Doctor Who!

[Kroms]

I think the Siliurian duo suffers a lot from being a Siliurian duo. There was no need to bring those things back. I'd have much rather they spent the money on something else: something new and original.

 

I bought a few Big Finish audioplays the other day. I'm going to spend some time listening to them.

 

I've only seen bits and fragments of Torchwood, but Zaarin says PJ Hammond's episodes are pretty good. I saw a bit of his fairies episode. It fits into Moffat's idea of Doctor Who. I want to finish it.

 

The thing about Torchwood is that it makes me actually wish for a science-fiction show for adults. Actual *adults*. Not something overly serious or epic, but a real, asks-the-hard-questions show, with due subtlety, ideas, characters, plots. The Wire as hard sci-fi. Even if it's just an animated series, I'd love to see it happen.

[AlfredJ]

Just wanted to show you guys this awesome mix of Doctor Who and Double Fine's new game:

 

 

You're welcome.

 

Edit: Oh, and the Christmas special was pretty great, even if I'm getting a little bit tired of some of Moffat's tricks. But his stories are still great, and I'm very glad he took over from RTD. Part of me wanted him to write that Dirk Gently pilot that aired a week or so ago. Oh, and that trailer at the end looked delicious. Can't wait to see what Gaiman did with his episode.

[Kroms]

This is pretty cool!

 

And yeah, agree about Moffat's tricks. A lot of Series 5 was re-using ideas from his older episodes, but the only time I thought, "I saw this before!" in Christmas Carol was when he was talking through a projector ala "Blink". I still think he's doing a great job of re-dressing ideas and casting them in new stories, though.

[Kroms]

So...new series. What did everyone think of the first episode?

 

(Minor request? Anything that hasn't already aired in episodes - anything you see in trailers and whatnot - please put in spoiler tags? I avoid trailers for a reason! )

[MeddlingMonk]

It'll be hard to really be sure until the second one comes out and it's tied together. Although, I get the feeling that it won't make complete sense until episode 13.

 

Loved the Discworld reference ("Oh, this is the Oval Office! I was looking for the Oblong Room.").

[The Tingler]

My favourite bit, which flew right over the heads of my viewing companions, was the

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chat about the Easter Island heads and what they look similar to. Utterly brilliant.

[Kroms]

I thought the episode was really great, though the

bathroom scene and the ending slow-mos didn't work for me initially (they grew on me on re-watch).

Some terrifically funny lines in there.

And the new monsters are very creepy. The death seven minutes in was a genuine wtf shocker

.

 

Also, to me, Matt Smith is the best portrayal of the Doctor I've seen. It's amazing how he looks both old and young, energetic but tired, dark and foreboding, yet happy and excited. Also, annoyed. He IS The Doctor. (Even Colin Baker thinks he's "incomparable".)

 

Like MeddlingMonk said, I'll have to see the next episode for a final verdict, but right now it is looking like it's one of the best episodes to date. Let's see how it holds up with the rest of the episode (episodeS? It feels like a series-long arc is at work).

[MJ]

I liked it, but I'll have to watch it again before I see part 2. As much as I love those throwaway lines, it's a shame that we don't get to see those potential storylines at some point!

[The Tingler]

My head hurts after thinking too much about Day of the Moon (it's getting like bloody Lost), but utterly loved it. Some pointers (SPOILERS):

 

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- That bit with the hatch and the futuristic woman with the Odin-like metal eyepatch totally screwed me up. I could deal with everything else in the episode, but that's one question too far! So... is... Amy... dreaming? AARGH!

- Did the Doctor really just command the human race to kill every Silent on the planet? We're getting back to the sneaky manipulative Sylvester McCoy Doctor who "hands-off" got Davros to blow up Skaro, excellent. If mean.

- She's... a... Time Lord?! Lady, whatever. And maybe Amy's her mother?? Ow, another headache.

