Doctor Who?

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Re: Doctor Who?

Postby KleinerKiller » Sun May 28, 2017 9:33 am

Sweet merciful God, that was a bad one.

Spoiler: show
Fuck Bill. Seriously. That may be the most foolish, unjustifiable, short-sighted, generally horrific action ever undertaken by a companion on this show, and that's counting various companions who were responsible for or complicit in genocides. Bill Potts is a brick-stupid worm with no morals, and she deserves to be killed or at least abandoned for that action. And that's leaving aside all of the sloppy writing and other assorted nonsense it took to get us to that point.

Oh but wait we can't criticize Bill so actually she's a strong empowered woman and this was one of the most brilliant DW endings ever.

Bleh.

Anyway, our tremendous failure of a companion aside, we're still stuck on this goddamn monks arc. I'm not happy about this, because the monks may genuinely be the lamest series Big Bads yet. We've dealt with them for two episodes and we still have not even the faintest clue what they are, what they can do, why they bother to do it, or anything of that nature. Their "consent and love" rules make absolutely no sense and paint them as the dumbest conquerors ever to land on Earth, and their grand plan revolving around one scientist accidentally starting a Grey Goo scenario with GM bacteria (because this was the same writer as "Kill the Moon" and the Zygon two-parter popping in to let us know how he feels about GMOs) felt absurdly underwhelming. I'm not sure why we're supposed to be afraid of these chucklefucks, or why they're being treated as more dangerous and challenging than any enemy the Doctor has ever faced.

Not even going to bother with all of the politics stuff in this episode, Marc did well enough there. Though I'd just like to point out that the president we saw in "Extremis" was clearly not Trump, but Bill referenced Trump being the president. I guess another critic-pleasing political jab was more important than solid continuity.

The entire episode was basically just pointless filler. Again. And the next episode looks to be an alternate universe thing, so yeah, still going. Yet it's being hailed as clever and subversive because it's stringing along episodes that don't matter. I don't get it.

Lastly, if the next episode opens with another Penny date gag, I may take a spork to my eyes.


It's a crying shame that this series is sucking so fucking badly, because I actually feel it's Capaldi's best work in the role thus far. He's doing consistently amazingly, even when the writing for the character of the Doctor doesn't work at all, and it saddens me to know that he has to leave after this tripe.

But please, even considering that, just let it be over already. Let Chibnall take the helm. Even if he's shit at it, I can't imagine him turning in an episode like this.
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Re: Doctor Who?

Postby Marcuse » Sun May 28, 2017 9:39 am

Spoiler: show
Australia wrote:So the Generals were accused of strategy when they only forfeited so everyone they loved would live and were subsequently killed but Blinkless Bill was not accused of strategy despite forfeiting so one person she gets along with can see and is seen as reliable, despite only seconds ago telling the Doctor that he has to get them out of the bargain she's making now? That checks out.


I actually turned to my wife when she made that stupid bargain and repeated the monks' statement about strategee. I was, however, unsurprised that Bill got away with it.

Australia wrote:I thought the reason we had a made up country in this episode was either a) it gets destroyed in the end and they're saving literally every real country for an important plot in the years to come or, more creatively, b) a timey-wimey ending where the country no longer exists in our minds, given that the aliens have a history of creating realities and could be slowly taking over the world a country at a time without us realising it, which is where I thought it was going. Guess I expected too much from this show. Nope, it was just a made-up country for no reason. Should have set it on a different planet then, but what do I know?


It's actually the same made-up country they used in the Zygon Invasion/Inversion episodes. It's basically the Who go-to fake country they use to set something in the Middle East without any of those thorny questions about actually having to reflect the culture and people of a specific country. It appears to be common now on TV, I don't know if it's because people are afraid of offending, or they just have no idea how to depict people from Kazakhstan or Mongolia.

CMSellers wrote:And what was with the talk of a border dispute?


My expectation was that it was probably Kashmir they were aping. But again, they have no spine sufficiently to actually set it there and handle it well.

KleinerKiller wrote:Their "consent and love" rules make absolutely no sense


Machiavelli would also disagree with their rules too.


Australia wrote:My final gripe has nothing to do with this episode, but with every year that goes by since the special, this bugs me even more. Why did they bother bringing back Gallifrey if they're not going to bring back Gallifrey?


What you have to remember is that this series' storytelling is entirely subordinate to marketing and promotion. Bringing back Gallifrey is only useful in order to market the finale of series 9. There is basically no continuity any more, and preserving the vitrified formula of "Doctor alone plus companion travelling also the master is about sometimes" is more important than opening up the series into something actually recognisable as a consistent continuity.

KleinerKiller wrote:It's a crying shame that this series is sucking so fucking badly, because I actually feel it's Capaldi's best work in the role thus far. He's doing consistently amazingly, even when the writing for the character of the Doctor doesn't work at all, and it saddens me to know that he has to leave after this tripe.


I'm appreciating Capaldi and Matt Lucas. I'm pretty sure a series with more balls than Grey Worm would just have the Doctor and Nardole together, because Bill has been literally irrelevant to the plot for the last few episodes (ie. they could have written in an extra and nothing of value would be lost).
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Re: Doctor Who?

Postby Marcuse » Sun Jun 04, 2017 12:30 am

Episode 10.8 - The Lie of the Land

Hoo boy. This one. Thiiiis one...
Spoiler: show
So first of all, I'd like to point out that, despite my generalised reservations about the quality of the series as is, I was a little interested in this episode. Not that I've suddenly become a fanboi who can't see through the shit,
but a premise transforming the world into an alien-controlled society where the Doctor has turned on humanity is a little exciting. It was obvious from the outset that he wouldn't actually regenerate (spoiled in both the trailer for this, and the pre-series teaser). Still, I nursed some hopes. A secondary aside is to note that the author of this episode is the same person who wrote The God Complex, and the two part Under the Lake and Before the Flood. I generally rate his writing.

Apparently an alien society imposed on humanity looks and acts a hell of a lot like North Korea. The monks have not only undermined the government of the world, they've messed with everyone's minds to make them believe that they were there the whole time. This stuff about their history and past is delivered by the Doctor himself, who is absolutely the scariest thing about the entire episode. This is one of the central conceits of the beginning of the episode. Bill is dumped back into the world and left to live her life as a slave to the monks. She can see people being disappeared, being sent to gulag by thought...I mean MEMORY police, all wearing the same crap overalls.
Weirdly it seems that the control the monks exert is far from universal, as plenty of people seem to be able to overcome it or evade it. They kind of don't address this, but tacitly do so by saying that it's only been six months since they took over.

Bill retires to her home, replete as it is with a hanging image of an eyeless zombie a la Kim Il Sung, to speak with her mind avatar of her dead mother. As people often do. She even makes a second coffee for her. She then tells rather than shows how she's been trying to keep it together and remember that the monks are bad and not the benevolent saviours they claim to be. She's looking for the Doctor, and while she's musing, she gets a knock at the door. I'm sure we were supposed to be afraid that it's thought police, but it's so clearly and obviously Nardole that the only surprise is how alike their respective screams are in pitch.

A yay aside to celebrate that Nardole ain't dead. I'm strangely fond of the guy. Apparently he's not human after all.

Luckily, Nardole has spent the last six months doing something more useful than serving chips. He's actually created an entire, complete plan to infiltrate the Doctor, whom he has already located, and bribed the people necessary to get where he needs to be. I'm not much of a fan of "problem is presented then immediately resolved by events which take place off screen" thing, it's very tell not show and doesn't work well.

