BARBELITH underground
 

Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.


Doctor Who, Season Four, Non-spoiler Thread

 
  

Page: 1 ... 1617181920(21)2223242526... 28

 
 
Triplets
19:38 / 04.07.08
So we have

Temp(us) Donna Noble

Lady Time Lord?


I already covered the Donna = Lady, Noble = Lord bit, but temp is something I'd missed there (including when Randy E. Randy said it apparently). Ooh!

Even better when we find that Davies included name puns very early on in The Fires of Pompeii, here:

Davies encouraged Moran to insert linguistic jokes similar to those in the comic book series Asterix, such as Lucius Petrus Dextrus ("Lucius Stone Right Arm"),
 
 
iamus
22:12 / 04.07.08
Hehehehehehehehehehe!

This is head soup, from my brain, simmering over four years of pure minted telly. No conclusions, just points of fact....




Something's happening, right? Something big and nasty. There was this big war, see, and it raged right across time, wiped out whole civilizations, displaced tons more and cracked planets into wee bits. Its effects have been echoing across a universe it now doesn't really exist in and it's been thrumming along behind everything The Doctor's been doing since then.

The Doctor. Quite the man, him. Clever bastard. Saves worlds. Carries the weight of the universe on his shoulders. Has occasional grimaces. Killed his entire species to rid the universe of the most evil bastards in creation, The Daleks. Gave himself an angst hangover of Billy Corgan proportions in the process.

Was cool though. Daleks were killed. Universe wounded, but safe.

Daleks came back. Everything shit.

Daleks dead again. Billy Corgan leaves.

Daleks back again, on the back foot. Rolls up sleeves, sets in about it. Has a bit of a dance about with them, bit like old times but not quite as scary, yeah?


Fucksticks.

Dave's back.


Dave's a prick.

---------

Dave got the biggest Get Out Of Jail Free Card the cheeky wee cock's ever drawn. Pulled right out of a sealed and buried fragment of spacetime, and back into existence like he'd just nipped out for a quick fag.

Jammy fucking bastard!

His wee lackey, Cann, last Dalek in the universe, drops through the time lock and tells Dave to get back inside cause The Doctor's hoggin' the dancefloor. Dave jumps in and nicks some planets. The Doctor looks about like somebody just stopped the music and put the lights on.

Wee Cann's brain's been fried, but. All he can do is rattle out stream-of-conciousness ravings about all the shit he knows and he's seen, trying to impress Dave. Dave's pretty chuffed with his work though and gives his ranting a good bit of attention. When the other Daleks try an tell him than Cann's spouting pish, he shouts them down and tells them that Caan only speaks the truth. The very next thing that comes out the wee man's mouth? All that stuff about the threefold man dancing in the lonely places. The creator of them all. The Doctor.

Dave's pretty sure things are trundling along quite nicely. The arrival of The Doctor on the scene, trying to mess up all the shit he's scheming. doesn't phase him one bit, in fact it only vindicates him. Dalek Cann foretold it, and it's happening. Dave wants The Doctor about.

(The first thing that springs to mind about the threefold man, is the head of Russ T.
Man likes his Deus Ex Machina, aye. But he also likes his own cleverness a good bit. End of his tenure and he's pulling everything up to now right back in. All I can think of as an explanation for that, from things we've already seen, is a Three Doctor's scenario. Where we started, where we are, where we're going. That's about it for speculation though and I'm not out and out expecting it...)

Tennent cannae be out the game. Contracts or no contracts, who's leaving and who ain't there's no fuckin chance that was his grand exit. We've got his hand, heavily foreshadowed, which originally came from him when he was a freshly-regenerated young pup and has been shown time and time again (this season included) to have a very strong link to him and all that genetic hoojimaflook.

At the same time we've got Donna, who, like it or not, is a bit special. Rose says so. Doctor says so. Instead of the universe fixing itself around her when things go a bit transdimensionally awry (a la Father's Day) she splinters the fucker into a whole new parallel. 'Member that parallel universes aren't as closed off and immutable as people like to make out. The Doctor himself once said that the Time Lords used to be in charge of their upkeep and maintenance. It was the destruction of the Time Lords in the war that closed the barriers between dimension. But that's barrier's been getting flimsier and flimsier ever since The Tardis took a drunken tumble through one and met some robots.

