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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

DOCTOR WHO! SEASON...um.....thirtyone (No Spoilers)

  
  

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iamus
12:21 / 11.04.10
X-post with Spatula.
 
 
iamus
12:22 / 11.04.10
X-X-Post!
 
 
iamus
12:27 / 11.04.10
Yep, Spatula pretty much sums up what I'm loving so much about this at the moment.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
12:28 / 11.04.10
Some of the smaller moments of CGI have been a bit wonky so far, too. In the scene last week where Amy first sees Prisoner Zero, neither of them are looking at each other. That's pretty pants, because it's not *that* difficult to line up a CG character so that the human player is 'looking' at them. Unless you've done the CG first, which would be insane. This time around, the tentacles were very much not really there, because the lighting was off.

I got some Pertwee from the dignity vomit moment - stiff upper lip in the face of potential humiliation and insurmountable odds. Smith's accent plays to this element of the character perfectly and gives the characterisation yet another element to fall for.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
12:40 / 11.04.10
Also!

Have you ever run away from something because you were scared, or not ready, or just because you could?

Once. A long time ago.

What happened?

*uncertain wave* Hello!

I love this series. This is how the reboot should always have been.

I can't shake the horrible feeling that something this awesome can't last, though, and that it'll either get a poor critical reception or dwindling audience figures, just because Smith isn't a recognisable face and people love to hate on change simply because they can - Who's had a remarkable few years in terms of popularity and it's not too difficult to see some people believing that it needs to be taken down a peg or two.
 
 
iamus
13:28 / 11.04.10
That's why we have regenerations though and why the thing's coming on sixty. Doctor Who gets a bit too entrenched in itself and then it up and changes to become relevant again. There is a backlash of sorts happening, but it all currently seems to be focused on the old guard (David Who? etc). Casts the old self to the wolves and moves on shiny and new, like it always has. Like The Doctor always does.

Early days, and it needs to be seen how and if it's going to pan out but it's important to remember that the only ones who really have a say in the show's overall longevity are the kids. Moffat knows this. He's on record saying sequels aren't as good as originals and it has to be a fresh show that is created for and belongs to the new wave of eight-year-olds that are going to be watching it. They're the ones that'll gather their families round the telly and make it all-right for grown-ups to let themselves that one wee concession in the week, they're the ones that'll be getting sonic-screwdrivers for christmas and getting their Tweed jackets stolen and grogged on. If grown-ups decide they want to be eight to watch it then that's great too, it'll reward them in spades if they do.

It's a show about imagination. Something that can go anywhere and do anything made for people who can go anywhere and do anything. That blue box on the spaceship might as well be a cardboard box in a bedroom. Also, the British have a thing against success and they like to root for the underdog. Doctor Who gets to have it both ways. I think that as long as it keeps changing, stays away from a sense of it's own importance (and now I see the new series, I know exactly what was turning me off the old one) and focusses on how amazing all these NEW things around the corner are, then I really think it can shrug off anything.
 
 
iamus
13:34 / 11.04.10
Also, I think that problem is very much in the minds of the creators.

Just like Prisoner Zero was more to do with Amy's childhood than intergalactic prisons, I don't think the giant Atraxi eyeball really came from outer space to square up our new Doctor. It belonged to the millions of viewers sitting around the telly scrutinising his every move.
 
 
Kali, Queen of Kitteh
14:37 / 11.04.10
I never forget that this is a children's show, albeit a dark one. And regardless of the details of the second episode, it does have a more family-friendly appeal. I wasn't complaining; I was observing.
 
 
■
16:21 / 11.04.10
Again, you've pretty much covered it. The mouth in space and tentacle things plot hole did irk me, but compare this to the superficially similar Simon Pegg episode and stylistically it just blows it out of the water. The grubbiness isn't layered on, it's looks more naturally accreted over time, which is what allows the Doctor to hit the ground running. We're not aiming at Blade Runner, which I think RTD tried to do sometimes, but something transplanted into space that is old even now: Workman's tents, which kids today have probably never seen; fairground laughing clown booths, ditto; clockwork keys as symbols of power. Signifiers of nostalgia that help people hold on to a forgotten world, where everyone keeps forgetting, which is why they don't notice how out of place they are.

