Doctor Who series 6: "prequel" teaser is online

[Yorick]

SUBJECT: YORICK
RIGHT TO OPINION REVOKED: 03/10/2011
REASON: ABILITY TO TOLERATE ENTIRE SEASON OF CATHERINE TATE

That's true, she was a truly horrible companion. I think I had blocked it from my memory. But, I don't know, there's a difference. Tate being awful was balanced out by some truly excellent episodes: The Doctor's Daughter, The Library, Midnight, etc. And of course the excellence that was David Tennant.

In this season we had some really solid companions, especially Rory, but the writing was subpar. And, you know, there's a difference between having a "bad companion" and what I consider to be a bad overall season. I found this latest in general to be dull, rehashed, poorly paced, and as I've said before, having made missteps with the doctor's character.

Besides, Donna's grandfather was excellent.

Hey this Doctor-disguised ship also does a good regeneration impression HOW CONVENIENT

That actually didn't bother me all that much. With all the records they had, they had the means to study it. And surely a "shape shifting robot from the future with the ability to shrink people down, bring them inside of it, and kill them" would be able to produce some neat effects.

Also fixed points in time only really care about what appears to be happening.

Yeah, right? Like, what the ****.

Ok so I really liked the final episode. I liked the whole "all time is happening at once" idea though not as much as the history disintegrating thing from last season. They've finally showed us why messing with "fixed points" is a bad thing. Previously it was just this is bad because we say it is.

I agree, it was cool to see that, and it was done pretty well. Though, I'm not sure what was added by making it an "alternate reality" in which no one knew what was happening. Since, you know, the Doctor and River knew, and Amy figured it out instantly, and Winston Churchill and Rory Williams didn't care, they still had the same feelings and personalities anyway.

That said I am disappointed with some of the elements of this series overall, or rather with some things it was lacking. How did the Silence take control of the TARDIS last series? Where they just trying to kill the Doctor or was destroying the universe intended? Where did the disembodied voice come from? None of this was answered at all. Also we never saw the Forests of Gamma and I was pretty disappointed in that River gets her name as River just from them telling her that's her name. I was expected Gamma to be linked to River's backstory in an interesting way. River's past as a Doctor-seeking missile was also wrapped up far too soon in Let's Kill Hitler. I was expecting her to be chasing them down for a few episodes or something but it all gets done with very very quickly. Also annoyed that they didn't leave space to have River replaced with a new actress. We see the start and end of her final regeneration so there's no chance of us seeing a different regeneration of her now. I was hoping that she might become a (very) long-term character with a chance of changing actress just like the Doctor and generally being the female counterpart of the Doctor.

I agree. I've felt for the most part that Moffat's seasons have been much less subtle with the seasonal arcs and have, in many cases, seemed somewhat rushed. You know, the 2005 season, you'd see "Bad Wolf" written in places, but you didn't actually know what it meant until the end. And it was still a borderline deus ex machina, but watched for it throughout the season. In Moffat's first, he lingers the camera on the very clear cracks in time and makes entire episodes around them and it's just, it's neat, but it's lacking something too. There's an attitude of "let's randomly go around time and space and see what's going on" in the earlier seasons, but these later ones feel much more like following single chains of events.

As much as I liked what they did with River, I agree too that it would have been better to have her around for longer. The thing that I think I liked least was her growing up with Amy. She essentially becomes River Song by, what, age 20, and never takes another form. Felt like a missed opportunity to me.

 

[Remus]

Also I'm not sure why but for some reason I like that the four current main characters are all married and related.

Which should make things more... bawww dramatic, if any of them would die.

Also, I lol'd when one of those silence agents told Rory: "The man that dies again and again, it's time for you to die one last time!"

 

[Eejit]

You realise we've already seen River's fate, with her becoming a disembodied computer personality. She couldn't have regenerated from that death anyhow.

 

[ríomhaire]

You realise we've already seen River's fate, with her becoming a disembodied computer personality. She couldn't have regenerated from that death anyhow.

You're not thinking four-dimensionally. If they hadn't shown her regenerating into her current form in Let's Kill Hitler they could always have introduced a younger version of her.


Also something I forgot to mention in my large post: All the stuff at the end only works on a metafictional level. Why the hell is the question of who is the Doctor a horrible thing? Why do the Silence not want it answered? Why does Dorium agree? Why did the Doctor (briefly) seem to agree?

Also "Fall of the Eleventh" was clearly made up just to make fanboys shit their pants with speculation.

 

[Eejit]

You're not thinking four-dimensionally. If they hadn't shown her regenerating into her current form in Let's Kill Hitler they could always have introduced a younger version of her.

