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Doctor who season 7

 
 
coweatman
18:32 / 30.08.12
starts saturday. i'm excited. anyone else?

I want to see if they can actually pull all of that sprawl together in a way that makes sense.
 
 
Poke it with a stick
20:57 / 01.09.12
Huzzah! Someone's here and wants to talk about Who. This makes me ludicrously happy, even if it's only the two of us lonely souls.

I thought the first episode was very, very good.

Funny, scary and looking wonderful.

My one gripe was that Pond Life seemed to be required viewing if you weren't left adrift about the Pond's home life. Otherwise they go from blissful to broken between seasons (not that Pond Life helped explain THAT much regards that either).

Jenna Louise Coleman was surprisingly good - even though the big eye thing left me feeling like I was watching an alternate reality Christina Ricci.

And, finally, as I read elsewhere "Eggs: Stir for a minute is a pretty good start for a souffle. Needs an egg whisk, though".
 
 
teleute
16:22 / 03.09.12
I'm a Who lurker here; have always loved the Doctor Who threads on this board even if too shy to contribute in the past.

Loved it, anyhow. Very much looking forward to the rest of the series, even if the BBC have split it again. And as a big eyed chick myself, bring on the bug eyes!
 
 
e-n
16:28 / 04.09.12
Huzzah Doctor Who, (and another thread on the lith) is back!!
Was thinking I might be getting jaded of Who after all the fuss with River Song last year but this was great!
Great concept, great direction as well and a great twist.
All that AND they updated the time vortex to make it murkier and lose the lightening strike on the Tardis, that had always seemed a bit much for me.
The joy felt at Matt Smith bopping round the Tardis, reciting the name of the show, was only outweighed by the sadness in the "I'm sorry" moment
10 out of 10, next: Dinosaurs on a spaceship!!
 
 
teleute
20:23 / 07.09.12
Curious though. How much is Matt Smith a pastiche of Tennant's doc? He seems like boy pretender sometimes, though he does old very well for a young man.
 
 
Poke it with a stick
10:29 / 08.09.12
Teleute: I've never really thought of him as being a pastiche of Tennant, particularly - anymore than Tennant was a pastiche of Eccleston. There always will be an element, of course - the Doctor is a sum of his pasts, and he can't just jettison an incarnation.

I've always found Matt Smith's version to be more like a cross between Troughton and Davison (just a hint of Baker there, too): A very wise old man who sometimes, nevertheless, acts very youthfully when confronted either by wonders or horrors.
 
 
■
18:32 / 15.09.12
Why did I hate that episode so much? I'm reeling a bit here.
 
 
Poke it with a stick
18:10 / 16.09.12
I just found it a bit "meh", for what it's worth. It felt very much like a (Frankenstein's) Monster of the Week.

A friend of mine was livid at the Doctor's (almost) use of a gun, though that didn't jar with me as much as him. He's been equally close to using a gun, or explosives, or a device that'd kill everyone in the Western hemisphere before so, no big deal. Plus he effectively let someone die last week, even though he could have saved him easily.

The thing that bugged me most about the episode was that the monster felt like a refugee from Red Dwarf rather than something a little more interesting.

In general, it was OK - nothing special, let's see what they do next week.
 
 
Shiny: Well Over Thirty
19:56 / 17.09.12
All three episodes of Series 7 so far had Matt Smith in.

Thus all three episodes of Series 7 so far were brilliant.
 
 
Poke it with a stick
20:52 / 29.09.12
So this was OK, I guess. The leads all played their parts well, it wasn't too overblown but a couple of things spoiled it for me.

1) No-one noticed the Statue of Liberty moving about? Really?

2) Is there any way that someone can put Murray Gold's EMOTIVE score a little bloody lower in the mix?

Seriously, I'd buy the DVD if there was a mute button for the score, sometimes.
 
 
coweatman
18:23 / 04.12.12
the angels episode really bothered me.

so the whole point of last season is that the doctor is a clever clever being and he figured out how to get around a fixed point in time?

it's a whole lot easier to create a circumstance that results in a headstone with names on it in a graveyard than it is to fake getting shot twice, dying, and getting a viking funeral. and we know there are other non tardis methods of time travel, and, i don't know, HIS WIFE, has access to one of them. and unpleasant as it is, why not land in jersey or on staten island and drive or take the train in to visit the ponds?

the only conclusion i can draw is that he just can't be bothered to go rescue them, which either means he's faking being upset about it, or maybe he's just clinically depressed.

and given how much amy and rory leveled up as characters, it bugs me to think they can't figure out an escape.

the whole thing just feels sloppy and lazy, and burned up a lot of the respect the show had built up with me over the past couple of seasons. and it accidentally makes the doctor come across as a whole heck of a lot colder than is intended.

also, dropping the whole thing about the silence? what's that about? the past two seasons were building up to big things and it feels like it just literally lost the plot.
 
