Doctor Who [10]

I love 'Turn Left' its such a fantastic episode. It could be my favourite.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:God I love Dr Who- Azriel

Yup me too! (and nice to see someone else around here who does!)

Hey I love Dr Who as well, just not all the parts you do!

In a show running for 50 years it's only natural for every The Chimes of Midnight, The Tomb Of The Cybermen and The Waters Of Mars there is a Love and Monsters, The Web Planet or In The Forest Of The Night...

Pettytyrant101 wrote:Well with the exception of the Forest episode and maybe parts of Caretaker I felt last series nailed it.

Wait...you think 'Kill the Moon' was good? It was shot very well, and I liked the idea of the Doctor walking out, but Courtney and the Moon is an Egg nonsense absolutely killed it for me, I could except it if it were just a silly romp of an episode, but the Ep treated things far too seriously for such an outlandish premise, once again the pacing felt all the over the place...

I love 'Turn Left' its such a fantastic episode.- Figg

One of my favourite episodes from the RTD era.

'you think 'Kill the Moon' was good?'

Yeah. I don't mind the outlandish premise, for me its a character piece. I'd agree not all the pacing is right, and it needs another ten minutes in my view for the other astronauts to get more screen time before their demise.
The moon's an egg thing didnt bother me. And the way the Doctor says it when he tells them had me grinning ear to ear.
I also loved the way how the Doctor sees time is further delved into, that at points when its in flux its like he is blind and then at the end when the time lines reestablish themselves out from that moment, and he plugs back in and sees the future unfolding and Twelves theme kicks in- I thought that was superb.
But mainly it was for the character development I enjoyed it.

yeah Courtney, probably the most irritating character ever written straight after Miss Evangelista and Jar Jar.

I didn't mind Courtney- she got a nice little arc of her own, from thinking the Doctor thought she was worthless through being scared and wanting to go home, to understanding the seriousness of their Dennison and choosing to put aside her own fear and be apart of making that decision. And the choice she made was the right choice and showed her worth.
It also nicely field the metaphorical themes of the episode by presenting the three types of female- the maid- Courtney, the mother (Clara is on the role of being personally responsible for Courtney's well being, as she says to the Doctor earlier in the episode) and the old women, in this case the astronaut, who whilst not grey hair old, is notably more mature and much older than Clara.
And the reason its those three and the whole thing is about an egg and whether to destroy it or not is because the episode is about women and the fact many of them in their lives will have to consider that very issue. And the old woman chooses to abort, the maid chooses to preserve, and the deciding vote is down to the woman of pregnancy age- Clara. (thats why at the end she is so raging with her, he forced her into a position where she had to confront that decision, but on an epic scale, not just one life but weighed up against potentially billions of lives).
The metaphorical themes behind the episode are pretty clear and Courtney is a crucial part of that.


And her being there also meant the Doctor got to say "You can't put pictures of me online."

I don't know where to even start on that... whatever it was...without beginning another flame war, so I will refrain.

I think Who should have under its bonnet of aliens and moon eggs more weighty matter, agree or disagree with it, at least the issues are there to provoke thought and its not all surface gloss. The writer has something to say as well a story to tell (the writer in this case being Peter Harness - h wrote the third series of Wallander and the critically acclaimed City of Vice for Channel 4)).

mnph nmmph!

I watched into the Dalek earlier. Got me thinking. They are a bloody tricky thing to do Daleks- they are best used sparingly, ideally once or twice ever four series or so.
But they cant do that thanks to the bloody Terry Nation Estate who own the rights to them and whose contract states they have to appear at least once in every series or the BBC loses the rights to use them.

In the RTD eras he got round this by starting at one-



and then continually upping the scale by not only having them invade but cybermen too and having a three way war -



until he had them back at full power and brought Davros back and all in epic spectacle big battle mode and with a plan to destroy every single atom in the universe, which is pretty much the point at which the question where the hell do you go from there arises?
I mean its fine- in that its the natural thing to do with Daleks, war on a huge scale with millions of Daleks exterminating shit (or absolutely everything in this case) its what they do.

Problem is RTD didn't really leave any further to go in that direction. Once you've had the defeated trying to destroy every atom in existence where can you go next?

You cant as Moffat has said just keep bringing them back on mass to destroy the universe and being stopped every time because every time the Doctor stops them it makes them less of a threat. And it gets stale fast.

But, you've got to keep them so that means bringing them back every year somehow.

In Moffats first year in charge he opted to bring them back but change their look and reinstall 'original' Daleks by means of them getting their sink plungers on original Dalek DNA from which to produce whole new armies of pure Daleks (and of course the first thing the pure Daleks did was exterminate the Daleks who created them for not being pure enough!).
But everyone hated the new design (I like the colours, the leading Daleks had colour designations in classic) but the shape wasn't right, too fat. So Moffat just made them the Daleks in charge like classic and the troops remained the normal NuWho design Daleks from RTD era.



Moffat is on record as really not liking being forced into bringing them back every year, so for the next series he rather cheekily bunged this excellent little opener scene into the beginning of Wedding of River Song, but it fulfilled the contract.



For series 7 he decided to avoid the whole issue of the Doctor having to stop the Daleks by turning it on its head- having the Daleks need the Doctors to save them, in Asylum of the Daleks. Which despite some flaws (mainly the still weird still not sure exactly what was he was aiming for divorce mis-step) has some great stuff in it-



Which finally brings me back to Into the Dalek.
The solution this time I think is rather ingenious. The idea that its not impossible for their to be a good Dalek and the fun scifi idea of shrinking them down and sticking them into a Dalek- and the first time I saw it I thought that was these were the two new things it brought to what you can do with a Dalek story. Neither seen before.

