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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Doctor Who, Season Four, Non-spoiler Thread

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09:10 / 16.05.09

So is June Whitfield apparently. So Cribbins may be getting a bit of the other, or getting his leg over. Something like that. I'm out of practice with the correct terminology for these situations.

21:38 / 16.05.09

Pie, I believe.

19:56 / 21.05.09

So Weeble and Bob as assistance is not that unlikely ?
Hmm Pie

03:46 / 27.12.09

Everybody quit watching this show, then?

Bah.

09:00 / 27.12.09

Still watching, just wondering if anyone else was going to comment first.

Timothy Dalton, huh?

jentacular dreams

14:57 / 28.12.09

Cribbins!

My Mom Thinks I'm Cool

22:11 / 28.12.09

I liked Waters of Mars a lot more than End of Time so far.

(spoilers if it matters)

Every special effect involved with the Master looked silly rather than creepy. I like the Ood but don't care much for cryptic prophecy as a plot device, or people only you can see giving you messages that aren't helpful. And the whole 60 minutes were spent setting up the Master to take over the world again, which was kind of cool, but seemed completely unrelated to the whole End of Time thing revealed in the last 30 seconds. Which means it's going to be rushed in the second half as they have to introduce it before they can deal with it.

On the plus side, I did like the bit about Donna's subconscious secretly helping out.

I'm mostly annoyed, actually, that I have absolutely nobody to discuss it with. Nobody at Reddit or WarrenEllis.com watches Doctor Who? None of my friends like it? Poo.

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

11:16 / 29.12.09

The End of Time seems to be an hour of John Simm laughing madly. It was distracting enough to the point where I think the horror I am supposed to feel about the Master's plan (snarf snarf!) and the exhilaration of the existence of the Time Lords didn't happen.

I am hoping that hour two will be less "What the hell?" and more "Proper sendoff! Yay!".

Poke it with a stick

15:48 / 31.12.09

While, in general, I thought this was a showcase of all the worst excesses of RTD, that scene in the cafe was great. No bloody music; no super-Master chewing the scenery (and everything else) and no massive portents of doom - just two men having a difficult and emotional conversation. When RTD remembers to have his characters talk and think rather than gurn and run, I'm prepared to forgive him almost anything.

Having said that, can anyone else say deus ex machina?

02:40 / 01.01.10

I gather this was a poor episode to try out as my first to watch the whole way through, then?

19:03 / 01.01.10

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

Master: See? I brought the Timelords back! Isn't that a good thing?

You weren't there, man. You got sent to bed early the night of the party. I stayed up with the adults. Dad drank too much and started hitting people. And that's what you've brought back.

Fortunately I can undo the plans of the series' finale's villains by shooting a single machine. Which is nice. Goodbye Timothy Dalton!

... Oh, I'm still alive. Wait a minute. Where did John Simm disappear to apparently off-camera? Oh well, better save Cribbins from the glass that's apparently bullet-proof.

Cribbins: Oh, thank you, Doctor! Wait a minute, where are you going?

Sorry, Cribbins. There's still ten minutes left, so I have to go and set up some continuity for the new lad as an excuse to shoehorn as many guest stars from the past in as possible. Won't this be fun.

Right, now that's done... Oh no! I'm Matt Smith!

20:22 / 01.01.10

I thought it was great. But me being out of step as far as Who reception on Barbelith goes... not exactly a first.

Hated the first part - Christmas Day episode by far the worst episode of New Who evah. As I remember it, though, I wasn't particularly taken with the penultimate Eccleston episode, either, and that was the first in another two-part finale.

Yes, the Master's disappearance was very noticable. And yes, the solution lying in the act of breaking the machine was pretty lazy writing. What the episode got right was the interpersonal stuff. That's always been Davies' strength, when he bothers writing it. He's a shockingly bad family thiller/SF writer - he's *never* got the balance right, always making the adventure childish rather than doing what he thinks he's doing, which is giving it a childlike glee.

Anybody who didn't expect him to see out his tenure on the show with a sob-fest gallery of familiar faces is crazy.