It also parallels that episode in another way. It's been ages since I've seen it, but I recall that Ecclestone story also involved the Doctor chewing out a prospective companion and dumping him (the name Adam is tapping at the edge of my memory), but because Amy is smarter, she's able to turn it back on him. Hugs not snogs are also very welcome.

That weird West country accent came back briefly, but I think Gillan is probably using that as a voice to signify something. Not sure what yet. She's also got a catchphrase that's growing on me: "shut up". Possibly because it's something a fomer girlfriend (also a Karen, Scottish with red hair) used to say a lot.

Yes, I did enjoy it, mainly because it's doing political satire right, as you noted. It's not "Look at these idiots in Number 10" it's "Are you sure you're not doing something similar, even if you have good reasons to?"

And come on, subverting the Demon Headmaster like that was a stroke of genius. Look! Instant bad guy! Oh, maybe not.

Mind you, I would have thought Amy would have guessed "which Prime Minister" without having to ask.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
19:15 / 11.04.10
LOVED yesterday's episode. It (to me, at least) appeared to nick a few things from Alastair Reynolds' Chasm City, but it's a pretty good place to nick from, and it did it VERY well. (And Reynolds nicked huge chunks of Dark Star for Revelation Space, so he's in no position to complain).

Very good, especially the Doctor REALLY FUCKING ANGRY at Amy. That's a side we don't often get, well, not aimed at a companion anyway.

So far it's two for two.
 
 
Lucid Frenzy
20:25 / 11.04.10
It really doesn't matter what Prisoner Zero is hanging from, or if he could have done with another month in the digital ovens. In the terms of the emotional content of the story, not a tiny bit of him is wasted. Zero is not an alien from an intergalactic prison. Zero is the emotional residue left over from The Doctor's abandonment of Amy. That's his whole, sole purpose in this story.

...all of which is a very good argument. The monsters on this show are intended as id-creations, repressed parts of our own minds. Yet that “whole, sole” argument doubles back on itself. In an episode like ‘Dalek’ the Dalek not just represents the Doctor’s sublimated hatred and aggression, but is even able to draw them to the surface. Yet there the Dalek can be both, both alien and monster, both repressed self and antagonist. It is not a mere shadow but becomes a character in its own right, and even has a parallel journey to the Doctor’s. Zero, alas, was for me all to tellingly named.

(More rantings along similar lines here.)
 
 
■
22:18 / 11.04.10
Just realised what's wrong with the titles. It's too much like a colonoscopy.
 
 
■
22:35 / 11.04.10
And "hair of an idiot" is a line RTD would never have allowed someone to use.
 
 
iamus
23:35 / 11.04.10
Heh. I watched Dalek last month for the first time in years when I bought the first season boxset, and I have to admit that I've seen The Eleventh Hour an embarassing number of times now. I'm not sure quite why, but sometimes my brain just tells me to mainline things until it's gotten out of it what it's looking for. This is all very deconstructive and apologise for any fun-sucking but I don't think I'll be fully content until I'm writing this show myself ...


It's a tricky one, and I suppose it's one of those things that either works for you or it doesn't, but there's reasons I wouldn't want Zero doing any more than he did. The Eleventh Hour really wasn't a creature feature. It was absolutely a character and worldbuilding piece. Very much part of a larger whole that, aside from references to the Pandorica and cracks in spacetime, will be setting up the emotional environment this series lives in in ways that won't be understandable yet. In this episode you need to do two things and you need to do them quickly: Make changes to a beloved character while simultaneously convincing your audience all the changes you made were right, and introduce somebody entirely new along with her world, relationships and make us care about what happens to her.

Now that's a metric fuckton of information to get over to the audience in that time (who all have massive preconceptions of what you should be doing with their show), and it's far and away THE most important task to accomplish. Ideally you'd want a seperate episode for The Doctor and one for Amy. Prisoner Zero is a cipher by necessity because adding a third character arc to the story is only going to pull it away from its fulcrum. He's really not important enough to do anything that's not 100% about one of those other two characters. In fact, Prisoner Zero isn't even the real threat in the episode, he's just the visible one. It's the Atraxi who are going to boil the planet.

If you split that episode down into those two main goals you have to accomplish: Introduce Amy and reintroduce The Doctor, you get Prisoner Zero and the Atraxi.
Prisoner Zero is a device to pull what's in Amy's head out into the streets of Leadworth, and the Atraxi on the rooftop stand in for us, giving The Doctor something to be amazing at and convince that he's the latest brilliant thing in a lineage. They need to show up to do that and then they have to get the hell off the stage.