 
Mistoffelees
18:45 / 26.12.12
I wasn't very impressed. But it was better than that WWII bomber episode. My favourite part was stunt casting Withnail.
 
 
jentacular dreams
00:38 / 27.12.12
I enjoyed idiot Sontaran. Christmas this year is pretty crappy due to family illness and that was the only thing to make me really laugh for a couple of days...

Oswald seems to be the opposite of a Timelord. Looks the same, has the same personality, but dies "properly" and has no memory of previous incarnations.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
12:47 / 28.12.12
Eternal Champion crossover?
 
 
Poke it with a stick
15:09 / 02.04.13
Well I waited (more in hope than expectation) and, alas, this thread has gone the way of the Norwegian Blue - which is a shame, really.

Ah well, any chance anyone has any huge insights into the mid-season opener?

Was the bike bloody silly? Has Moffat run out of ideas and just started recycling some of his not-quite-so-good-ones? Is the feisty and slightly strange companion trope so three seasons ago? Does Matt Smith have the best stylist ever? (Seriously, those shoes! That frock coat!)

Should I be commenting on the Tom and Lorenzo reviews instead of here?

Thoughts?

Anyone?
 
 
Poke it with a stick
15:50 / 02.04.13
Oh and this just popped up on my twitter feed (can't be arsed messing up the html, sorry):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/doctorwho/articles/The-Zygons-Return-for-the-50th-Anniversary-Special
 
 
coweatman
14:45 / 13.05.13
these episodes have been fun to watch, but i'm bored with clara and this whole string of episodes just feels like waiting for the plot to start again.

dragging the clara thing out but still teasing it feels cheap and it's getting annoying - like, seriously, she learns the doctor's name and that she's already died twice and then forgets all about it? this just feels like treading water.

and i'm still annoyed about how amy and rory left the show, which, admittedly, may make me predisposed to not give clara a chance. it feels a little like "let's clear the stage for poochie!"
 
 
coweatman
20:47 / 14.05.13
and now supposedly the finale has been leaked ...
 
 
Evil Scientist
10:46 / 16.05.13
I've been enjoying them to a moderate degree. I think this "side" of Season 7 has had stronger stories overall. Only "Rings of Ankhenaton" really felt below par.

There's definitely something lacking though. The chemistry between Clara and The Doctor just doesn't seem to be there for me. It's certainly not there in the way that it was between Amy and him (friends but still with a certain one-way frisson).

I'm not sure if it's just exhaustion at yet another Companion with unrequited (or, in this case, slightly 'quited) passions for The Doctor. Even though the stories seem stronger in the second half, I much prefered the interplay of Rory/Amy/The Doctor that we had in Season 6 and Season 7.
 
 
coweatman
13:10 / 20.05.13
ugh. it feels like they just stopped trying with season seven, which is frustrating because the show and moffat and co. are capable of being so much better than this.

the silence arc just getting dropped is exasperating, because it was such a big deal for such a long time, and then we get to trenzalore, and it seems like it has nothing to do with any of that after being hyped up for so long.

the great intelligence (keep in mind i'm not familiar with his 2nd doctor era stories) never seemed personally invested in the doctor as an enemy, and now he's willing to kamikaze him? if they pulled out, i dunno, davros or the master, it'd be believable.

the clara arc seemed really awkwardly drawn out, and the teases about it in the other episodes this half season were all massively clunky. like "we're going to keep referring to this, but we're not going to move it forward". and i'm just not emotionally invested in her as a character and i just kinda don't care. which makes me even more annoyed about the ponds getting death by plot hole in an episode that seemed to be entirely composed of plot hole. they were much more fully realized characters that i actually cared about, and i could picture how they'd interact while waiting for a bus or doing laundry or something terribly mundane. clara's just kind of glib and flat.

if this was the last we're seeing of river song, it's also a disappointment. she didn't seem very well written or emotionally resonant, but the reveal that the doctor never went back after saving her as a data ghost does support my early theory that the doctor could go visit or save the ponds if he wanted to, but is too self involved and can't be bothered.

jenny and strax and vastra are always fun, and i'd love to watch a torchwood style spin off about them, but i haven't had a reason to be emotionally invested in them yet. ok. strax is kind of a joy to watch, like when he threatens the horse, or just how happy he looks when he finally gets to run in guns blazing.

i started watching with season five, and what drew me in was how strong the arc writing was in seasons five and six, and how strong the character writing was and how it drew me in and got me emotionally involved. there's very, very little of that this season. i'll keep watching, but i'm disappointed.

the one thing i really liked? the idea that after we're gone, what's left is what we've done with our lives.

i dunno, i'm relieved that last episode wasn't a bigger mess, but that's like crash landing the plane without killing anyone instead of piloting it straight into a mountain range.
 