The weak point was the actual regeneration. I very much remain to be convinced by the casting decision, and I don't think that the new Doc was helped particularly by an introductory few lines that reflected Tennant's - the whole bit of finding something odd with his new body was done already and repeating it wasn't a very clever thing to do. Also, the music - which, until that point, had beeen remarkably subdued in comparison to the intrusion it normally presents - came back in with such force that I couldn't make out what the fuck he was saying right at the end.

21:01 / 01.01.10

I loved the whole thing. Yes, there's holes all over the place, but I gave to say I really do not give a toss. It was a big, sobby goodbye from RTD and Dave to the show and it showed. Don't give a toss. It shattered canon in so many ways that I just say "screw canon". It was fun, beautiful and well structured.
I was getting flashbacks to It's a Wonderful Life in the last 20 minutes. Ok, so younger Rose looks a lot older suddenly. Don't care.
Rassilon is kind-of alive so Five Doctors can't have happened. Meh.
"Doctor meets his mum" was schmaltzy and unnecessary? Sod you, not listening.
In fact, I haven't been so utterly enaged (I suddenly realised I was chewing my fingers at one point) by a piece of telly since Tom Baker fell off a small platform onto soft grass many years ago. Yes, RTD has written a lot of utterly awful episodes over the years but this was just great.

"Step aside"

Poke it with a stick

11:29 / 02.01.10

Doctor meets his mum? I didn't get that, though I'm not sure who it was meant to be - Romana?

RTD genuinely had me at three points last night - I won't go into it, but you know, Cribbens and Tennant felt real to me.

I thought the last 20 minutes was fanservice rather than fanwank, but he sailed it pretty close to the wind, at times.

And not one, but two Star Wars homages.

ONLY NICE THINGS

11:50 / 02.01.10

Well, it was authorial self-indulgence, which wouldn't be so bad if we hadn't already had everyone getting together and saying goodbye to the Doctor at length at the end of the last full season. Some of these ideas - signals sent back through time to inspire action, the Wrath of Khan ending, the gang all turning up for the big finish - are recycling at a pretty fierce rate, now. Still, it was only ten minutes or so of a really fun, comparatively well-paced (after the intermittently manic sludgefest of the first) episode, well-played by Tennant and with RTD's better angels to the fore.

Incidentally, fanservice means the insertion of sexually provocative material into works - I liked Mickey and Martha's new look as well, but I don't think I liked it that much.

What's interesting to me, I think, in the responses is how some of those here have been in response to idas and accusations which I don't think actually exist in the public sphere. Cube is clearly eager to make it clear that he doesn't care about disruptions to canon which I don't imagine the vast majority of the current viewership have any interest in at all. Elsewhere, Mistoffeles proposed that Matt Smith's appearance would involve a total reset to @stop the RTD wound from festering" - apparently feeling that in general the actions taken by Davies are acknowledged by the public and BBC bosses as disastrous, rather than, e.g. the making of the modern series. I just don't think a meaningful number of people are as unhappy about these things as these responses imagine.

So, not enough Gallifrey, the Time Lords were nerfed, the last series finale had planets appearing next to Earth, the Doctor getting irradiated and so on... but it was fun, wasn't it?

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

13:34 / 02.01.10

I agree that the plot had many many holes but I've come to expect that from RTD. Regardless, I thought the current incarnation saying farewell to all his companions in the new series was lovely. I liked seeing it.

Matt Smith is an odd-looking man.

ONLY NICE THINGS

13:45 / 02.01.10

I'm sure that plenty of people are going to comment on the relative physical attractiveness of the actors who play Doctor Who. I feel like we should maybe rise above that - these are people with feelings, after all, and nobody gets to decide their bone structure. I'm sure we will all find a way to love Matt Smith.