Turns out the Doctor's on a boat. Presumably this is keeping him in anguished incarceration and he'll be begging to be spring out. We then cut, nigh immediately, to them on the ship where another voice over tells us it'd sure suck if they did a spot check right now. What do you know! The guard immediately calls a spot check. How's that for tension? But just as they get to Bill, a very weird thing happens. So weird in fact, that it calls for its own paragraph on the subject.

So as the spot check is about the unmask Bill as the lowly purveyor of lightly burned potato sticks she is, they all freak out. One of "them" is here, and they're all rushing to attention. A monk enters the scene, and walks past them.
He stops, then turns and looks directly at Bill. Now, she's the reason they're in power now. She's been physically present with them while she did so, and she isn't particularly in disguise, and the fucking thing is staring right at her. It then turns and leaves and we never see it again. The...fuck? I'm a monk, doing my monk shit all day,
when I run across someone I know damn well is associated with the Doctor, in the company of another person I know is associated with the Doctor, on a ship I know damn well the Doctor is on. I conclude there is nothing to suspect here and carry on my monk way to do more monk things? There is absolutely no excuse for this scene existing.

But after a couple of seconds of looking on a large almost empty prison ship (I assume they're not still using it as a prison) they find the Doctor in a weird looking office. Then commences the single most disheartening scene I've ever watched in a Who episode. Bill runs in and does the standard template companion behaviour: "Doctor, shit got real and I'm woefully underprepared, save meeeeee". He calls the guards and the fucking monks and reports her. She asks him what the fuck he's doing, and he repeats that he's reported her and she's mad. He explains that the human race can't be trusted any more, we don't learn and so he's not going to stand in the way of someone who wants to keep us under control because it's "safer". Bill protests and he blames her for the situation, saying he didn't ask for his sight back (well, he didn't and there was totally a way to get out of it without selling the planet to zombies, but whatever) and she didn't listen to his express orders. She tries to give him a code by incorrectly identifying the location of magic poo fish hoping he'll play along, but he calls her out instantly for the code and denounces her. Bill then does a strange thing. She grabs a gun from an armed man and shoots the Doctor four times.

Wait. She does what now? Bill? You know that one who has had an epic freakout every time she's seen someone die, is going to commit murder in cold blood now against what I can only assume is her best friend, and pull the trigger not once but four times? You have to be fucking kidding me. That is so far out of character for Bill that it's inexcusable.

The only point to having her do that is so we can have what comes next; the bullshit fakeout not-regeneration.
I almost hoped they were doing some kind of alt reality thing and he'd choose the form of a monk or something and they'd truly be on their own. But no, they choose to throw a deuce at the head of everyone who bought even a little into the marketing for this episode, as we do nothing. Rekt.

See, the regeneration isn't just fake in the real world, it's also fake in the story too! The Doctor was just so horrible to his friend that she tried to murder him for a joke. He seems to think it's funny, but he needs to ask Nardole whether the regeneration thing was a bit much because literally nobody else in that room has a clue what regeneration is. So everything the Doctor had said was a lie, he was getting the monks to trust him and they don't yet. He's recruited the soldiers and deprogrammed them so he can use them as he wishes apparently. Cannon fodder always bodes well in episodes like this.

Lie of the Episode.png
Look at this bullshit. In any other industry this would be false advertising.
Lie of the Episode.png (197.07 KiB) Viewed 5836 times


I cannot express how much this part made me want to give up and never watch another Who ep again. It's flat, tensionless, unfunny, harsh, way out of character for Bill, and gives us nothing but a giant turd on the all the setup and promise the idea of a turncoat Doctor might have given us.

The next thing he does is crash the ship into land so they can get off the boat and on to the next series-wide story beat. Capaldi is once again fucking scary as fuck pulling weird faces on the prow. Because when you plow a ship into land the best place to stand is on the front of it gurning.

Capaldi Crazy.png
Look at this mad bastard.
Capaldi Crazy.png (311.62 KiB) Viewed 5836 times


They then hop skip and jump across to the university to enjoy more exposition. This time it's to open dat vault and speak to Pissy I mean Missy. The inside of the vault is bigger, as you might expect, and it has the look of a disused bar about it. The Doctor is here to ask her for advice, which she initially tries to barter for treats. The Doctor tells her that one doesn't do that sort of thing with the fate of a planet at stake. Apparently trading one man's eyesight for the fate of that world is small potatoes. It seems to be related to the sub-plotline they've been introducing of Missy trying to be "good". My primary problem with this is that they appear to be using terms that 2 year olds can understand. It's all about "good" and "bad" and it just doesn't come off mature enough about the subject it's hoping to broach to be able to handle it correctly. Missy trying to be good and coming to terms with her past is like trying to redeem Darth Vader and then actually deal with the aftermath. It's impossibly complicated and probably worthy of its own show. Instead we have an absurdly truncated exchange with the Doctor, Bill and Missy,
and one ending scene to deliver probably the most complex issue on Who right now.

Missy tells them the simple truth, which is that Bill is the conduit by which the Monks exert their control and they can just kill her to end it. Or they could render her into a permanent vegetative state which would be better because they wouldn't be able to use her brain but she wouldn't be dead. Bill keeps talking over the Time Lords here, and I kept thinking to myself "ffs Bill, let the grown ups talk please". The Doctor storms off in a huff because Missy gives him some line about how he's arrogant and sentimental and won't take the obvious solution and dresses it up in moralist language to make him feel righteous. It's about the only cutting remark anyone makes. She also points out that she could have opened the door any time she wanted, but didn't. So that's nice then.

But the Doctor heads back to the little caravan thing the soldiers have been cooling their heels in with Nardole while he consults the oracle. He hits on the plan that he can, instead of disrupting the network by removing its source,
disrupt it by overtaking the transmitter. That's located in the ridiculous ancient pyramid in the center of London.
They wander there without being stopped by anyone. Some totalitarians these guys are, eh?

Their secret weapon against the monks is for everyone to wear headphones (Beats by Dre FTW) with tape players (yes really, cassette tape players, no I have no idea) with a monologue of Bill telling them the monks are evil.
Apparently that's more than enough to work right where the signal is strongest. Why doesn't that work all the time then? When I switch on "loyal to the nightsky" would that disrupt it too? This is not very well thought out as a mechanic, as people go around all the fucking time with headphones in, sometimes for hours at a time.

We have a slightly cool looking fight between the monks and the redshirts. The powers the monks possess are still all over the place, and now they apparently have Force Lightning and Force Protect. I'm guessing they swapped out their points in Mind Trick and Force Push for more Dark Side powers when they become a full on villain. One of them dies, which begs one of many questions; why don't they just kill the monks? If they're truly awful and there's not many of them, why not just kill them all if they can just walk into their inner sanctum and murder them at will? One of the soldiers' tape players gets busted and he turns on them, only to be knocked out in seconds by Nardole doing a...Vulcan neck grip? Oh come on. That's bullshit. Who is nearly 20% recycled Star Trek elements now, and it's sad and derivative to see it happening.

We then find the middle of the complex. There's no mind affect here because that would complicate the story.
There's a gnarly-ass looking zambo in the middle of the room on a throne like a badass. Sadly he does nothing.The Doctor does his mind meld (Trek again) on the thing and we know it doesn't work out because the TVs in the roof tell us so. He goes boom and the next thing he knows he's tied up by Bill, kinky. She's gonna commit suicide by mind meld, because they also teach that when you learn how to scoop the chips properly.