 
Hush
19:53 / 23.05.13
We were really excited too! watched all the previous episodes of 21st Century Who in the last year and were prepared to watch each episode in the week of broadcast, which doesn't happen in this house, ever.

We simply lost interest by episode 7. Not sure why; probably agree with all the points above. It simply wasn't good enough. We forgive Doctor Who a lot in the way relying on running to generate excitement and the sonic screwdriver to open doors in the plot; it's very slapdash approach to science is offset a bit by the fact it's getting to grips with the non-sequential nature of the Doctors live.

Simply disappointing; lacking wit and humanity. Will watch eventually.
 
 
Poke it with a stick
20:39 / 01.06.13
Balls. Matt Smith's moving on to pastures new. He ended up being my favourite of the New Who regenerations.

A piece of me hopes (ever so hard) that, instead of just seguewaying into the new Doctor, they dedicate each episode of the new (12 part) season to one of the 11 incarnations, with the Christmas Special having the introduction of the 12th Doctor.
 
 
jentacular dreams
11:25 / 13.06.13
A season of locums then...
 
 
coweatman
22:37 / 09.08.13
since they've been playing with time so much in the past few seasons, i think it'd be great if they casually cut to a scene of whomever interacting with another version of the doctor and then back to the main one. it wouldn't be any more timey wimey than what's going on now.

i just want moffat to stop and take a deep breath before proceeding, because the entire past season feels like failing to deliver on great setups.

that and i'm still grumpy about how the ponds left.

death by plothole is never ok.
 
 
coweatman
19:52 / 26.11.13
so what did everyone think of "day of the doctor"?
 
 
coweatman
20:19 / 24.03.14
no takers?

so, looking back:

with the except of the weeping angels episode, which just felt enormously manipulative and left me pretty pissed off, i thought a lot of this past season was fun to watch, and i even managed to turn a friend into a fan through them, because they were the only ones consistently available on on-demand at her house.

"fun to watch" doesn't always translate to "good", though, and i think season seven was a mess. the clara payoff was dragged out far too long and hinted at too clumsily. the manner in which rory and amy were written off the show was flat out insulting to the audience. dropping the silence arc like a hot potato and handwaving it away is insulting to the audience. like, oh, you people won't stop bugging me about that? here, now go away!

the episodes are over-crammed. fifteen or twenty minutes more screen time would help immensely with character development, which is just steadily going to shit. stephen moffat also appears to be running out of ideas and repeating himself. i'm not one of the fundamentalist moffat haters, but i'm starting to agree with more and more of their points.

i still don't care about clara.

it's a bummer they didn't work in the rest of the actors who have played the doctor that are still alive.

that being said, matt smith was consistently great, and the show itself has so many moments of awesome that i keep watching and getting upset by how much of a sloppy mess it's getting to be outside of those moments.
 
 
jgbell
20:41 / 24.03.14
Over the years, the only thing one could rely on from the series was that there would be change, I guess. Although I think Peter Davidson is my Doctor, David Tennant's run was simply epic. Hard to follow that. I fear the show lost a lot of my interest through the last couple series, so I'm looking forward to the next new change; especially since it seems they've hinted about familiar faces returning.
 
 
jgbell
21:11 / 24.03.14
I suppose I could also mention that I was extremely amused by some of the items stored in the vault from Day of the Doctor.

For example, at the exact moment when the dialog says "The humans don’t realize what half this stuff does - we could conquer their world in a day." There is a passing shot of a pair of red high heel shoes next to a clear jelly dildo. See a screen capture here.

Also, there's a moment when Clara is talking to the War Doctor and there's another huge dildo on the shelves right behind them. See a screen capture here.

Ridiculousness amidst seriousness is one of the things about Doctor Who that's always been a delight for me.
 
 
deniscp
19:51 / 02.10.14
Is anyone following season 8? I wasn't sure I was digging at first, but after "Listen" I'm a believer all over again.
 
  
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