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Gabez

By Gabez
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The Tingler Newbie

The Tingler

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Victory of the Daleks I enjoyed while I was watching it, but afterwards I was disappointed. The first half, with the WW2 Daleks and the mystery, was excellent, but all that was pushed aside to cram in the new style of Dalek.

 

There were also just too many logic problems.

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Why didn't people just unscrew the lightbulbs? How did they go from a sketch to fully functional prototypes (complete with powerful laser weapons) in a few minutes? Why didn't the Daleks just shoot the Doctor immediately after the 'Self Destruct Button' was revealed as just a Jammie Dodger? How does that 'love conquers Dalek bomb' idea work then?
It all just felt very rushed, and considering the potential of the idea and the first half it felt like a wasted episode to me.

 

The Time of Angels though I'm still on the fence about. It was undeniably an excellent episode, but there a few things that marred it. First of all, Moffat seems to be cramming too much in to his episodes this series. The Beast Below didn't give reasons for half its best ideas, and this time it takes far too long to get the characters exploring the Maze of the Dead. Loved the opening, but tonally was out of place and they really needed to get on with the story. None of Moffat's other two-parters have had this problem, in fact I don't recall any Doctor Who two-parters doing it at all.

 

There were also a few too many moments of “FOR CHRIST’S SAKE JUST TELL SOMEONE” that mar the worst horror movies and spoilt a lot of the episode for me.

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Like Amy in the trailer with the recording moving, those two clerics wandering out of eyesight when they’re supposed to be sticking together, Amy again when something weird is obviously going on with her eye, and finally Bob wandering off to find those other two on his own. If his radio was being disrupted I would’ve understood, but he made no attempt to mention to the commander that the other two were missing.

 

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The twist about them all being Weeping Angels was good, but unfortunately was given away entirely by that two heads comment earlier. Amy’s smart enough to ask why the ship’s not crashing down on them but not smart enough to ask “then why didn’t they build statues with two heads then”? No amount of "perception filters" can change that (which was wrong anyway).

 

Hopefully the next episode will eliminate these problems.

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Gabez Newbie

Gabez

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I liked Victory of the Daleks very much, and wildly adored The Time of Angels.

 

As for the logic problems in VotD here are my thoughts:

 

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Lightbulbs are too hot to unscrew when they are still on. Furthermore, it is not the first thing you would think to do in a moment of crisis -- the first reaction would be to (pointlessly) flick the light switch repeatedly, then perhaps go to the fuse box, then look outside and gape at all the other lights. The shock of the matter would stop everyone unscrewing their lightbulbs, even if they could. The Nazi planes were arriving in just ten minutes (though, on a sepperate but related point, it was a very long 10 minutes, and I felt that more was needed on how the spitfires got into space)

 

"How did they go from a sketch to fully functional prototypes (complete with powerful laser weapons) in a few minutes?" -- you mean the new Daleks? I didn't consider this, since I accepted that if you had the technology for powerful machines with laser weapons, you could also have the technology to create new versions of that machine quickly, if you had the right kind of resource (and there was a line about this being a sort of rare genus of Daleks... sort of like carrying a backup computer HD into battle, and if your original computer explodes, you can restore all operations with this small backup disk. But more than that, because this original source has things on it that are purer than what you were using before.

 

"Why didn't the Daleks just shoot the Doctor immediately after the 'Self Destruct Button' was revealed as just a Jammie Dodger?" -- suspension of disbelief is one answer, but if you want an answer in narrative terms, the Daleks were curious as to what the humans were up to, and wanted to find out more from him. They were still, even then, in a perilous state, and more than killing the doctor, they wanted to get away. I also feel that villains are often resistant to kill their enemies because it would take away part of the definiton of who they are -- very like the Master resisting to kill the doctor.

 

"How does that 'love conquers Dalek bomb' idea work then?" The logic is that the scientist was partly human and partly robot (a fact worked out by the fact that he had human memories, so he must have once been a human; even if his body was fully created, the Daleks at least transplanted a real human's memories to the robot); the daleks could only explode him if he was a robot, since humans have minds of their own and cannot be controlled in that way; what feels like a human is human, because humanity is defined more by its emotions and thoughts than by other characteristics (debateable but also acceptably); thus, making the scientist feel human made him human, meaning that he couldn't be blown up. I loved the realisation that what made humans human wasn't merely feeling pain, but feeling a mixture of emotions -- pain and happiness at the same time.

 

The Robot Love Bomb thing was much easier to accept for me because I was reminded of the scene from the Torchwood episode Cyberwoman, when a simmilar battle between mind and machine takes place in someone's body. The ending of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is also very simmilar (Harry expels Voldemort from his mind, finally, by remembering the love of his friends).

 

Of course you're not wrong in having these doubts -- but I think that the fault was not having more explanation, rather than an error in the logic itself (which, although stretched, seems to hold). What the episode needed was a stronger editor. The human love bomb could have been fixed quite easily I think.