But look, the mind of a gormless twit who loves her dead mum a bit is more powerful than the mind of a two-thousand year old Time Lord. Bill's mum wins the day and all the monks run off, never to return. Shit goes right back to how it was, and everyone thinks the monks never existed.

Right at the end, Missy delivers some exposition about how she's got the sads that she killed people. It's once again punctured with childish language that takes away any sense of this being complex or real. Michelle Gomez blows the crappy material out the water, but it's just mawkish and silly to have someone prepared to coldly suggest killing someone one minute then cry about having killed the next. Especially so in an episode where they handled another character's attitude to killing so badly.

So what do you say about a shitshow like this? This is the first one I'll outright say is awful. It mis-sells it's opening badly by promising a traitor Doctor and Bill on her own. She's never on her own, nothing happens at her behest and once again you could have replaced her with anyone else and nothing would have changed, save the link to her being important as the dealmaker. The solution is derivative, being very much the same as the Clara leaf thing we endured previously, and the climax of the episode is rushed, underwhelming and mostly nonsense.
I really can't understate how much it bothers me to have built so much of this story around the trailer material,
only to openly and knowingly fake out the viewer in a way that feels like a middle finger. The monks are the worst villains I've ever encountered, none of them even had a speaking part in this episode, that's how much they weren't proper characters here. I don't know if the writer simply didn't want to deal with them, or if he was unsatisfied with the stuff he'd been handed by the precursor episodes so just kind of wrote them into the background. Either way,
it leaves a swathe of unanswered questions, not least of which was why they were even doing it in the first place.
Why conquer Earth? Why rewrite history? Why work with the Doctor at all? Why are there so few of them? Why do they fly pyramids? Why not imprison Bill and take samples to clone new anchors for their signal? Nothing about the monks has, or ever will, make sense. I powerfully do not care about Bill's mum. The Missy sub-plot was handled childishly, and doesn't do anything to demonstrate the weight of hundreds of years of being really awful to people on Missy. Nardole's status as human appears to change depending on who's writing him. The only positive thing I can say is that Capaldi, Gomez and Lucas put in great performances of crap material.

The next one looks mind numbingly stupid. Ice warriors vs Victorian British soldiers in caves underneath Mars.
I'm not expecting anything. Probably best at this point.
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Re: Doctor Who?

Postby cmsellers » Sun Jun 04, 2017 2:17 am

I just cannot take the monks seriously. These dollar store dementors are such pathetic villains I keep expecting them to break out in a comedy song routine.
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Re: Doctor Who?

Postby Marcuse » Sun Jun 04, 2017 11:36 pm

Oh, here's something I realised today and wanted to bring up.
Spoiler: show
The Doctor introduces Missy to Bill as "the other last of the Time Lords". What the fuck is that? We know absolutely that the Time Lords were saved and Gallifrey exists. Why're we going back to the conceit that there's only two Time Lords again? We know there's more than that. Even if they're at the end of the universe this is a society that has time machines. Did the writer forget that the Time Lords came back, or did they think the audience would have?
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Re: Doctor Who?

Postby KleinerKiller » Mon Jun 05, 2017 12:22 am

And now the fandom is falling all over itself trying to prop up the trilogy, justifying the monks with their own headcanon theories that no episode has provided solid backing for, and proclaiming that at least it's still better than anything RTD ever did with similar concepts. And don't you dare talk shit because Doctor Who isn't about plotting, it's about how it makes you feel, man. Oh, and also Bill is OMG amazeballs and best companion.

Ladies and gentlemen, this may be the worst fucking series of the show since its revival. Broad, sweeping statement, I know, but I feel its truth in my bones. There were a lot of clunkers in Series 2 and 3, 6 dragged on with its tedious Silence plot that ended up being a damp squib, and Marc previously did a grand job chronicling the miserable absurdity of 9, but at least those all had something. They all had episodes that were good-to-great, or powerfully memorable character beats, or at least a generally entertaining Doctor-Companion dynamic. Series 10 has not landed once for me. The closest it's come is "Extremis," which is still a pretty damn sloppy episode that I feel no impulse to rewatch. The people who are still clinging to it, be they fans or critics, keep referring to it as Moffat's victory lap, but all I keep seeing are the worst excesses and mediocrities of his tenure with none of the positives.

Capaldi deserves better than this kindergarten drivel.
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Re: Doctor Who?

Postby Marcuse » Sun Jun 11, 2017 9:51 am

Episode 10.9 - Empress of Mars

Spoiler: show
Oh here we go. Right from the off, this one looks like a silly one. We have the worst CGI NASA HQ in the world to zoom in on, and they're counting down to...something. We're not even sure while they're counting down,
but who cares because the Doctor is there counting too. Apparently he can't resist a string of numbers. Also he,
Bill and Nardole have no trouble secretly inveigling themselves into a secure control centre.

Oh look and there's a rock formation saying "God Save the Queen" on Mars. Yay. The only notable thing for this is how Capaldi plays it. He looks satisfied by it in a...very strange way. I think Capaldi has taken the "madman in a box"
thing to heart, and just plays everything like he's going really crazy.

So smash cut to the TARDIS! Short conversation. The smash cut directly to Mars! No need to set anything up or build tension. Let's just go to the place and do the thing! While on one hand I appreciate the directness, it feels very rushed. After wandering about a bit, Bill falls down a hole, quite far. She does that fake landing thing that a lot of shitty TV shows do, where it looks like a still CG image of the actor has been painted crashing into the scenery,
and it makes me wonder why she couldn't have just slid down or something less violent if they were going to have what looked like a 20 foot fall have no consequences. The writer indicates how little interest he has in writing Nardole, by having him run back to the Tardis to get ropes and have it literally fly itself away, not to return until the end of the episode. The dialogue around here is peppered with pop culture references, which I suppose is meant to make people think this is witty? But it just comes off a bit stilted. The joke that the Doctor doesn't know human pop culture is not funny.

The Doctor however, finds an Ice Warrior. We don't waste much time on figuring out what it is, because the Doctor knows everything already. He greets the warrior, and is apparently getting him on side, when a Victorian British soldier turns up, and threatens. The Doctor, thinking that the human is threatening the Ice Warrior, tries to warn him off, only to get a warning shot himself. Shock twist: the ice warrior is in league with the HUMANS. Dun dun duuuun.

Actually wait. This is just the plot of The Victory of the Daleks isn't it? An alien attaches itself to a group of human soldiers, but secretly has its own agenda to bring back its species. Right? Right?

Okay so this is literally the same thing, just on Mars with Ice Warriors. They found the spaceship in South Africa
and the one warrior, whom they name Friday, in suspended animation. How they wake him up is not addressed,
but they do and he flies them to Mars. Mars has oxygen apparently, but only in the tunnels? Whatever. He promises the humans jewels or whatever in exchange for their help in digging his people out. It's pretty obvious what's going on. Lo and behold, around the time the Doctor arrives, we find the Queen. I'm almost certain she's played by the same person who played the Queen of the Rachnos.