Rose still gots a secret, I reckon. She's been holding off until she's found The Doctor to tell it, but there's a whole heap of shit raining down on every dimension at the moment, and Davros and The Daleks currently only account for one, no matter what they did to get there. Buuuut, they're building some sort of big engine out of planets in The Medusa Cascade. Used to big a big rift in Time and Space, that one. Prof. Yana got found there as a nipper.

Right after he shat it from the war, wasn't it?


Hrrrrrrrrrm......

There's a lot of threads here that are jumping at me, but nothing's quite going click yet. If Russ T. gives me that click tomorrow (as I'm bloody hoping he will) instead of a damp little fart, then I'll love the man forever.
 
 
iamus
22:20 / 04.07.08
....

That probably had more of a point to it before I got bored writing and hit post...
 
 
■
23:35 / 04.07.08
Grabbing the baton, iamus.
Look, there's a hand in a jar, right, that's part of Doc Dave. It's all over the place, foregrounded at the start of the ep. It's a symbol for him. What if, instead of the body Doc Dave is in regenerating as we would expect (RTD is all about breaking rules), the hand regenerates into... Doc Dave. When the regen starts he hold up his hand. A moment later he says "it's starting", and his hand glows. Buuuutt, if both the hand (kind of part Doc Chris and more Doc Dave than the rest of him, stem-cell-wise) AND his body regen, we temporarily get two Doctors. One of which at the end of all this gets to sod off to another dimension and play hide the Draconian with Rose at the end of it all. That leaves him clean of dirty dirty desire to be a clean slate for Moffat to start anew.

Nah. I love it when I have this week of speculation, though.
 
 
Seth
23:54 / 04.07.08
I'd kinda love it if we get a new Doctor but Tenant stays on as a recurring new Master.
 
 
Kali, Queen of Kitteh
01:18 / 05.07.08
I honestly think that Tennant's going nowhere, but I suppose that's personal hope. I really wasn't expecting a potential regeneration happening at the end of "The Stolen Earth," so more fool me.
 
 
HCE
01:56 / 05.07.08
Donna, who died (under the truck) to save all of humanity, and then came back to life (in another timeline) is clearly JESUS and I don't know why you all can't see that.

In other exciting news, were Billie Piper's teeth always so huge? It's like she's swallowed a handful of piano keys. I remember them as being a little more human-sized.

Can't wait till tomorrow!
 
 
Hallo, Paper Spaceboy
02:09 / 05.07.08
They're Billie Piper-sized, and I don't know why people must continuously comment on them. Hasn't this already been discussed not two pages ago?
 
 
osymandus
09:35 / 05.07.08
Well isnt obvious i mean it all times up with the Alchemical equation of IAO
I= Rasollon the maker
A= The other breaker and fixer of things
O= Omega the end of all

The regeneration is the alchemical destruction by fire to be reborn as per the phoenix , but this time Doctor dave using his hand (hands have an esoteric refernce to will or expression of intellegct ya know).

Plus his on top of teh eye of harmony calls back all teh other time lords , Donnas the female aspect of a hidden Time lady-ess (i mean come on Donna = italian for Lady )
Its all symbolic ...

Or failing that we get Jason Streatham giving it large , calling Dave Ross a slag and doing him with both barrells

Its a close call.
 
 
iamus
10:19 / 05.07.08
Doctor Dave'll pull some handy regenerative trickery. The Medusa Cascade is the nexus of all worlds. The Dalek planet machine is the thing what'll break it. Donna is the thing what'll fix it.

Broadly speaking.
 
 
Poke it with a stick
11:10 / 05.07.08
I've come to the conclusion that I don't have a scoobie about what's happening anymore. And that I don't really care - I think RTD has (hopefully) got all his "Doctor as God" bollocks out of the way already and that this is going to be a frakking great episode.

Dave Ross and Caan make up for the whole "The Daleks? Again?" reaction I had at first. A bit of intelligence to go with the psychotic malevolence is always good.

The Daleks really do need therapy, don't they?
 
 
Lama glama
11:49 / 05.07.08
The Medusa Cascade. Used to big a big rift in Time and Space, that one. Prof. Yana got found there as a nipper.

Loved all your theory making iamus, except my hyper-anal fan child wants to tell you Yana was found on the coast of the Silver Devestation. It doesn't matter, I suppose, but my broken brain wouldn't let me ignore it.
 
 
the Doctor
12:49 / 05.07.08
My guesses (actually, more higly unlikely hopes) for the guy who could be a good 11th Doctor.