No, I just much prefer a plot line for her that seems pre-planned rather than opportunistically jamming in extra content with a different actress for the sake of it.
And it probably would have confused too big a section of the audience to have multiple River regenerations on the go at once (from the point of view of the TV show). See for example the hl2.net posters who thought this season's arc was already simply incomprehensible!!1

 

[Yorick]

Also something I forgot to mention in my large post: All the stuff at the end only works on a metafictional level. Why the hell is the question of who is the Doctor a horrible thing? Why do the Silence not want it answered? Why does Dorium agree? Why did the Doctor (briefly) seem to agree?

Also "Fall of the Eleventh" was clearly made up just to make fanboys shit their pants with speculation.

Well, Fall of the Eleventh is supposed to come later, isn't it?

In regards to who the Doctor is - that's not it. That was just Moffat being a ****ing muppet and winking the entire time. It wasn't "Doctor Who?", it was "Doctor, Who?" referring to a third party.

 

[ríomhaire]

Well, Fall of the Eleventh is supposed to come later, isn't it?

Well yeah but's it's clearly supposed to make people go "OMG DOES IT THE MEANS TEH ELEVENTH DOCTOR?!"

 

[Asknoone]

You guys watch this show and discuss it, like, seriously. I don't understand.

I DON'T UNDERSTAND.

AND ISN'T THAT THE SADDEST THING YOU EVER HEARD.

 

[ríomhaire]

You guys watch this show and discuss it, like, seriously. I don't understand.

I DON'T UNDERSTAND.

AND ISN'T THAT THE SADDEST THING YOU EVER HEARD.

When they built Samon they left out one important piece: his heart. Yorik was designed as a subroutine to fulfil this purpose but became self-aware by accident. It is Samon's hidden shame. It is his hidden flaw.

Spoiler

 

[ríomhaire]

Bad news everyone: Sounds like Matt Smith only wants to do one more year:

 

[Yorick]

Bad news everyone

Depending on who could be next, that might not be bad news at all. I like Smith, but I feel like he is lacking something.

 

[ríomhaire]

David Yates (directed last four Harry Potter films) wants to do a Doctor Who movie. Moffat saying that they wouldn't give any Doctor Who film a go-ahead unless the BBC team was involved and it starred whoever was currently playing the Doctor on TV, ie, he won't allow and out-of-canon movie.

 

[Yorick]

Which is a really stupid thing to do, since one of the main reasons for doing a movie would be to pull new people into it.

The things Moffatt has said about his plans for next season make me believe that he's actively trying to run the show into the ground.

 

[ríomhaire]

I don't see why an in-canon film couldn't also bring in new people.

 

[Yorick]

Foreverbump.

This article sums up exactly why Dr. Who is rubbish now. How Moffat Ruined Doctor Who For My Little Sister.

 

[ríomhaire]

Missed the first episode of the series but there's a replay tonight so I'll catch it then. I haven't read the whole blog post because I don't want the entire story of the episode spoiled but I did skim a few paragraphs and I saw this:

"My sister doesn’t like the show as much anymore, because in her own words ‘Everything is too BIG and it happens all at once! It’s all squashed together in one episode. And everything is in space all the time!’"

Warning: A lot of rambling is about to happen:

This is Moffat's fault? Seriously? Doctor Who definitely works better when it's small. Whenever I see people discussing their favourite episodes of the new show it's always episodes like Dalek and Midnight and Blink that get praised, not the big season finales. I have issues with Moffat's writing (I thought River's storyline was handled very poorly last year) and I agree that this is a problem with the show but I thought Russel T. Davis was even worse for this towards the end of his run than Moffat is now.

The first two seasons weren't so bad but the Master storyline was really the turning point for the show with the everything has to be BIG issue and the Doctor being SO IMPORTANT. I always figured Davis just slapped down the first thing that popped into his head onto the page (though he did get one gem out of this with Midnight) but everyone chanting the Doctor's name at once in order to give him temporary superpowers and then hugging the Master and crying as he died was the point at which it was decided that Doctor Who must be big and melodramatic.

The season four finale was even worse with ALL OF REALITY EVERYWHERE IN ALL UNIVERSES AT ALL TIMES WILL BE DESTROYED by Davros but that wasn't even the worst thing about that storyline to me. There was this awful but where Davros has to show how AWFUL and TERRIBLE the Doctor is by bringing every major character back and into the same place in a contrived manner (in the end they just had Davros teleport everyone in to save time) so it can be so EMOTIONAL when they watch the Doctor being helpless (also Rose is supposedly an intelligent badass somehow now for no reason other than to try to be cool). I didn't even think it could get worse but then Donna comes in and she's SO IMPORTANT and ALL THE TIMELINES WERE CONVERGING ON HER because she's now a HUMAN TIMELORD and NOTHING LIKE THIS HAS EVER HAPPENED BEFORE OH GOSH (except for the human Doctor clone created by the giant cop-out they had to resolve the EXCITING cliffhanger they had to have in the previous episode by having Tennant pretend to regenerate and when River also turns out to be a human timelord later on but apparently the universe doesn't care about that because she isn't a special snowflake any more) and then Donna of all people saves they day by pressing a few ****ing buttons on a console while Davros or any of the Daleks do nothing to stop her. I'm also leaving out a whole bunch of plotlines and plotpoints that are absolutely stuffed into these epsiodes without really adding anything to them at all.