Evil queen wants to kill everyone, asshole corporal wants to as well, violence ensues. However, the deposed captain, who'd almost been hanged for desertion, ends up murdering his captain and working with the Ice Warriors.
There really isn't much more plot than that. There's a weird scene where the Ice Queen calls out Bill for her opinion for no reason other than her gender, but then immediately moves on like they forgot that happened. Dunno why that was necessary.

Nardole gets dumped back home, and does the obvious thing of asking the other Time Lord for help. Missy flies the TARDIS back to get them, does nothing wrong, but the Doctor is furious. He...kind of stands near her for a minute while the music increases in tension. I thought they were going to kiss or something. But nope, nothing happened.
I don't know why it's a bad thing for her to help out in a crisis. If I were stuck on Mars I would be okay with someone who seems to be trying to be a better person saving my life, and then agreeing to return to captivity. She wouldn't have even been involved if Nardole hadn't run to her. I guess that they're trying to make Missy sympathetic,
which is working because Michelle Gomez is selling it well enough, but it's clearly just to make her turn evil at the end and probably kill the Doctor so he regenerates.

Overall this one went in one ear and out the other. It's barely worth comment. There's no surprises, the plot is recycled, and the only slightly interesting thing (Missy) doesn't go anywhere.
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Re: Doctor Who?

Postby Marcuse » Sun Jun 18, 2017 11:02 am

Episode 10.10 - The Eaters of Light
or; Shut Up Cornelius!

Spoiler: show
We're in ancient Scotland, because the author is from Aberdeen. Also Bill and the Doctor have a heretofore unheard of disagreement about the fate of the ninth legion. Nardole reflects the audience by thinking this is a weird thing to be wasting time on. Matt Lucas is rocking the strangest orange dressing gown, and the Doctor has a jumper that appears to have been embroidered with stars but I can't help but think looks a little like a baby has thrown up on him.

Trivia Aside: The writer for this episode is now the only person to have worked on both the old and new runs of Doctor Who.

Bill wanders off and finds a Pict, who reacts in a way I would expect people of that time to: she screams blue murder and tries to kill her.

Trivia Aside 2: The actress playing Kar is appeared in Game of Thrones as Samwell Tarly's sister. I only found that out at the end of the ep, and spent the entire time wondering where I recognised her from.

Bill falls in another hole, and loses the Doctor. Wait didn't that happen last time? Maybe we can get away from excuses to have Bill separated from the Doctor, eh? It seems to be a way to introduce the villain without the Doctor seeing it and knowing exactly what it is. As last time, Bill finds a soldier. A roman one this time, who sounds like he's from Sarf Landan. He explains that he was a member of the ninth legion, thus solving the mystery we were presented with at the beginning almost immediately. But oh no, we have some evil beast after them. The Doctor finds a victim and points out immediately that all the bones have gone from the body, and this is caused by lack of exposure to light. As a mechanic I guess that's inventive, it just...doesn't feel like a threat because we know for sure that's not going to harm anyone important.

Meanwhile the Doctor is kidnapped by the aforementioned picts. But he notes pretty quickly that they're all rather young. We're treated a monologue about how awful the Roman Empire, and imperialism in general is, and nobody disagrees or challenges them. I guess this is our version of "Bill's opinions" for the episode. Empires bad. Got it.
Cowardice good. Noted. All the pictish adults have died in battle and it's basically only teens and kids left in the village. Sad.

We find out that our screaming pict from the start is nominally in charge, and refers to herself as the "keeper of the gate". The Doctor figures out that she let something through, and it destroyed an entire legion of Roman soldiers.
He deduces with almost no information that she calculated that maybe the legion would, in being destroyed,
wound the beast sufficiently to kill it. He runs off with the weird expedient of throwing unpopped popcorn into a fire, which makes a sound like a gun. Er. That doesn't do that. If anything it'd just burn and no pop. Whatever.

Meanwhile Bill makes her escape from the hole in the ground, and the soldier who was tagging along dies to the monster. Despite having no guide, and being chased by a tentacle monster, she manages to find the one cave with the other Romans in it. It's almost as if she's been directed to them or something... The Romans are even more Sarf Landan that the others, with the most common refrain from them being "Shatap Cornelius". I know they're supposed to be young, but why do they need to all speak like yoof? None of them act like Romans, which when you're playing Romans is a disadvantage. Apparently these ones are also cowards who fled from the beast, and are hiding in a cave because the beast's weakness is apparently stones. They help and support Bill for no real reason. I'm guessing the writer intended that to be taken as unspoken because they're all in the same bad situation, but given there doesn't appear to be any threat inside the cave, it comes off as weird that they just unquestioningly help.

Arriving at the cairn from before, the Doctor manages to see inside the portal. There's a shitload of the monsters in there. Popping out after seeing this he finds he's been in there for two days. It's a timey wimey thing. Nardole now sports the same shitty face paints as the picts, and appears to be their best friend now. I'm going to say it once,
Matt Lucas is a joy in these episodes, and I don't know why he's not just the companion on his own.

They retire to the black mage pictish village and discuss the situation. Kar tells us that she's destined to fight off the monster, and the Doctor tells her she doesn't have a clue. He figures out that the pictish elders managed to seal the portal but it opens every so often as a kind of safety valve, to prevent it collapsing. Just then, SUDDENLY ROMANS AND BILL. They literally open a hatch into the picts' tent. Because their mud huts have extensive underground cellars now?

Either way, they all realise that far from speaking foreign languages, they now all speak the same one, including Bill. She points out at tortuous length that this is the TARDIS doing that. Well done, I thought the translation field was something that was just taken as given? Apparently we need it explaining again. Then we do that thing again.
You know, the "Doctor thinks humans are children" thing. Where he gets incredibly patronising and presents any sort of human conflict as trivial and why don't we all just give peace a chance. Says the man who fought the Time War.
Hypocrite.

But the Picts and Romans buy it hook, line and sinker. They all rock up to the portal to stop it. They kill the eater of light by...shining lights on it. Whereupon the Doctor states his intention to go fight the monsters forever because he doesn't die. He explains at length why the humans can't be the ones to do this because they'll die of old age before the portal is made safe. But the humans don't listen, literally club the Doctor to the ground and run in there themselves. Apparently thirty seconds of pep talk makes you willing to fight forever to the death against an evil monster when before you were too cowardly to stand against it with an army at your back... Whatever.

Then the crows start saying Kar because they're saying her name. Face, meet Palm. Oh yeah did I mention that crows talked all through this for no reason in a way that affected nothing? Oh I omitted it because they add nothing to your understanding of the plot.

Overall this one is a mess. There's high handed yelling about why imperialism is bad, cowards brought round by pep talks, Bill being equated with the Doctor as though they're remotely the same, and stupid shit with crows talking.
The whole thing reeks of someone writing for themself rather than for an audience, and including as many things they want to speak about instead of what would be interesting for the viewer.

We end on the ridiculous concept that the Doctor left Missy unattended in the TARDIS while they were out. He's letting her maintain it for him. Er. What. This is dumb. She claims to be locked out of the controls so she's a prisoner. But.. like... she's maintaining it. She's got her hands in the guts of the machine, and she can't control it?
Is the Doctor huffing paint? We have more of Missy crying, and she doesn't even know why she's doing it. The Doctor thinks it's a ploy, but then goes along with it anyway. The fuck?

The next episode is him letting Missy get everyone killed for no reason, and is also the finale, so we end on a shot of John Simm asking for a kiss. Eh. This is so lampshade hung that when the Master does betray the Doctor I'll be more annoyed than anything else. In fact the only thing that would surprise me is if the Master remains loyal to the Doctor. Anything else would just be what we knew would happen in the first place.
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Re: Doctor Who?

