) had come onboard the TARDIS it would have been Romana-tastic!

However: is it my imagination or is there a theme of replacement (for want of a better term) running through the series so far? The Adipose as replacement-offspring in the first episode, the scheme to replace the entire Earth population with stone-beings in the second episode, the Ood turning their master into one of them in the third, the Sontaran plan to turn Earth into a clone world and now this episode. How does the appearance of Rose tie into all this? Do the Daleks have something to do with all this (they were in one of the trailers for series 4 after all so it is safe to assume they will appear later on)?
 
 
Kali, Queen of Kitteh
23:57 / 10.05.08
For my money, the weakest of the series so far, yet enjoyable. I would've liked to have seen the story fleshed out too. I loved Martha and the Hath. It was so sweet that it made me teary when it died saving her.

Anyone else get that Rose feeling when the soldiers were talking about how "her breath created life"? Or that the Doctor could hear the drums too as he pointed the pistol at Cobb?
 
 
Poke it with a stick
09:48 / 11.05.08
I'm tempted to blame Murray Gold for that one seeing as he has all the subtlety and innovation of a victorian house brick.
I'm fed up having to turn the volume down and miss dialogue because of his hugely intrusive and manipulative score.

Having said that, so much less annoying than I'd feared it was going to be and the Hath seemed genuinely different for Who - I like the fact we know nothing about them - they just were.

I'm prepared to ignore the whole suited and booted and made-up'ness of the clones just this once, but I'm noticing a steadily increasing change in the tone of the show:

Doctor Who used to be he and his companions wandering around the universe as smart-arsed tourists, getting caught-up in drama and accidentally saving whole planets at a time. These days they cut out the whole "accidental" bit and just have the doctor sort it all out because he's a Lonely God/Timelord/Smug git with a screwdriver.

In the older series, there was the idea that he wasn't meant to meddle particularly, but RTD and co. gave him this supposed ability to instinctively know when it's OK to tinker... I'm not liking his absolute infallibility these days.
 
 
Lama glama
12:29 / 11.05.08
I really liked it (intrusive score and all-- more intrusion Murray, MORE!) and can't wait to see Jenny Who on BBC 2 in 2009. My only problem with the episode is that it could have been and probably should have been two episodes. The Hath and Human factions were barely established, the geography of the place was very confusing and there were so many themes running about the place that it became a little overbearing at times. With two episodes, everything could have been so much more relaxed, and we would have got to spend more time with Georgia Moffett who was really fantastic as Jenny.

johnnymonolith:

Replacement does seem to be a theme, along with the invasive colonisation of planets. Children and progeny of all sorts also seems to be a definite theme: Adipose reproduction, Pyrovillian's assimilation of human flesh, Sontaran and Messaline cloning and of course the Doctor's Daughter. It's very likely that's going somewhere, along with bees and the Medusa Cascade. Probably.

I really liked Jenny's escape from Messaline at the end. She stole a ship to explore the universe, just like her dad.
 
  

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