Dalek was called Dalek because it was about a Dalek. It's a character piece and a creature-feature because one of the two main characters is also a monster. It was about showing what a massive intergalactic wanker a Dalek is, and why that pushes all the wrong buttons for the Doctor. Their history just brings a story's worth of dramatic baggage with it, and the fact there's a Dalek in it is actually one of the most important points of Eccleston's whole season. In that episode Rose gets a quick boyfriend, but her overwhelming function is as an empathic link between them because it's a total two-hander between Doctor and Dalek in the same way that The Eleventh Hour is a two-hander between Doctor and Companion. Everything else in the story works only to push that forward.
 
 
iamus
23:49 / 11.04.10
Cube, RTD did have Rose make a point of saying that The Doctor had "Great hair. Really great hair".

I only remember that because at the time, in my secret, dark and wet little fanboy heart, I wanted it to be a sly response to something i'd written here.
 
 
iamus
00:14 / 12.04.10
Just realised what's wrong with the titles. It's too much like a colonoscopy.

Ending in fire?
 
 
Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero
00:40 / 12.04.10
Very good, especially the Doctor REALLY FUCKING ANGRY at Amy. That's a side we don't often get, well, not aimed at a companion anyway.

Yeah, I think that's something that Tennant couldn't pull off very well, he'd always go over the top. One thing I love about Tom Baker is that at his best, his anger would come out of nowhere but it'd be totally believable, it'd be the kind of anger you'd hear and jump on board with, like "yeah! Tou totally are a dick, space-pirate!" in The Ribos Operation.
 
 
Lucid Frenzy
16:24 / 12.04.10
It's a tricky one, and I suppose it's one of those things that either works for you or it doesn't,

Yeah, but then there’d be no point in us playing!

Prisoner Zero is a cipher by necessity because adding a third character arc to the story is only going to pull it away from its fulcrum. He's really not important enough to do anything that's not 100% about one of those other two characters.

Don’t know if you bothered reading the blog entry I linked to. (And fair enough if you didn’t, there are many links on the net but you only get one lifespan.) But that’s a point I made, only exactly the other way up. To me it’s like saying “I didn’t pay you because I’m broke.” Okay that explains it. But you still didn’t pay me!

It was about showing what a massive intergalactic wanker a Dalek is, and why that pushes all the wrong buttons for the Doctor.

I don’t think you have it quite right. The Dalek is in some ways almost a sympathetic character. (Not a sentence I would have imagined myself writing before seeing that episode!) The real villain is Van Staten, as when the Doctor explains to him the Dalek’s killing spree: “Because it honestly believes they should die.” The Dalek is living out its nature, while Van Staten isn’t living life at all, merely attempting to collect and control it.

The Doctor starting to behave like his arch-enemy has to be frightening, but it also has to be credible. Their journeys even act as the reversal of each other, as the Doctor becomes his most warlike the Dalek starts to question his directives.
 
 
■
21:52 / 12.04.10
Ooh, a colleague has pointed out the nightie is a nice reference to Wendy. I do like that.

What is the Tardis if not the ultimate Wendy House, and who is the boy who not only won't grow up but keeps getting younger?

Mind you, make sure no-one tells Alan Moore, as I don't want Sarah Jane in Lost Girls 2.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
17:12 / 13.04.10
Not to piss on your colleague's chips, cube, but Moffat made that observation in this week's Confidential.
 
 
■
17:57 / 13.04.10
Buttocks, my BBC3 reception is so crap, I never watch that. Did he pretty much say all of it? If so, I consider my chips piss-free.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
16:22 / 14.04.10
Yeah. Amy in her nightie = Wendy, going on one last big adventure before she becomes an adult. Guy she's going on an adventure with is Peter Pan.

Confidential's probably up on the iPlayer website.
 
 
e-n
17:47 / 17.04.10
So what do you think of the iDaleks?

I must admit it was a nice way to move the series and the legacy along and allow Moffat and co to put their stamp on the Doctor's Nemesis going forward with no baggage from RTD's run.
Almost miss the now "old-new" Dalek design now.

In other news Why doesn't Amy remember and what's going on with the cracks?
They shouldn't all tie back to patient zero, right? He didn't seem like that much of a threat, unless it the Atraxis (?) are following the doc around, playing a long game?
Could it just be that the Tardis is not quite back to 100%?
 