- To be fair though, creepy as they were the Silence didn't actually do very many bad things. They killed one annoying woman (who didn't want them to?) and got the human race to go into space so they could have a spacesuit for that little girl. That giant mutant clam in Genesis of the Daleks was more evil than they are.

- But forget that... PIRATES!

[Kroms]

I thought the episode was superb. Easily the best I've seen in Doctor Who - classic *and* new.

 

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- The scene with Amy in that room was one of the scariest things I've seen, topping even "Blink".

 

- The Silence/Silents are freaky. I mean, cheesy too. But freaky.

 

- That was a very complex story, very character-driven, and with a brilliant resolution.

 

- I love it when Moffat pulls rugs from underneath people. The way this episode started got my eyes popping.

 

- Some hilarious lines in there.

 

- Season arc looks brilliant. Much more involved, eh?

 

- Poor River Song. "And last times." Indeed.

 

- What a cliffhanger.

 

Anyways, an A+ from me. I don't think any other episode will top this two-parter.

 

I should probably mention that I re-watched "Astronaut" and then started "Moon" immediately afterwards, so that might have helped a bit. Great great episodes, either way.

[MeddlingMonk]

What I'm looking forward to (hopefully for a long while yet) is getting to the young River's first encounter with the Doctor. Then I can watch her episodes in reverse order and get into her perspective of those stories.

 

And open all the doors to the swimming pool.

[Gabez]

But when we get to River meeting the doctor for the first time it will mean it is all over.

 

I wonder if the Doctor will feel like that. A first time and a last time.

 

Although presumably the Doctor can break out of the sequence if he wants to... presumably he sets the TARDIS to the point just before River goes to the library so he can turn up at her house with a new haircut and give her his screwdriver etc.

[MeddlingMonk]

I suppose the Doctor must be able to jump around River's timeline, since he has a time machine, although normally his first meeting with someone is their first meeting with him as well, and the second, and so on. But, the Doctor definitely went out of the crosswise sequence with River when he gave her the special sonic screwdriver just before Silence in the Library. That has to be his last meeting with River, which is her next-to-last rather than her first.

 

Moffat is clearly taking the whole time-travel thing more seriously than the series has in the past. The Tardis traditionally has been used just to land the Doctor in the middle of something. The first story to play on the notion of time travel as time travel was The Space Museum, and that was more than a little crap. It's not until Day of the Daleks that time travel was employed as the driver of the plot. Moffat seems intent on really making time wibbly-wobbly.

[Kroms]

"The Curse of the Black Spot": enjoyable, solid, nothing special.

 

"The Doctor's Wife": incredible. ARGHHH so good. And on my birthday. Real special, this one.

[The Tingler]

Happy Birthday!

 

And totally agree. Curse of the Black Spot I had high hopes for (Doctor Who and Pirates! What could go wrong?), but it had a point at which the whole plot just basically stopped and they didn't have anywhere else interesting to go.

 

The Doctor's Wife though - barring the slight disappointments of the "stored control room" not being a classic series control room and the TARDIS being a few identical corridors, this was an exceptionally good episode. The relationship between the Doctor and, um, Idris just makes the whole thing - as it really does in every episode, it's just never been humanised like this!

[Kroms]

Thanks Chris!

 

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The control room had to be what it was because it was the set they had. That was *not* a cheap episode. Personally, I enjoyed the little throwback to Nine and Ten. Also, for once, we see the TARDIS interior in New Who. It looked fine to me, though I will say this: RIP swimming pool.

[The Tingler]

Ack, not too worried about that particular part. It's been and gone about 2 or 3 times over the course of the series.

[MeddlingMonk]

Don't feel too sorry for the swimming pool. The Seventh Doctor jettisoned it because it leaked sometime before Paradise Towers. From what the Doctor said about making Amy and Rory a new room, the Tardis can probably make a new swimming pool (again, I guess).