* the Grant, Himself
* Warren Ellis
* Alan Moore (just THINK about it!)
* Robert Carlyle
* Daniel Radcliffe (THAT would be quite a surprise, wouldn't it?)
* Jason Isaacs
* Bruce Dickinson

...and that other guy.
The one whose name I simply can't remember.
Yeah. Him!
 
 
iamus
14:05 / 05.07.08
Yana was found on the coast of the Silver Devestation. It doesn't matter, I suppose, but my broken brain wouldn't let me ignore it.

Ooop! You're right, there!

Was The Medusa Cascade mentioned at all in those episodes? It's certainly been kicking about for an age and crossed my wires somewhere.


Not long to go!

I should nip out and buy wine.
 
 
iamus
14:06 / 05.07.08
* Bruce Dickinson

You mean David Dickinson, surely?
 
 
Seth
14:11 / 05.07.08
Alexander Siddig for the Doctor!







You know it makes sense.
 
 
Kali, Queen of Kitteh
15:51 / 05.07.08
The Master mentioned the Medusa Cascade in one of the last two eps last year, I just can't remember in what context.
 
 
the Doctor
15:55 / 05.07.08
David?

No, no, Bruce Dickinson.

 
 
iamus
16:09 / 05.07.08
David




David Dickinson.
 
 
iamus
17:43 / 05.07.08
Awwwwww, Russ!


Geez a hug you big, beautiful bastard!
 
 
Spatula Clarke
18:17 / 05.07.08
I don't think I liked it.

:<
 
 
Triplets
18:21 / 05.07.08
Are you... are you trying to bait me, Erandy?
 
 
Spatula Clarke
18:34 / 05.07.08
No, really. I don't think I liked it, but I'm finding it difficult to work out if that's the case or not. I certainly didn't come away from it feeling satisfied in any way.

The resolution of Rose's story is to create a substitute Doctor? With the personaliity of the one who she built into a father figure inside the body of the one she got gooey over? That's a whole world of wrong, right up there with Paving Slab Girlfriend.

And Donna gets condemned to live a life that she hates, being a person who she hates? With the only compensation being crappy CGI sparkle coming from her ring, teaser-style?

That, plus Mopey Doctor is back. Joy.

I wanted to be sat there going WOOOO! as the credits rolled. Instead, it was a mixture of wha? and bah.
 
 
iamus
18:46 / 05.07.08
Bloody marvelous, I thought. Still prey to the normal structural weaknesses of New Who, but stuff that I've always been more than happy to disregard as long as it delivers on the no-pretense emotional joygasms.

The resolution of Rose's story is to create a substitute Doctor? With the personaliity of the one who she built into a father figure inside the body of the one she got gooey over? That's a whole world of wrong, right up there with Paving Slab Girlfriend.


Paving Slab is exactly what I was thinking, but that's pretty much why I think I loved that as much as I did. Using a similar setup, it'd be easy to churn out a pat resolution that ticks all the happy boxes, but I'd wager that'd leave you feeling ten times as dissatisfied.

None of the send-offs here were easy, really. The Doctor gets one perfect moment in the Tardis with all his pals. He gets to save the world and put it all to rights again, but then has to go about cutting the ties and letting everyone go their separate ways. Where else could it end but with The Doctor, lonely again, just him and the Tardis?

Nothing about the end of this run was easy for kids TV. It may have a few tics of the genre, but it's not stuff that's getting resolved in wee heads by Ovaltine and bed.

Bravo!


Fucking loved the bolshy DoctorDonna back and forth. That's the culmination of a great working relationship between Tennant and Tate, wouldn't have worked if it hadn't been those two. You can see that one coming from everything they've worked on together, CiN sketches and all.
 
 
iamus
18:49 / 05.07.08
It totally was like two best mates good-naturedly ripping the pish out of each other.
 
 
Axolotl
19:12 / 05.07.08
I know, their interaction was totally brilliant, and that's why her ending kind of annoyed me. I mean couldn't they have had some kind of applied phlebotinum hand wave that meant she couldn't travel with the Doctor but still knew what she'd done? I don't think that would have cheapened it, or maybe my inner fanboy just wishes that.
I did like the pure joycore of the two Doctors and Dr Donna plus the rest of the companions careering through space dragging the earth behind it, Donna pushing Sarah-Jane away to get a hug from Jack and Mickey's interaction with the rest of the gang.
Somehow however I'm left feeling that the episode was less than the sum of its parts and, like Randy, a little unsatisfied. Though that's not to say I wasn't squeeing during the show.
 