Postby Marcuse » Sun Jun 25, 2017 12:59 am

Episode 10.11 - World Enough and Time

Before the spoiler, what the hell is that title? It doesn't even make sense for the episode. It's taken from the first line of this poem, but shorn of the context it doesn't make much sense to me.

Spoiler: show
We open directly on a shot of Capaldi falling out of the TARDIS, regenerating like a muthafucka. Note the snow, we're not seeing this again until the Christmas special. People are speculating that they'll do some fuckery to have him regen in the series finale because Capaldi has said he's already filmed himself regenerating. I doubt it.

Next we have a very long and unnecessary flying section just to tell us that we're on a large spaceship. Well done.
The TARDIS immediately warps in, and Missy pops out and says she's "Doctor Who". I'm a huge fan of Michelle Gomez, but the conceit that she thinks the Doctor is called Doctor Who is annoying because it's self referential and frustrating, especially when she tries to punk Bill by saying it's his real name. It only reminds me of the disgusting fakeout that was The Name of the Doctor and that's never something that endears.

But the premise is as we expected, the Doctor is a dumbass waiting to get stabbed in the back, and he's given Missy a chance to be "good" by sending them to a place where there's a problem and getting her to solve it and be nice. She's kind of being blase and sarcastic about it, but then the Doctor is eating crisps while everyone he's in contact with has a mic in their ear. Not cool Doc. Eventually they discover that the ship is escaping a blackhole, and everyone on the crew has died, because the screens are all moved to face one position. That's a cool little deduction and something I'd expect a Time Lord to notice.

Well, not everyone on the crew. Blue Man Group has survived, and his only purpose is the blow Bill a hole straight through her. There's baddies coming, and they want only humans, so Bill happily makes herself as big a target as possible.

YES. FINALLY.

Suddenly flashback! I don't know why we need this set of scenes really. It seems to be an abortive attempt to generate some sympathy for Bill. The only real purpose we get out of it is revealing that the Doctor is pinning his hopes on Missy because she's the closest person to him, so he wants to know it's not inevitable that people like him turn evil. (Please let the next Doctor be evil, won't happen but would be so much better).

The baddies turn up, and they're...medical patients? One of them speaks with a mechanical voicebox on its drip stand rather than use a voice. I mean, even if I didn't know that they hadn't used the Mondasian Cybermen yet, it would be obvious that they're cybermen. They tell the Doctor that they'll repair her, and not give her back. They disappear down the magic elevators and that's that.

Bill wakes up on an operating table, she's being told by the weirdest Nazi-looking doctor that they'll fix her heart but it's only temporary. She passes out again and wakes up in the scariest 1960s-looking hospital in the world. She meets a man who's never formally introduced as far as I can tell, but he is named as Mr Razor. He's funny, like really genuinely funny. I found the frank, depressing stuff about tea to both fit the theme and be hilariously funny at the same time. "Drink it while it is hot. The pain will mask the taste". It's obbbbbbbbbviously John Simm in prosthesis, but that just makes it better. Bill is introduced several times, and in chilling fashion, to the upgraded humans. The scene where the one is just posting PAIN over and over again is particularly distressing, as is the brief moment where one of the converted humans says DIE ME while walking past her. The impression of mostly silent suffering permeates the whole hospital, and while it's creepy it's never overdone. A rare hit.

At length, and through several time changes, we're introduced to the premise. Bill is at the bottom of the ship, which is running much faster time than the bridge due to the size of the ship and the differential between the two ends. It's a big fucking ship. In addition, a whole society has developed on floor 1056, which is falling to pieces. Bill lives there with an artificial heart for years, waiting for the Doctor, working for Mr Razor and the creepy matron. He explains that their world is dying and they need to be strong to survive the coming push for the bridge. They're converting people to upgrade them in order to become stronger and survive the trip. This doesn't ring entirely true, as the part converted people got right to the bridge just fine, but by this point I expect the joyous Razor to be lying about everything.

Indeed he is, he offers Bill a way to find the Doctor as he travels down in the elevator, but really sells her out to Nazi doctor man. They convert her fully, and before they do they show her the characteristic head dongles the Cybermen all sport, which they say won't stop the pain of it, but it'll stop you caring that it's happening. Also chilling. Bill gets converted, nobody saves her.

RESULT

At length, the Doctor, Missy and Nardole manage to travel down in the elevator to floor 1056. The Doc and Nardole wander off, leaving Missy to check the computer records. She realises the ship flew from Mondas, which is obviously the birthplace of the first Cybermen. At least it is now. The Cyberman continuity is all over the place. I'm okay with this origin, so it works well enough even if it's got no emotional impact for me. Mr Razor turns up, and drops hella hints that he's also the Master, but Missy ain't twigged. He eventually pulls off the disguise and looky looky it's John Simm Master. He has a sweet evil goatee and apparently it totes doesn't matter if two versions of him are present in the same place. Woo.

The Doctor and Nardole have made their own discovery though. A proper completed Mondasian cyberman. He asks it where Bill is, and I start throwing popcorn at the screen because of course that's Bill you dumbass. You think she lived for YEARS among cybermen and survived? The interesting undertone to this is that the Master did this specifically to discredit Missy with the Doctor, knowing she was responsible for this atrocity, how could he have faith in her to turn "good"? That's a nice subtext, and they managed to deliver it without it seeming sanctimonious.

Overall I enjoyed most of this one. Bill died, twice. Missy was witty and not weepy, John Simm was a fucking joy as Mr Razor, and the world at the arse end of this massive colony ship was scary and collapsing. I felt like the Mondasian Cybermen were reminiscent of the victims of gas attacks during the First World War, and that kind of look permeated all of the aesthetic, which really worked. This is the first episode to seem even mildly scary, and the only one to make me genuinely laugh out loud.

Kind of makes me worry for the finale, if Heaven Sent/Hell Bent is anything to go by. If Bill is brought back by the end of the episode I wouldn't be angry, just disappointed...
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Re: Doctor Who?

Postby Australia » Sun Jun 25, 2017 3:52 pm

Spoiler: show
Has a companion ever "killed" a Doctor before? Because that would be new, even if Bill is in Cyberman form. They've definitely gotten him killed and I haven't watched a ton of Classic Who but I can't remember any actually pulling the trigger. Probably because we'd never trust another companion again, but they've set up the possibility.

Marcuse wrote:(Please let the next Doctor be evil, won't happen but would be so much better)

So you hope he'll regenerate into this?
Image
Well, he has been known to time travel so you may be on to something. But being an evil President of Earth doesn't really fit his usual motive of one million dollars.
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Re: Doctor Who?

Postby Marcuse » Sat Jul 01, 2017 10:37 pm

Episode 10.12 - The Doctor Falls

Spoiler: show
So here's a nice scene; rolling countryside, green grass, nice trees, dead cybermen crucified. Wait, what?
If anyone haboured any suspicions that this is a show for children, then dispel them now (then kindly do away with the expectation that plots can be shit because it's for kids). We're obviously on the ship still, because the number of the floor is still up there. A cute little pastoral family, with far too many kids in tow, are shacked up in an old time homestead. But the partially converted cybermen are out for them, but they have...laser guns...so that's okay then. Later on, a small spaceship slams through the floor and a Mondasian Cyberman walks out, holding a prone Doctor.