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The Tingler Newbie

The Tingler

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How did they go from a sketch to fully functional prototypes (complete with powerful laser weapons) in a few minutes?" -- you mean the new Daleks?


Nah, I meant the space-capable spitfires. "Theoretically it should work". Yes, but that doesn't mean you can knock it together in under ten minutes.
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Darth InSidious Newbie

Darth InSidious

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With the blackout, lightbulbs aren't the issue; rubbish history is. The blackout didn't consist of turning all the lights off; people used blackout curtains and darkened their windows in that kind of way. How the hell does turning all the lights on in London affect blackout curtains?

And solving the plot with the healing power of love? Sorry, but I don't care if Torchwood already did it (hardly a recommendation in itself), that's just piss-poor writing.
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The Tingler Newbie

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And you can use a towel or any fabric to loosen lightbulbs, or just smash them if they're scared. They wouldn't just stand there and go WHAT DO WE DO WHAT DO WE DO. And yes, curtains!

And that Cyberwoman episode is the worst episode of Torchwood, hands down. I love the Cybermen, but it was just awful.
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Gabez Newbie

Gabez

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Good point about the curtains. However:

 

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I've just remembered that the lights were on the outside -- Big Ben was lit up like a Christmas Tree, for instance. So the building and street lights would be the real challenge.

 

I didn't say that Torchwood had used the idea as a recommendation, just an explanation for how I understood it easily without much explanation (I had seen it before). It's not very different from the ending of Star Wars. I'm sure there are many other examples. It's not about the healing power of love, but about feeling human (which in this case is felt through feeling love).

 

About the spitfires: yes, I agree. Seemed too easy to get those things in space. Could have done with a scene showing that -- I imagine that it was a case of not enough time or CGI, though. Perhaps it could have been fixed, again, with some edited dialogue.

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simonsoup Rookie

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The Time of Angels though I'm still on the fence about. It was undeniably an excellent episode, but there a few things that marred it. First of all, Moffat seems to be cramming too much in to his episodes this series. The Beast Below didn't give reasons for half its best ideas, and this time it takes far too long to get the characters exploring the Maze of the Dead. Loved the opening, but tonally was out of place and they really needed to get on with the story. None of Moffat's other two-parters have had this problem, in fact I don't recall any Doctor Who two-parters doing it at all.

 

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The twist about them all being Weeping Angels was good, but unfortunately was given away entirely by that two heads comment earlier. Amy’s smart enough to ask why the ship’s not crashing down on them but not smart enough to ask “then why didn’t they build statues with two heads then”? No amount of "perception filters" can change that (which was wrong anyway).

 

Hopefully the next episode will eliminate these problems.

 

I found The Time of Angels most thrilling...

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I was not so clever and had the same 'how did we not notice that?' reaction as the Doctor and River when the one-head twist hit. I caught the earlier mention of two heads but it just didn't click. It was this great sudden terror that I think the writing was going for, but as you've pointed out, it's very tricky to let people notice stuff but not get heavy-handed.

 

Mostly I think Moffat's been great at letting people spot crucial consequential things ahead of the series and feel smart. The repetition of the crack in Amelia's bedroom wall has gone from the nice subliminal appearance in the Tardis at the end of The Eleventh Hour to the crash-zoom signposting, and of course that crack's about to become a huge plot element.

 

So many of the other subtle weirdnesses in the early episodes seem like they could be significant given the cracks, and generally this series just feels very carefully and splendidly crafted in that way. It is exciting to engage with it on the nerd level.

 

As regards telling good stories, I get what you're saying about Moffat trying to cram too much in, but I think what I enjoy about his writing is how it doesn't stop where you think it will, he digs a little deeper, and risks a mildly chaotic narrative in efforts to make things interesting. The Time of Angels in particular had so many ideas. I've definitely appreciated and understood his episodes more when I've viewed them a second time, which I'm sure isn't the ideal for a childrens' adventure show, but they are packed with good, clever stuff that enriches the Whoniverse.

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simonsoup Rookie

simonsoup

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Hmm - I feel like there are levels to that, though. Surely

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the date on Rory's nurse badge, and Amy's age as determined by Starship UK may have something to do with the cracks? Or maybe they're just production errors. Also all that cryptic 'silence will fall' stuff that Prisoner Zero says...
All stuff I only really get to spot or think about when rewatching an episode, that starts me anticipating what might be coming up in the 'arc'. I'm really enjoying it all anyway, I hope the episodes keep on being as good as Saturday's.
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Gabez Newbie

Gabez

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Regarding notcing things...

 

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The one head thing took me by surprise. Even when everyone stopped and looked at the statues in horror, I thought it was something else ("something to do with the eyes!") -- maybe I thought that the statues were representations of people sepperate from those who created them, or maybe I was just being thick.

 

"The repetition of the crack in Amelia's bedroom wall has gone from the nice subliminal appearance in the Tardis at the end of The Eleventh Hour to the crash-zoom signposting" -- where is that? I've watched the 11th hour 4 times and went back to that scene just now in the iPlayer but still couldn't see that crack. :~

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