15:26 / 02.01.10

the responses is how some of those here have been in response to idas and accusations which I don't think actually exist in the public sphere

True to an extent, but did you see the comments thread on The Guardian's review of the first part? Ouch.
The intended younger audience probably don't care, no, but there is a very large old-enough-to-know-better bunch (like us) who you know will pick over it and crow about how awful a writer RTD is and how Steven Moffat will be great (and there is evidence for both, yes) and yada yada, but instead of appealing to the quality of the show as it is will complain about, for example, how bloody good Roger Delgado was compared to Simm while conveniently forgetting Antony Ainley's scenery-chewing.
It did reahash the goodbyes, but I think that's more a sign of how badly done they were before than anything else.
And that's the second person who has made the Star Wars comparison. I must have not been paying attention.
Oh, and the mum thing was just a feeling, really, although it's entirely possible it was Susan. No idea who the other one was, though.

Poke it with a stick

16:06 / 02.01.10

Cube: The mum thing was echoed by Mark Lawson over here, although I'm not sure that that was just him trying to justify a pretty limp comparison between Doctor Who and Hamlet.

As for the Star Wars references, the section with Cribbens and the cactus bloke in the gun turrets was reminiscent of the escape from the Death Star and the goodbye to Jack was the Mos Eisley cantina in everything but a band playing alien free-form jaz in the background.

And let's be thankful Murray Gold didn't get a chance to try his hand at that.

Only Nice Things: I bow to your superior grasp of internet nomenclature.

Does anyone have a opinion on the new-look TARDIS? That is, if the trailer for the new season really does show it around 20 seconds in (Sorry Kali - UK only, but I know it's available elsewhere).

16:11 / 02.01.10

I don't think that Time Lady was the Doctor's mum.
Or Susan, or Romana, by the way.
Both of them don't make many sense, in a celebrative-end-of-RTD's run episode.

My money's on Doctor-Donna.

When asked about her by Wilfred, the Doctor doesn't answer, but looks in a strange way at Donna.

22:35 / 02.01.10

Young Doctor like that? It's his Mum.

Course it's his Mum.

I'm only being half facetious

22:44 / 02.01.10

The thing that surprised me, non-fan but willing participant that I am, was the absence of real death. I was expecting the Doctor to die in a much more solid way and for his regeneration to be more than a little unusual and leftfield in terms of it's purpose, results and mechanism. Was I wrong to expect this? It seems to me that the show - which admittedly I don't pay that much attention to - set up those kinds of expectations.

23:10 / 02.01.10

Ah, but all the branding is so different and he has a gun in that trailer and he's young and could that red telephone box possibly be a new tardis (the inside is different why not the outisde?)?

23:25 / 02.01.10

Was I wrong to expect this?

Not at all. I was expecting a proper nasty, horrible end involving a reboot in which the decks are cleared and someone new took up the mantle. But those expectations can go hang. I'll live.

By the way, I have realised where my instinct that it was his mum came from. On Desert Island Discs, Dave T talked about how he was happy that his mum had seen him become successful just before she died, and I think maybe I was connecting Dave and the Doc.

Even though in the story he effectively sent her to Hell, it may have been a nod from RTD of Dave's relationship with his own mum. Not sure.

00:10 / 03.01.10

Also thought it was lovely to call Jess Hynes' character Verity. A nice, quiet tribute.

01:15 / 03.01.10

I thought it was pretty good, actually—thematically coherent, at least, in that it killed off the Doctor in a somewhat unexpected way that was still entirely in character. He doesn't die saving the whole planet—he dies to save one man, a very old man whose days are numbered anyway, but who has put his faith in the Doctor.

And just as the Master gets his redemption moment, so this is the Doctor's moment of redemption, for all his endangerment of his companions, for the lives of all the "little people" who've gotten caught in the crossfire when he's fought his grand cosmic battles.

BBCAmerica's been running selected eps from the Tennant years in the lead-up to the finale; caught "Family of Blood" last night, and I was struck by something the Matron said near the end of the episode: "If you hadn't chosen this place, on a whim, would any of these people have died?" And the Doctor was caught short.