Sighhhhhhhhhhhh. It's Bill, I knew it was Bill from the first. Yet another Cyberman whose brain has been upgraded with tech, has overcome the neural net control by the power of love. Boring. Sorry but that's not interesting or cool,
it's just boring. But we flash right back to what happened to the Doctor right after he met roboBill. He got slapped about a bit by the Masters, and he wakes up tied to a wheelchair on the roof of the hospital while the Masters dance. Nardole ran away to do offscreen things to advance the plot.

Then comes what I like to term "extricating Ep 2 from Ep 1". In nearly every two part episode now, we have to have some reason why the story can't just logically continue from the first one and has to move location and change plot entirely. It's why a lot of these stories fall flat, and it would be excusable if these ones had a different writer,
but they don't, and I don't see why we couldn't see more of the decrepit world that's creating the Cybermen.

The Doctor points out, to an accompanying orchestral swell as though it's the end of the episode, that he changed the Cyberman protocols (in a split fucking second while he was concussed by a strike from Missy) to include Time Lords. So the Cybermen are now all after them too. Excellent. Hope that protocol never gets out or the Doctor just brought the wrath of all Cybermen down on Gallifrey. But nobody cares about Gallifrey. We're also introduced again to Billbot, purely to distress the Doctor.

The Cybermen begin attacking the Masters and they realise that they're probably fucked without the Doctor.
They let him out, but yay Billbot comes to the rescue. Of course she does. Nardole flies in on a hitherto unseen spaceship (why do they need to upgrade if they can make spaceships to protect themselves?) and the Doctor gets zapped by an errant Cyberman. Why they do this is unknown when they could just grab him and carry him away.
Whatever, tension. The Masters leave him for dead and try to get Nardole to leave without him, but Billbot grabs hold of the rope ladder and apparently this is enough of a tether to stop a presumably interplanetary spaceship from moving.

The previous landing scene is then implied, and we wake up to... what. No. NO.

Bill is all better again and in a barn. They're keeping her there because they think she's dangerous, and because the Doctor is injured. Uh. What the fuck, what happened to Bill's massive chest hole? What happened to her upgrades?
Pearl Mackie is acting like everything is normal for her, so I'm not sure. She's emoting like a human so I assumed she was human. But really what they're doing is keeping the actor in the show by having her stand in for her Cyberman self in order to illustrate how she doesn't see herself as a Cyberman. This becomes apparent when she discusses the situation with the Doctor.

Now, on the whole I'm okay with the whole "Bill thinks she's human so sees herself as human" thing. It on occasion allowed us insight into things she was doing in a way that was shown and not told, but it also raises hella questions.

The main one for me was how the hell was she emoting in the way that she was when everything the Cybermen have always been about is removing emotion? Okay this one is a prototype, but they specifically stated in the last episode that the head dongle thing is the thing that makes her have no emotions. But all she does is fucking emote all the damn time. The Doctor struggles to tell her she's a Cyberman, and I have to question why he even bothered,
when he tells her that her denial is all that's keeping her, her. Surely it would be better and safer for her to remain convinced of her humanity so she could remain loyal to him, the implicit assumption is that she would lose her identity to the Cybermen if she were aware of it and came to terms with it. I also wonder why she fires off her weapon when she gets angry, as aside from the fact that Cybermen shouldn't get angry, this is the exact same way that Daleks use their weaponry (cf. The Witch's Apprentice). Does every Who villain have to have weaponry literally powered by hate?

Either way, her blasting the door down allows her to see what's happening. The townsfolk, basically led by Nardole while the Doctor sleeps (and apparently with no interference from the Masters, even though John Simm's one has thus far been as cruel and spiteful as ever) have been fortifying the town with sandbags they pulled from their assholes filled with sand that they made at the Trek replicator they have in their house because there ain't no fucking crops in this land.

John Simm walks up and insults Bill a lot. She says she doesn't mind but on the inside she's totally sads. Cry-Ber-Man.
He also says that they found the entrance to the lifts, which is handy and would have probably helped in the last trip they took. Whatever. While they're walking there Billbot Baggins of the Shire confronts the Doctor about his claim to fix her. He admits it can't be done, but he points out that she cried and this is important because "where there's bullshit tears there's hope". So he lied to her again then, HERO.

Missy immediately calls up one of the lifts and the Doctor tells her she done fucked up because the lift was in the bottom floor. Lolsostupid. A normal Cyberman prop that's cheaper to use pops out and they all shoot the shit out of it with various gadgets. The Doctor exposits that they have had a ton of years to upgrade and send out military models to attack them (not that that stops them also sending shitty Mondasian models as well).

Then the Reapers attack. BWAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

No wait, that's the Cyberman BWAH. I can tell because the BWAH is a little less BWAH and a little more BHAUH.
I think. Anyway, we'll bang okay.

Speaking of that. The Masters are talking again. See, John Simm has a TARDIS, but broke it. Apparently due to timey wimeyness, Missy remembers herself as John Simm being told by Michelle Gomez to have the spare part she needs, as so Missy just happens to have one. Convenient. Also they have Missy push the Master up against a post to tell him this important technical information, and he gets a bit of a chub on. Well done Doctor Who, our children need some confusing questions about whether it's okay for two people who are the same person to fuck.

The Doctor goes outside and see the Masters wandering off. They're running for that busted TARDIS and he's pissed off at them. He kills delivering a really hammy speech about doing the eminently stupid thing he's doing because it's kind, and John Simm literally laughs in his face and leaves. Missy hesitates, and he makes an appeal directly to her saying her standing with him is all he ever wanted. I don't really buy that for a second, really all he wants is to know that he can make someone as mad as the Master stop being so mad, because then he can fix people and make them not be awful any more. Missy confusingly tells him that she wants that too, but then leaves anyway. I...don't get it.
They seem to have set this up to have the old Master in the person of John Simm run away and leave him to die,
while Missy has changed and become a good person. But then she just fucks off anyway and I'm left wondering what all that setup was in the first place.

Where were we? Yes the Cybermen are on the way. The first line of defence against them is...a child with an apple.
I'm convinced they had her use an apple purely because they wanted Nardole to have that crack about an Apple upgrade. It's dumb. Nevertheless the apple explodes like a fucking nuclear bomb. Apparently below all this grass is fuel lines and pipework that can be exploded in controlled fashion in a way eminently suitable for combat. How this floor hasn't turned into a post-apocalyptic wasteland, I don't know.

The Doctor tells us that the Cybermen have retreated thinking they have powerful weapons. Now they're not trying to convert them, they're trying to kill them all. Good job. But apparently not the kids because they're not military targets. Despite them using a kid to deliver a military attack sufficient to convince them that they were legit threats. Sound logic bro. But nevertheless, evacuating the kids is priority, and the Doctor orders Nardole to do this. They have a little bitch fight about it, because Nardole apparently hates humans so much that he would rather die that care for them. The Doctor calls him out by asking who of them is stronger, and he just mutters "damn" under his breath and does whatever the plot decides. Farewell Nardole, you were the only funny and interesting character.

