Doctor Who

[Thad]

I'm with McDohl. The story would have worked great with Amy. But Clara is the character who stepped into the Doctor's timestream, dispersed herself across the universe, spent eons helping all his previous selves, and still has some kind of vaguely-defined residual memories of that. If anyone has ever been well-equipped to understand what regeneration does and that he's going to be a little weird for a little while but he'll settle back down and be the same man he's always been, it's Clara.

It seems like we're just pretending Name of the Doctor never happened.

Which is okay, I guess, considering you'd have to do some serious mental gymnastics to reconcile it with Time of the Doctor.

It doesn't help that, like I said, they seemed to be using Clara as audience surrogate for all the Smith fangirls and trying to tough-sell them into sticking around.

[Mothra]

Yeah...

[Bal]

Not really. Name of the Doctor happened, and then Time of the Doctor changed history, because "We could have, once, back when there were Time Lords". My view is just that being scattered across eleven lives of the Doctor, and who knows how many lives Clara needed to save all of those Doctors, didn't leave her in any condition to remember much of what she'd seen. She comments throughout her tumble through his timeline that she doesn't know who she is or where she is, and when she hits bottom it's only Matt Smith and John Hurt that greet her. Yes, she remembers the other faces, at least at the time (or at the very least definitely does not remember John Hurt), but there's nothing to suggest she came out with a particularly deep grasp of Time Lords, despite having once been one, because the whole experience was insane and completely disorienting. If anything, it would make her latch on to HER Doctor even more, because in the episode it is that attachment that allows Smith to find her and take her back out.

[Smiler]

She saw a dude she knew spontaneously combust into old.

[Joxam]

I know its probably stupid but I feel a little bit upset that the Doctor didn't have his normal fire and brimstone proclamation of protection for what I deem to be the 'right' cause. Originally the story starts out with him all but infatuated with the Dinosaur and after she dies he says a one off line about righting wrongs and then it shifts gears back into a standard 'Protect humans from thing' story. Even if it'd ended with him saying a final word about the Dinosaur I would have been OK with that but nothing.

Its a small nitpick I know but it really did stick out to me, to the point that it was the only thing I really thought about the episode afterwards.

[Thad]

She saw a dude she knew spontaneously combust into old.

Yeah, five minutes after he dropped a thousand years off his age.

[Kayma]

Man, this episode is $8 on sites that sell such things. I hate being a legitimate consumer.

[Joxam]

i know the freaking season pass was like 50 bucks :(

[Grath]

Man, this episode is $8 on sites that sell such things. I hate being a legitimate consumer.

I had success with Hola Media Unblocker and BBC iPlayer. All I'm doing is lying to the website about where I live and then using their legitimate distribution.

[Bal]

So I was watching the episode again, and this time I was paying particular attention during the showdown with the villain and Capaldi's broom analogy. I'm wondering if that's going to be another theme for the season. We've had hints from the season trailer, and now the idea that you can only change so many parts before there's nothing left of the original as an interesting addition, and there's the very obvious "I bet you don't even remember where you got that face" scene. Moffat also made mention at one point that they might address the fact that Capaldi has appeared on the show before. I think the Oldest Question might be at issue again, but for the Doctor.

[Thad]

He's certainly setting it up to explain Capaldi's face. Whether or not he actually gets around to doing it is another question.

I see a fan theory making the rounds that Missy is the Master. On the one hand, it fits the theme of the Master using a really obvious pseudonym and Moffat et al's clear interest in playing with regeneration gender fluidity; on the other, having the Master become a woman before the Doctor seems a bit anticlimactic, and having her outright refer to the Doctor as "my boyfriend" would start making things a little weird.

("Darling...")

[Smiler]

Moffat's on record saying that the Master is dumb and the Doctor doesn't need an arch-rival so there's a less than likely chance that it could be the Master.

[Thad]

Rule one: Moffat lies.

I mean, I'm kinda hoping she's NOT the Master, but keep in mind that while stuff Moffat says may be Word of God, it's the word of a trickster god.




(I'm more interested in the bit where he seems to imply he won't be using Moriarty again.)

[Bal]

That was... interesting. I enjoyed it, and it seems to further the A plot for the season a bit, especially at the end. I don't think it's going to go down as an all time great, but at the very least it is a side of the Doctor/Dalek relationship we have not seen before, and I enjoyed that aspect of the episode most. What is meant by the Dalek? That he would make a good Dalek, or that he is himself the mythical "good" Dalek they were trying to create over the course of the episode. With the same purity of purpose, but inverted. I also hope we see Journey Blue again by the end of the season. I liked her.. I don't think I'm going to like next week though. It's an historical, and it sure doesn't look like it's going to be Vincent and the Doctor, which is basically the only historical I can stomach in any era of Who. I just don't dig on, you know, one of the traditional lynch pins of the series.

[Thad]

Definitely one of the better Dalek episodes in recent years, but most of its best ideas and plot beats were from "Dalek". Lots of very deliberate similarities, from the image of a single chained-up Dalek in disrepair to a handful of repeated (or at least similar) lines of dialogue.

Good, though, and downright chilling in the end, even if it WAS just playing with ideas the series has been working with since 2005.

[Smiler]

Episodes in which 12 got hornswoggled by a cyborg: 2/2

[Thad]

a handful of repeated (or at least similar) lines of dialogue.

Adding: Most notably, in "Dalek" the Dalek says "You would have made a good Dalek," and in this episode Rusty says "You are a good Dalek." Ouch.

(Though the ambiguity Bal noted is a good observation.)

[Thad]

A bit late to the party on these, but you know the "You can imagine that line spoken by any of the other Doctors" game popularized by Gaiman?

[Sharkey]

Despite its flaws I actually liked the first new ep a bit, but this Dalek really thing put me off. It was another weak reprisal of something that had a lot more impact the first time around, and what's new to it didn't really work. Partly because they apparently build Daleks with convenient miniature human sized corridors and liquid physics that ignore the square-cube law. And Clara came off like Dave Bowman screwing with HAL's memory core if it were a crawlspace filled with dryer hoses. But mostly I'm repulsed because the Doctor suddenly has some rule against soldiers/militants/violent people in the Tardis. Since fucking when? Probably not helped by the fact that Zawe Ashton bears a shocking resemblance to my girlfriend, who just happens to be an ex-army medic. I'm trying to put it off, but we're going to have to watch this one together eventually and I'm not looking forward to it.

My first complaint is distracting, but mostly pedantic. The second is a bit of characterization that just flipped me from "I might like this guy" to "Oh. Well. Fuck you, then."

[Thad]

Well, they're clearly going somewhere with that.

It's more of the guilt thing -- which is a little odd considering Day of the Doctor was all about achieving catharsis, moving beyond what he did as the War Doctor, and oh yeah he didn't actually do that as the War Doctor after all -- but the introduction of Danny Pink makes it pretty clear this is one of those things the Doctor and Clara are going to end up butting heads over, and she's the one who's right.

I'm okay with that, but you're right that it's a pretty weird thing to be dealing with right now. Like that bit right after Kylie Minogue ate it where 10 insisted that he travels alone (which led the friend I watched it with to respond with something along the lines of "Uh, what?").