But on rewatching it I realised there is another new thing in it, which I think when you stop to think about it really adds another layer of nasty to Daleks. The protein pool.
Daleks are still living creatures, and they still need food. Its never come up before in 50 years.

Daleks sometimes eat people.

Think about that a moment.
Thats quite an addition to know, and makes them even worse to meet than they already were.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:I think Who should have under its bonnet of aliens and moon eggs more weighty matter, agree or disagree with it, at least the issues are there to provoke thought and its not all surface gloss.

It should, but it should also recognize the limitations of a 45 minute runtime, and focus on creating a entertaing script and story first and foremost, although the themes and political commentary in Classic Who for instance wasn't always that subtle, I've never felt like it was coming at the expense of an entertaing story, Kill the Moon was interesting thematically, and I liked the moral implications it raised about the Doctors character, but the script was all over the place for me, just felt like a bunch of scenes strung together haphazardly, the Doctor and Clara both came across as unlikeable and cheesy, and frankly it just felt like filler.

But each to their own.

but it should also recognize the limitations of a 45 minute runtime- Malick

I think Who in general needs either more two parters or full hour episodes. We wont get the latter because it makes it harder to sell to commercial television overseas, and thats a huge audience now. And it seems the opening of series 9 will be a two parter- so I suspect that may be the way it will go.

Wasn't that a rumour?.- Malick

Sadly not- there is an interview on youtube somewhere with Moffat talking about much he would like to rest them for awhile (he said this in the press at the time), but in the end he couldn't because of the deal the BBC have with estate (he didn't go into details on the deal) but that their appearance was brief (that was the opening scene from Wedding of River Song- which really you don't need, the Doctor could just have flashed his psychic paper in that bar rather than present a Dalek stalk as proof of his credentials, but it got the Dalek in- and Moffat made it work by making the bar seem scummy and criminal so it would be the sort of thing to impress.

I don't mind having Daleks in every season, they are part of the shows DNA. it would be strange if they weren't there.

Yes but you cant just keep having them being defeated over and over, or trying to blow up the universe over and over. Ever time you use them thats another new thing to with them gone.
And whilst I love the Daleks and the whole concept of them they aren't best things for having a conversation with.

Mrs Figg wrote:I don't know where to even start on that... whatever it was...without beginning another flame war, so I will refrain.

But.. what about all our fun.

don't tempt me

But.. that is my remit as far as this thread is concerned.

Here's an interesting idea I came across on IMDB a few days ago, if you picked your favourite Episode 1, 2, 3 etc from all 8 seasons what would your perfect Series be? (Two parters can count as 1 ep if you want)

My list (Only series 1-5, 7b-8 haven't watched the rest yet):

1. The Eleventh Hour (Series 5)
2. The Fires of Pompei (Series 4)
3. The Waters of Mars (OK, whilst 5 specials dosen't really count as a series this had to make it into the list) (Series 4) /The Unquiet Dead (Series 1)
4 The Girl in The Fireplace (Series 2)
5 Rise of The Cybermen/Age of Steel (Series 2)
6 Dalek (Series 1)
7 42/ (Series 3) Amy's Choice (Series 5)
8 Mummy on The Orient Express (Series 8 )
9 The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances (Series 1)
10 Dammit...Blink (Series 3), Midnight (Series 4) and Vincent and The Doctor (Series 5)...how do you choose?
11 Turn Left (Series 4)
12/13 (mostly 2 parters) The Stolen Earth/Journey's End (Series 4)
*13 The Name of The Doctor (Series 7)
*Xmas Special  Although I have enjoyed most of the Xmas eps I've watched, I'm not overly found of any of them so I'll just say The Day Of The Doctor

(This is mostly based on recollection, as I haven't watched some of these eps in three or four years)

On a similar note I did think about making a list of top 10 'favourites', but I don't own any Who on DVD, and I haven't seen many of the episodes more than once or at least not in a few years (I don't really have the space for many more DVDs...) so I'm not sure whether they would still be objectively 'good' if I did a rewatch, anyway in no particular order

The Waters of Mars
The Chimes of Midnight
The War Games
Dalek
Midnight
The Tomb Of The Cybermen
The Dalek Invasion Of Earth
Midnight
Vincent And The Doctor
The Empty Child/Doctor Dances

All good episodes Genesis of the Daleks noticeable by its absence.

I cant remember the names of the episodes but I know which ones I like.

I dont think I could pick only ten. Just looking at list of top ten episodes I'm always "but surely you meant to put City of Death in there" or some other episode that springs to my mind- theres just too many good ones.

its easier to chose the ones I don't like. and that would be a town called mercy and the impossible astronaut, and the one with the monster in the hotel that looked like a big pig. they were appalling

Pettytyrant101 wrote:I dont think I could pick only ten.  Just looking at list of top ten episodes I'm always "but surely you meant to put City of Death in there" or some other episode that springs to my mind- theres just too many good ones.

I'd agree with that, there are definitely more stories that I love than hate, comparatively speaking I've only seen about a fith of the show (probably considerably less taking the audios into account) my list of 'favourites' grows ever larger, but the list of ones I hate remains thankfully small

Love and Monsters
Fear Her
Kill The Moon
The Web Planet
Voyage Of The Dammed
The End Of Time
Boom Town
The Beast Below
In The Forest Of The Night