The Masters have reached the lift and are attempting to open it. They succeed and John Simm runs to it. Missy stays behind. He enquires as to what she's doing and she weirdly plants her umbrella in the ground and tells him to "come here". Oh shit is this really going to happen? Who gets to play the sub? This ham fisted come on works, because the Master is apparently really interested in finding out what fucking himself feels like, and they embrace. Without really showing it, she's killed him with a hidden blade from Assassin's Creed. Well done with the plagiarism there.
They're clearly setting him up to regenerate into Missy, which is fine. But then after a little conversation where she tells him that it's time they stood with the Doctor he shoots her in the back and she dies and can't regenerate.

What. No seriously. What?

I'm not going to really dwell too much on the merits of her not regenerating. It's not like that didn't get completely overturned in the Russell Davies era when they wanted to bring the Master back. But the whole plot arc of Missy ends like this? She just gets shot in the back by herself and laughs until she dies? She never actually does anything material to help the Doctor, just craps out in the forest and leaves him to die there? Does she not REMEMBER this part of events given she was John Simm when he did it? There's too much about this that confuses me and makes everything a time paradox.

Meanwhile Billbot of Bag End has a final chat with Il Dottore. They can't come up with anything meaningful to say like "I'm sorry I once sold the Earth to zombies to get back your eyesight", or "I'm sorry you lost your eyesight getting me out of a scrape", or "Thanks for stopping that crazy bug man from killing me". He can't come up with anything because she hasn't done anything important. So they settle for Bill, as a robot, reminding the Doctor for absolutely no reason, that she's gay, then skipping off like she's not one ton of stamping metal abomination. Ladies and gentlemen, the final episode of Bill's Opinions.

While Nardole runs the kids and the thirstiest homesteader lady to the lift to run five floors up, the Doctor and Bill run interference. This works for longer than you might expect, but ends as you would expect. Kaboom. Strangely,
despite every single other Cyberman being destroyed, Billbot is unharmed and she can still agonise over the Doctor's strangely unburned corpse like she's a normal human.

BWAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Oh that one wasn't the Cybermen, this one is the bullshit alert. Everything after this is pure unadulterated bullshit.

Our plot now runs thus. Bill is miraculously and fully revived by the sentient starship fuel from the first episode.
They rescue the Doctor and dump him on the TARDIS and wander off to live an amazing life of being starship fuel.
The girl can fly the TARDIS just because she's the Pilot. Apparently. Nardole goes to live a life fending off Cybermen on that spaceship because they're totally going to upgrade for a thousand years and come kill them all. Nobody cares though because on that day they're okay. The ship itself is not rescued, nobody bothers to get it away from the black hole. The people on floor 900 just all die or get converted. Nobody saved Blue Man Group.

The Doctor is abandoned in the TARDIS, trying to regenerate. But he said NOE. He's like the Ian Paisley of Time Lords. He dun wanna regen and unlike Tennant he's mad, not sad. We revisit the scene from the start of the first part where he's yelling about regenerating, and he just shoves his hands in show and doesn't. I think he's going to become a lady. I just have that feeling. But in the meantime we're confronted with...the first incarnation of the Doctor, played by that guy who played the actor in the Adventure in Space and Time series about the making of Who. Wooo. That sounds...boring.

So overall this episode was basically Moffat 101. Tons of buildup, some genuinely engaging situations brought up,
but it lacked any sort of quality payoff. Everyone gets a happily ever after and nothing of import happens. The only one who didn't was Missy, who turned good long enough to be murdered for it. But we can safely consider her a villain. The Cyberman went from a scary threat to just another stomping army to evade or defeat. Every other thread is left hanging. I'm forced to conclude that Moffat genuinely doesn't know how to tie up plots. Overall this one was disappointing.

I will be attempting a full series roundup in hindsight soon.
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Re: Doctor Who?

Postby A Combustible Lemon » Sun Jul 02, 2017 4:13 am

While your review was awesome and basically the only way I'm catching up with Doctor Who anymore, I'm not gonna read any more until you fix the glaring mistake of not saying cry-ber-man when you said cy-ber-man.
John Simm walks up and insults Bill a lot. She says she doesn't mind but on the inside she's totally sads. Cy-Ber-Man.


edit: nods at edit
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Re: Doctor Who?

Postby KleinerKiller » Sun Jul 02, 2017 8:09 pm

Huh. Well for what feels like the first time since I started reading this thread, I liked the episode way more than you seemed to, Marc. By no means was it free of the expected Moffat bullshit, but I quite enjoyed a lot of it.

Spoiler: show
The Good:

John Simm and Michelle Gomez. I enjoyed Simm's ham back in the Davies era more than everyone else seemed to, but there's no denying that he has massively improved here. He's the same incarnation of the character, but all of his slime and sleaze is better utilized so he's more petulant walking tragedy than cartoon. Gomez is as delightful as ever as Missy, and the duo have impeccable chemistry together that I wish was given a lot more focus in the episode. I don't think we've ever had as compelling a set of antagonists (however briefly they were allowed to be antagonists) for a Who finale in the entire revival era, which makes what happens to them in the end all the harder to swallow.

The scene in the barn with Bill realizing she's a Cyberman may have been a wholesale repeat of Clara's only likable incarnation in "Asylum of the Daleks", but it's also the first time in this entire series that I've remotely cared about or felt for Bill. Her character has been wholly inconsistent and sloppily handled, Pearl Mackie's performance still isn't anywhere near as revelatory as the critics and diehards like to pretend it is, and it still doesn't excuse her selling out the entire human race to the decaying Trump stand-ins (I've made peace with the fact that this is all the Monks ever were -- and by made peace, I mean I still hate hate hate hate hate hate hate it), but nevertheless, I really liked the scene and some of her other struggles throughout the episode.

Unlike the dreadful "Hell Bent," the stakes of the episode felt as high as they ought to be, and they stayed that way up till the end. I wish the Mondasian Cybermen had stayed in more focus after such tremendously well-done buildup, because seeing the Cybusmen marching through the woods again was a real letdown from the high of "World Enough and Time", but I didn't have a problem with them being another marching army again because the episode itself generally made them feel fairly threatening.

That rant on the eve of the battle. Holy shit, Capaldi kills that ramble. He's never felt more like the Doctor than he does when he's screaming at the Masters about why he does what he does. Is some of it a little on the nose? Absolutely. Is it material we've covered many times before? Absolutely. But that doesn't devalue its impact through Capaldi's performance, and it's without a doubt my favorite scene of the episode. And Simm-Master's simple, casual rejection of everything he's said is devastating in a way that Missy's apparent heel turn isn't, because it wrecks the Doctor while also showing just how far gone the Master was when he was Simm. I'm really going to miss Capaldi.

The Doctor sacrificing himself to blow up the Cybermen -- at least, a decent number of them, but more on that and related issues below -- is a pretty great way for Twelve to go out after three series spent honing himself. It's climactic, believable, and fairly poignant, and it fits since it was only a few episodes ago that he thought he'd be letting himself blow up anyway (although his survival blows apart every Bill apologist's justification for "Pyramid at the End" that the Doctor couldn't regenerate from a close-range explosion). And I did feel a little misty at his "I'd hoped there would be stars" lines.

David Bradley was pretty good as William Hartnell in that "Space and Time" special, so I'm hopeful that he can deliver well as the First Doctor, no matter the other reservations I have about the Christmas special.