Throughout these seasons, we've been reminded again and again of how dangerous a man the Doctor is, to his friends as well as to his enemies. Those who love him—and just about everybody he meets comes to love him, in some way (did Wilfred actually blow him a kiss for cryeye)—such people must inevitably suffer. But by having his final sacrifice be for the sake of a single human life, for Wilfred of all people, for such an insignificant man as that—it may not balance the scales, exactly, but it shows us where his hearts lie.

To address a couple of points from upthread:

not one, but two Star Wars homages.

Three, by my reckoning; the Master's redemption, with him letting loose on Rasselon with the lightning, was straight outta Return of the Jedi with Vader vs. Palpatine; the monster turns on the monster who created him.

...the music ... came back in with such force that I couldn't make out what the fuck he was saying right at the end.

Pretty sure it was "Geronimo-o-o-o-o!"

03:07 / 03.01.10

I hope, I hope, I hope "Geronimo!" doesn't become a thing. Please.

In other news, it was a big step up from part one, but it wasn't the best episode ever. I'm going to miss the hell out of David Tennant.

He was My Doctor.

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

11:39 / 03.01.10

In the teaser for the new season, I believe the 11th Doctor says "Geronimo!" twice.

I had read somewhere that Julie Gardner confirmed that the woman was Romana but again cannot remember where I read it, even though it has been in the past 48 hours.

14:24 / 03.01.10

(Doesn't seem this is still a non-spoiler thread, but it's not season four, either) I spent a lot of time last night watching the two "End of Time" episodes back to back. A lot of time, yes. Won't be getting that back, will I.
I think what I resolved is that it's pretty useless for me to try and jump in at this point, without the benefit of knowing the history and canon it's built on. Without that, it's just ridiculous and silly to me. I'm sure if I'd been watching since I was a kid, I'd love/hate it.

17:22 / 03.01.10

Well, yeah. It is a bit daft to watch a series finale, not having seen the other episodes, and expect to get any of it.

The female Time Lord wasn't anybody. My initial feeling was "mum" - and I'm sure that's the subtext that RTD was going for (really, who else is it going to be? He's been awfully careful to not include characters and events that only viewers of the old shows would get the reference to, especially in roles as important as this, and he's not going to start throwing that all away in the very last epsiode he's in charge of) - but it's also fairly clear that, at the same time as being his mum (or sister, or wife, or child), she's not got any identity yet. It's a legacy thing that he's thrown into the mix - something for future writers to play with, if they want.

In non-plot terms, I was a little disappointed by the regeneration sequence. All other Doctors got something unique - largely because the special effects were defined by budget and technology at the time of those regenerations, but still. It was a nice little touch that meant even if you knew a regeneration was coming, you got *some* kind of surprise. This is the third time we've had the same efffect used - and the second for Tennant - and it robbed the moment of some potential impact, I thought.

I know it was full of plot holes, but the only one that's really stuck with me is: how is it possible for the Doctor's mum/sister/child/whatever to appear before WIlf and tell him what's going to happen and what he needs to do, if she's sealed off inside the bubble that contains everything related to the Time War? or is that another lazy prophesy thing?

Rassilon isn't a plot hole, btw. There was nothing stopping the newly-evil Time Lords from freeing him from his stony prison - it did grant him immortality, after all. It's not like he ever died.

Oh, and apparently, the Master disappeared into the bubble with him when the Doctor destroyed the terminal. You see them both vanish into the whiteness. It wasn't very clear at all, though.

22:02 / 03.01.10

is that another lazy prophesy thing?

Umm... On balance, yes.

01:03 / 07.02.10

I thought someone here might be interested in this.

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

12:46 / 07.02.10

I read it on Gaiman's blog this morning and wept with utter delight. It's a convergence of two things I love so dearly that I can only do a dance.

23:50 / 08.02.10

Eep. I had tea with NG a few years ago (well, he had tea, I had beer) and pretty much all we talked about was Douglas Adams' tenure on Who. He's a big fanboy and will do it proud, and if this is confirmed, I reckon the new team deserve a round of applause for getting him.

ONLY NICE THINGS

16:09 / 09.02.10

Could this be as good as that episode of Babylon 5 with Penn and Teller? Could be!

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