 

Tardis corridors were a bit on the samey side, but then there were back in the '80s. But that's much better than Victorian brickwork interior from The Invasion of Time.

 

I'm also fine with the use of the console room that they had, and I liked the idea that the Tardis retains all the old console rooms. It's kind of weird nod to the new/old console room introduced for The Hand of Fear.

 

And, rounding off the title dropping festival, let's hear it for the psychic boxes from The War Games. Woooo!

[The Tingler]

War Games, yeah! Oh, and the Eye of Orion from The Five Doctors. I also think the swimming pool was chucked sometime by the Fifth Doctor too, possibly in Castrovalva, I have a vague memory of Tegan being on her way there to have a swim when he did it.

 

I do like how the "alternate" TARDIS looks a little bit Classic.

[MeddlingMonk]

You're thinking of the Zero Room, actually. But you're otherwise right: I think it was in Castrovalva that introduced the idea that Tardis rooms can be converted into thrust.

 

When you think about it, The Doctor's Wife had a lot of references to old Who. Just off the top of my head, there were references to things and ideas from: The Edge of Destruction (Tardis is alive and intelligent, but unable to communicate using language), The Sensorites (Time Lord psychic powers), The War Games (psychic distress-call boxes), Frontier in Space (telepathic circuits), every story that mentions the fact that the Doctor stole the Tardis (starting with Planet of the Spiders, I think), The Masque of Mandragora (more than one control room), The Invasion of Time (swimming pool introduced), Destiny of the Daleks (planet that is a shell around a living organism), Logopolis (cloister bell), Castrovalva (burning Tardis rooms for thrust), The Five Doctors (rebuilding the console), Paradise Towers (swimming pool deleted). And there may be others.

[The Tingler]

Rebuilding the console in The Five Doctors? When? And I thought the swimming pool was ditched along with the Zero Room in Castrovalva, but could be confusing it with Paradise Towers. I think it possibly happens again in an 8th Doctor audio adventure.

 

Anyway, 'The Rebel Flesh'. I vaguely enjoyed it, cheap as it felt, but even with that ending I'm not sure where they can go with a second episode. Surprise me Matthew Graham! Still, it feels good to have an almost proper Classic-feeling episode right down to a cliffhanger. And where does the Doctor know the Flesh from? The gravitas he gave it makes me suspect a major enemy, but who?

[Kroms]

It's really not that hard to guess *how* he knows The Flesh. They're not an old enemy, I'll put it that way. Major hints throughout the episode.

 

I personally really, really liked it. It was exciting. And funny. And weird and new and interesting. Much prefer this to cheap, hollow knock-offs like "The Hungry Earth" or "Victory of the Daleks". There's a good cast and good writing. It's all up to part two, though.

 

Also, I have a relatively strong theory about Amy's on/off pregnancy. I'll tell you, just no-one write anything from trailers and future synopses to confirm or deny.

 

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I don't think it's a coincidence that Rory keeps verging on death. I'd say that someone, for some reason, is trying to off him so that the baby, whoever it is, doesn't get born. Hence the Yes/No. This probably ties into the Astronaut Girl somehow.

 

Again, please, no-one post anything from trailers or synopses. I avoid them. That's just my (relatively plausible) theory, though.

[MeddlingMonk]

Rebuilding the console in The Five Doctors? When?

 

A new console is introduced, not for the first time, but in a way that draws attention to the change. There's a conversation between Tegan and the Doctor about it. She wonders if the Tardis will now work properly and the Doctor replies with something like "once everything is connected". Instead of pretending the console had always been like that, it was played up as a new installation.

 

Different topic, but I wonder whether the Flesh will ultimately relate to the death of the Doctor in the first episode. It's not as if they're going to really kill off the Doctor and the series with him.

[Kroms]

"The Almost People" was so exciting.

[MeddlingMonk]

Tom Baker's voice coming out of Matt Smith's mouth was certainly unexpected. I actually jumped when that happened.