 
DavidXBrunt
19:29 / 05.07.08
If it contained nothing else it had a fantastic performance from Cribbens. Show stealer.
 
 
Feverfew
20:13 / 05.07.08


Indeed.

Also, with regard to the teaser at the end, am I the only person whose first thought was, having seen it, "what? Again?

Fun, but I'm kind of with the unsatisfied lobby.
 
 
Imaginary Mongoose Solutions
21:04 / 05.07.08
That was.... underwhelming?

I do have to say though that Cribbins stole the show. Injected some much needed humanity into a show strangely lacking in any. Actually, let me add Mickey and Jackie to that, too.

Strange. A big whopping finale and those were my favourite 3 characters.
 
 
Poke it with a stick
22:48 / 05.07.08
I'll add my love for the Cribbins and new and improved mean Mickey.

The Rose resolution seemed to do exactly what I wanted it to do and somehow exactly what the 10/Rose shippers wanted it to simultaneously - they got there icky lovey-dovey squeefest and I got the Doctor free of her pancake make-up and irritating whole-body grin. And even then, Rose got the damaged Doctor minus most of the stuff that makes him the Doctor - Spike and the Buffybot all over again.

As for, you know, the story - we had a resolution that wasn't too obvious in its execution (Caan a good guy?) and genuinely epic in scope.

Seen on the big screen, the Crucible would beat the bloody Death Star.

It also managed to move things along in a way that seemed natural, rather than plot devices being shoe-horned into it a la Torchwood at the 11th hour - the DoctorDonna stuff and the constant foreshadowing of Donna's future loss.

But what really sold it for me was the Doctor's attitude to losing the girls: when it came to say goodbye to Rose, there was none of the overwrought emotion from season 2 but even I, cynical, bitter and twisted I wiped a tear from my eye as he made his exit from Donna's life - her being almost too busy on the phone to notice him leaving. That was the real deal.

Plus, German-speaking Daleks.
 
 
iamus
23:18 / 05.07.08
Cube called the two pints of Tennants there.

See, I think there's something beautifully real about that ending for Rose. I mean, the thing with them always seemed that no matter what they had, in the long run it would never work. We all had this discussion in Season 2. At the end of the day, he's a Time Lord and she's a human, completely physically and mentally incompatible. They'll never be able to meet each other's needs. They've been through this shit before, it can't really end any other way and they both know it.

Rose has to give up the man she really loves, from a relationship she knows is too big to last any longer than it did. She ends up with somebody who, in every way, reminds her of the love of her life, but isn't him. He's an echo of that relationship. A pale memory of something she'll never have again.

I think that's a very bloody interesting thing to show the kids of the nation.
 
 
Lurid Archive
00:15 / 06.07.08
Nah, the Doctor that Rose ends up with is just the same as the other, only able to love and share his life with her. As far as Rose is concerned, he is a *better* Doctor than the original.
 
 
Mark Parsons
02:15 / 06.07.08
Spoilers, please? (In spoiler space to preserve the sanctity of the thread title).
 
 
PatrickMM
03:59 / 06.07.08
I reviewed it in depth here. What stood out for me was the fate of Donna, and just how hard to take it is. I feel like anything would have been better than this, and even though that awfulness made for a really gut wrenching ending, after building up the character so well over the series, couldn't she get some kind of happiness? Not since Adrianna's fate on The Sopranos have I seen a character get so brutally torn apart.

There were some really wonderful moments too. I loved the "Children of Time" towing the Earth back home, all working together. And, it was nice to see Rose at least get some kind of happiness. The whole over the top insanity of Davros worked really well, but what sticks with me after the episode is Donna on the phone ignoring the Doctor, and Wilf on the steps saying he'll still watch the stars.
 
 
HCE
04:38 / 06.07.08
I also agree with Randy -- I wound up feeling rather deflated. Save for the moment where Captain Jack spoke my mind, I experienced little jubilation. Too much fast-talking jargon, too little emotional connection.
 
  

Page: 1 ... 1617181920(21)2223242526... 28

 
  
Add Your Reply