And even after all that The End of Time special to end Davis' and Tennant's run on the show (which I rewatched this morning because it was on and I was bored) managed to be even worse! I was so glad to know Davis was gone after watching that. Even Tennant's regeneration was melodramatic. Eccelston did it rather gracefully by comparison. He convulsed for a bit and then there was a light show and we had Tennant. When Tennant regenerates it takes him half an hour because he has to say goodbye to everyone because it's so sad (and he's so important) and then when does finally start to properly regenerate the entire ****ing TARDIS explodes just to make sure you know how dramatic this is.

After that stuff Moffat, while he's still doing these annoying ALL OF TIME WILL BE DESTROYED plots, does them less bloody melodramatically at least. The stars disappearing in the season 4 finale is handled by having everyone stare up at the sky and say "oh my god" a load of times and then repeating the phrase "the stars are going out" so many time throughout the episode to remind you that that is a bad thing. In season 5 all the stars also go out but it's handled far better (well, I will admit the scene were the Doctor is locked in the Pandorica is bit OTT). There's a strange conversation where Amelia's aunt is having a confusing argument with Amelia over the painting she did. Saying strange things about stars. It builds up to the reveal of looking at the sky with her saying "there's no such thing as stars." I actually found that delivery fairly chilling. It's delivered in a semi-understated way but with massive implications as opposed to season 4 where people keep saying it's important I really stopped giving a shit as to why the stars were going out before it was revealed what was going on.


So yeah, I agree that things in the show are too BIG and everything has to be dramatic and in space all the time but the idea that Moffat's brought this in? As far as I'm concerned he's toned it down compared to what it was getting like before. I wish he'd tone it down the hell further though. He's written some of the best small-scale episodes the show's new run has had. More Blink and less Time of Angels please Moffat. I wonder is there pressure from the BBC to do things bigger and more dramatic or is it up to the writers themselves?



Edit: Reading the rest of the post, they're putting up Fear Her as the shining example of what Doctor Who should be? Seriously?

I do agree with many of the points raised though about the episode, though I did enjoy it overall. Moffat has picked up Davis' habit of throwing random plot points at the wall and it's sad to see. This is not the same Moffat who wrote The Doctor Dances.

In those two episodes pretty much everything brought up served a purpose and everything seemed well thought out (though the ending had a tinge of cop-out to it). Everything introduced in that story; the nanogenes, Jack's ship, the object that fell from the sky, all of it played a purpose and was important to the plot (except for the Sonic Blaster, that just came out of nowhere and then went away again, at least River got a few years later).

In this story many things introduced seemed pretty pointless.

Spoiler

Why exactly does the Doctor have a new nickname from the Daleks? Why is there a giant Dalek monument on Skaro? Why is Skaro even showing up again in the first place if it's only there for a one minute? Why do Daleks have a parliament? Why do Daleks have a prime minister? Why do the writers keep making Daleks more complicated when they're supposed to be simple? (their best episode in the new show is still Dalek because it's the only where where it acts like a Dalek is supposed to) Is the zombie Dalek plague supposed to be making everything scary? A planet full of insane Daleks should be scary enough! Why are the Daleks going back to calling things sacred, wasn't Daleks talking about gods and religion supposed to signify they'd gone insane in the first season? Why would any Dalek think it was acceptable to convert a human into a full Dalek? That's supposed to be a big no-no. Why would the Asylum Daleks go to the trouble? What use was converting anything to their cause when they were prisoners (something had to have put her in that device we saw, it wasn't just the nanogenes). The Daleks freak out and want to destroy the planet as soon as they realise it has been infiltrated. If they though having anything infiltrate it was a sign that it was no longer of use why was there an automated system in place to convert anything that was infiltrated into a Dalek agent? Why don't the Daleks just release that on Earth if they have the technology? Why doesn't Amy just ****ing look up an adoption agency? Why is Moffat trivialising Amy and Rory's relationship by having them supposedly completely broken up (and divorced) and then getting back together forty minutes later? Why tell us there's a million Daleks down there when for the practicale purpose of the episode there's about a dozen? Why did they change the logo again, the last one was really good!

It just seems like Moffat doesn't think things through or plan them like he used too. He's far to concerned with the big picture to make sure the details and individual episodes actually make sense. Perhaps he doesn't have time any more now that he's in charge of the whole show? I don't know what's wrong but as I said, Asylum and the Daleks and Flesh and Stone are not the same grade of work as The Empty Child and Blink.

I did actually enjoy the episode though.