The Bad:

The resolution to the Masters, and how much of a damp squib it makes Missy, is still leaving a very sour taste in my mouth. This is what I can't stand about Moffat and others of his ilk: every time they strike at gold, they have to do something to self-sabotage rather than exploit the riches for all they're worth. I buy Missy stabbing the Master (though I wish he could still stick around in some capacity, or at least get a bit more to do than he was given), and I buy the Master shooting her in the back because he's the Master, why wouldn't he. I even momentarily thought it was fitting that the Masters would go out by backstabbing each other, as Simm lampshades. But Missy's apparent perma-death (which we have seen reversed thrice at this point, twice with Simm and once with Missy herself) is in no way a fitting cap on this redemption arc. She gets nothing meaningful to do in any situation. What was she built up for? Remember when "Extremis" teased that she'd be the Doctor's ace in the hole against the Monks, only for that never to come to pass? Remember her inexplicable behavior in the last few episodes? What did it lead to? What was the point? Nothing. She goes out effortlessly just so Moffat can salt the earth for Chibnall if he ever wants to use the Master character.

There was no resolution to the actual problem. I didn't expect the Doctor to kill all of the Cybermen with his sacrifice, because it would contradict a lot of other Mondas stories, but he basically sacrifices himself to be a temporary stopgap and does nothing to solve the actual problem. He leaves Nardole -- Nardole who was always there for him, Nardole who was never annoying, Nardole who deserved better -- to care for a bunch of children and protect everyone on the rest of the ship for an endless war with the bottom half. That's the kind of situation the Doctor generally wanders into and permanently solves, not the kind he leaves it to. Sure, there's some potential poignancy in the Doctor going to his last against an unstoppable problem, but from a plot standpoint, it doesn't hold together. Who's to say Nardole will be able to single-handedly uphold his task? After all, it wasn't his weaponry in the farmers' hands that destroyed most of the Cybermen and enabled the escape; it was the Doctor and his screwdriver.

And skipping beyond my biggest problem, I simply don't buy the Doctor delaying his regeneration. There is great potential for emotional resonance in a story about the Doctor refusing to move on, but I doubt it will make up for my twofold problems with the idea. Firstly, since when could a Time Lord simply decide not to regenerate, even through sheer force of will? At best, he's only ever managed to delay it. Like the magic resurrection boxes he used on Ashildr, this throws a wrench in a lot of the prior mythology. But my second and bigger problem is that... I don't believe that Twelve would repeat Ten's schtick. With Ten, I believed it, because he was selfish and arrogant and saw himself as above humanity while still being too human for his own good. Ten was a pragmatist who avoided his problems, never a self-sacrificer. Twelve isn't the same. We've admittedly run the gamut of basic reactions to a regeneration -- Nine was pretty chill about it, Ten was terrified and rejected it, Eleven embraced it with open arms -- so it was inevitable that there would be a repeat sooner or later, but this doesn't feel like a natural Twelve reaction. One could make the argument (and indeed, most have) that since he's taken three series to truly find and define himself, he would be afraid to go back to square one, but how well does that hold when he's been all too willing across his tenure to sacrifice himself for any number of reasons?

Not to mention the simple fact that forcibly pulling the regeneration back to the all-important Christmas special, a tradition I hope fucking dies soon, ruins the poignancy of the scenes that seem to lead to it. But that was to be expected.

The "Fuck You Forever, Moffat, I'm Glad You're Getting Replaced":

Fuck you, Moffat, I'm glad you're getting replaced. The resolution to Bill's "arc" was exactly as terrible and ass-pulled and inexplicable and unjustified as I feared it would be, and was briefly hopeful it wouldn't be when it looked like she was stuck as a Cyberman forever. No fucking balls, Moffat. The return of Puddle Girl to magically save Bill from Cyber-dom and spirit her away for moistened time-space fun times as an immortal reality-bending couple is just...
UUUUUUUUUUUUGH. It is exactly fucking "Hell Bent" again. He can't give his baby even a slight raw deal, so he solves the problem by making her a functional immortal free to take on the Doctor's role. Except it's even more unearned and nonsensical, because it's fucking Bill and her magical water girlfriend.

Ugh, fucking goddamn it, it's so bad! It's so bad! This is everything wrong with Doctor Who encapsulated in one scene! Puddle Girl was never built up as Bill's one true love or something, and Bill never mentioned her once after the first episode! Puddle Girl acts completely differently than the last time we saw her! SHE'S SUPPOSED TO BE MADE OF ALIEN FUEL, HOW DOES SHE SUDDENLY GET TO BEND ALL ATOMS OF THE UNIVERSE TO HER WILL?! AUUUUUUUUUUGH!
It could not be more blatant that this ending is half designed just to appease critics who get up in arms every time a gay character gets a splinter, and the other half designed because Steven Moffat is a child who can't bear not to give his little pets their perfect happy endings.

Retch.


Series 10 In Summary:

Spoiler: show
This was the worst.

I stand by my earlier judgement that this may have been the worst series of Doctor Who since the revival. It wasn't entirely free of redeeming qualities, mind; Capaldi was the best he's ever been as the Doctor, and I'm going to miss him when he's gone so much. Matt Lucas was also stunningly good as Nardole, who could have so easily been a stupid comic relief character and instead was one of the most delightful parts of the season. Parts of "Smile" and "Extremis" hooked me, "The Eaters of Light" was okay, and I really, really enjoyed this finale two-parter. It was generally well shot and well directed.

But I can't remember the last time watching this show felt like a chore for me. Even in the worst Davies runs, even in Series 9 with all of its Ashildr tedium, there was some redeeming value and I eagerly awaited the next episode even if it looked pretty bad. This series... just drained my excitement. It was so tedious, so empty, so focused on proving the show's "woke-ness" to critics and spitting futilely at the Empire of Trump rather than on telling compelling or entertaining stories. "Thin Ice", one of the apparent critical and fan favorites of the series, was one of the lowest points of the run for me. Yet the fans can't get enough. And don't even get me started on how crappy a partner Bill was, because I like to think I've said enough on that already.

This just... didn't feel like Doctor Who. I've seen bad Doctor Who, but this was bad in a new and different way. It was bad television. It didn't feel like the show I used to know. I can recognize and rationalize episodes as far varying in their terribleness as "Fear Her," "The Rings of Akhaten," or "Hell Bent" because those at least still feel like subpar Who. I can't recognize or rationalize Series 10. I have no idea what most of this was.

I just want to believe Chibnall and whoever's going to be the Doctor next (I know a shit-ton of people who are going to throw the most entertaining screaming fits if he doesn't regenerate into Phoebe Waller-Bridge, but I also despise the rumors that it's going to be this Kris Marshall guy) can right the ship. Because I already stopped calling myself a Whovian long ago, and I don't want to take the next step into just hating the show. I really don't.


Blech.
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Re: Doctor Who?

Postby NathanLoiselle » Mon Jul 03, 2017 2:41 am

I prefer the Mondasian cybermen. They sound cooler, they talk cooler, and instead of "DELETE, DELETE" it's more of "YOU WILL BE UPGRADED".
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Re: Doctor Who?

Postby KleinerKiller » Fri Jul 14, 2017 7:56 pm

The 13th Doctor announcement will finally come on Sunday, reportedly.

Everyone place your bets now! Will it be the eminently bland Kris Marshall, stacking the deck against the new series and sending hundreds of internet critics into a frenzy? Will it be Phoebe Waller-Bridge, placating the mob but surely resulting in a Bill-esque field of anti-criticism where all opponents are sexist? Or will it be a new challenger out of left field?

I don't have any guesses myself, I just want Chibnall to serve up a series that I don't dread watching every week.
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