 
Feverfew
18:55 / 17.04.10
All I have to add now is... A Dalek with a Box File! Hee.

Interesting stuff, though, and I find myself liking this new run a great deal, although it's perhaps true that it's really going with the Hit The Ground Running ethic - I may have missed something, but couldn't the Tennant Tardis only travel more or less randomly (not having a full crew, as was explained), while the Smith Tardis can apparently travel relatively precisely (to within a month or so)?
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
19:38 / 17.04.10
That was quite possibly the silliest, most implausible, and most ridiculous episode of New Who yet.

I loved every fucking second of it.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
21:12 / 17.04.10
In other news Why doesn't Amy remember and what's going on with the cracks?
They shouldn't all tie back to patient zero, right? He didn't seem like that much of a threat, unless it the Atraxis (?) are following the doc around, playing a long game?
Could it just be that the Tardis is not quite back to 100%?

Um, the cracks? In the fabric of space and time? That have been shoved down our throats in every episode so far? I don't want to be a dick, but it's the least subtle cross-episode plot mechanic in New Who yet, and Prisoner Zero explicitly stated that it was nothing to do with him.

Not too impressed by this week's episode.

Neither the Doctor nor Amy - particularly Amy - given anything of substance to do for more or less the entire running time.

New Daleks design that manages to look both stupid and less advanced than previous Dalek design - seriously, were you lot not cumbersome enough to begin with, you felt the need to make yourselves more lumpy, shapeless and less maneuverable?

Editing and direction that sped past the good, exciting ideas with indecent haste - apparently it's possible to convert a regular Spitfire into a Space Spitfire in roughly nintey seconds - and dwell on the one boring scene - the Doctor, in the Dalek ship, repeating the Jammie Dodger threat about thirty times - for far too long.

There were nice moments - the Doctor having a mental and beating the shit out of a Dalek, the Daleks asking if anybody wouldd like a nice cup of tea, the basic premise of the episode (Daleks in WW2, plus dogfighting in space, deserved *far* better treatment than this), the relationship between the Doctor and Churchill - but, on the whole, I thought the execution left it mediocre, at best.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
21:16 / 17.04.10
Oh, and Power Rangers Daleks = complete lack of threat or menace. Gatiss was on Confidential trying to tie the idea back to the two Cushing movies, which is cool because they're great film treatments, considering when they were made, but rather missed the glaring difference in how the idea of different shell colours was implemented there.
 
 
■
21:51 / 17.04.10
While I largely concur with your reservations, Spatula, I rather like the tall shiny Daleks. I want to see ridiculously big Mechanoids in lurid TV21 colours, too. It's probably because I love the mythos more than the shows themselves. Years upon years of absorbing DWM about programmes I thought I'd never see can do that.

I think the interesting plot stuff gets shoved out of the way these days in favour of big set-pieces and "humans you're great" moments. However, that's an easy criticism, given that if you go back and watch any series before, say, McCoy, where there was less action and plot movement than rabbiting on about not very much at all. Apart from Timeflight, I think all the series had a bare minumum of two hours to do their stuff and usually squandered it (I'm looking at you JNT and Bidmead) with waffle and crap assistants. (Yes, I was in love with Sarah Sutton, but Nyssa was utterly useless.)

Ok, so Amy didn't do much, but what she did was pivotal and essential, and pointed up that though the Doctor may love humanity, he just doesn't quite get it. He's all about suffering, where real humans tend to notice the good stuff. Especially as he shows that the leaders become like the Doctor not even noticing someone under his command in mourning. I also loved the subtlety of "so it was a girl?" Cheeky and not as sledgehammer as RTD often was.

Yes, 90 seconds to get to Northolt and rig Hurricanes (will have to watch again, but I don't think they were Spitfires) with FTL drives and pop back did rankle more than a touch.

And MacNeice was excellent. KBO? that was new on me, but I like it. The sparring and the key theft and all the rest. The Doctor has our perspective, he knows they'll win, but they don't. And to be reminded that our best intentions now may not be the best in the long run is a fucking great lesson to give kids, in my opinion.

As Stoatster says. Utter nonsense, but a great big wodge of fun jammed into a VERY short space of time.
 
 
Kali, Queen of Kitteh
22:49 / 17.04.10
Matt and I spent the end of the episode trying to figure out the upcoming Big Bad for the end of this season. Cracks between dimensions, a collective amnesia about The Stolen Earth, etc.

Tonight's episode was fun, silly. I do wish they had done more with the dogfight in space because well...it's a dogfight in space, innit? I am guessing that the reborn Daleks (much like Time Lords, they seem to have a finite number of regenerations) will figure into things in the future. Maybe not for the rest of this season, sure, but of course, you can't Doctor Who without Daleks.

Next week's episode is what I really want to see.
 
 
MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!
22:56 / 17.04.10
While I understand the need for a certain "there can be no Superman without Lex Luthor" duality in the series, I am, to be honest, sick to fucking death of ham-handed ways of bringing back the Daleks in every. single. season. of Doctor Who since the reboot.

"ONE! SHIP! SURVIVED!"? Oh, please.

I liked the comedy beats that this episode wrung out of the Daleks (although still not nearly as much as the Dalek/Cyberman "yo' mama!" throwdown in Army of Ghosts/Doomsday), but Jesus, guys, can't we just have a season without Daleks? See how that goes?
 
 
■
23:13 / 17.04.10
I believe it's called "keeping your powder dry".

Yes, but I suspect Moff may have used this as his "here's your Dalek episode, now sod off" moment to concentrate on better stuff. Look at how few Dalek stories there are in Who classic. Not many. Two per Doc is generous. Davison didn't even meet them once, IIRC, and no-one ever saw the CBaker one thanks to strikes.

That's what I'm hoping he's heading for, not following the RTD formula. They're great baddies and he knows the BBC will keep it going for at least another year so I REALLY hope we won't see them again till next year in a big daft Cribbins-ridden mid-season special.

It won't happen, will it?
 
 
Spatula Clarke
23:32 / 17.04.10
Davison didn't even meet them once

Resurrection of the Daleks. I think it was the one that caused a bit of an outcry over the level of violence/number of deaths in the episodes.

The thing about Amy... yeah, I know she effectively saved the day, but there was absolutely no character stuff for her in this episode and she didn't do anything up until that point. She barely *said* anything up until then. I wonder if other scriptwriters are going to be able to use her properly, because the impression I got here is that she's maybe a bit too much of a Moffat creation for anybody else to get a decent grip on. There were also times when both main actors seemed a little unsure about themselves, too, but that may have been because they weren't being used to the best of their abilities.

I dunno. It was okay, it was *far* from being the worst episode I've seen - if you were to split them all into two groups, one crappy, one good, it'd undoubtedly belong in the latter. But the waste of potential narks me.

Also: Mark Gatiss needs to be given the scary episodes to write, rather than the fantasy ones. That's where his talents lie.
 
 
Kali, Queen of Kitteh
00:21 / 18.04.10
We were discussing about the apparent role (at least thus far) of deux ex machina that Amy seems to be playing. I agree that because she is a Moffat creation, it is hard to get a handle on her.

I'd say more but my back is killing me and I need my heating pad.
 
 
iamus
05:21 / 18.04.10
Just watched it, it's very early in the morning and I am very drunk still (aunt's birthday) but I'm not sure I liked that very much. Overriding feeling was that it felt as if it must have been shot early in the run, as neither Smith or Gillan looked nearly as comfortable with themselves as they have done previously, and the score and editing seemed well overblown to try and patch some of the cracks in the performances.

I dunno. Seemed like a sequence of progressions bolted on one after another. Liked the new technicolour of the Daleks, but not digging the design overall. Looks all shoulders.

Blah.


Something more coherent later...
 
 
Dead Megatron
14:03 / 19.04.10
I kinda like the Daleks to be stubborrnly outdated in their design, going always with the bulky and the big. Why would xenophobic, self-centered, impossibly arrogant creatures give a damn about human sense of practicity and aesthetics in their design, after all? But, hey IMHO...

Also, did anybody got the names of the new Power ranger Daleks? I only got "Supreme" (the white one)

Plus, a collective amnesia about The Stolen Earth

We don't know if it's collective as of yet. It could be just Emy. I'm betting it's collective, but no indications so far. Or did I miss something?

I like that this Doctor is a bit angrier than the one before*. And not so infallible in his plans. So far, that's twice Emy fixed a situation better than he was even trying to


*I still miss Eccleston's Doc09 calling humans "monkeys", tho...
 
  

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