Doctor Who - Series 10 (Part 2)

[Replies From View]

I used to be an Avenger like you, but then I took an arrow to the Patrick MacNee.

I remember when I was a naive Avenger along the same lines as you, taking an arrow to the knee of Patrick MacNee.

The thing to do is to learn from your mistakes.


I have faith you will do brilliantly well in your life, HappyTree.

[Ambient Sheep]

Terrorism mention to be cut from this week's episode. Never see the point in these things.

Oh, FFS.

[BritishHobo]

It's just covering their own arse, isn't it? No chance of anyone kicking off if it's cut out.

[Phoenix Lazarus]

But obviously a brief allusion in a fictional programme is more likely to spark imitation and trigger trauma victims than the genuine article being in the news for a prolonged period.

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Nardole:  "Bill; look under the table."

(She slowly lowers herself to look under the table, then slowly returns to standing.)

Bill:  "There's a [snip] under there.  There are [snip] under all of them."

[phantom_power]

Nardole:  "Bill; look under the table."

(She slowly lowers herself to look under the table, then slowly returns to standing.)

Bill:  "There's a [snip] under there.  There are [snip] under all of them."

Bill "There are <awkward overdub> bits of chewing gum</awkward overdub> under there"

[Replies From View]

Would be very annoying if what was cut was an essential call-back to last week's CERN scene.

Surely there's a limit to what they can cut.  Last week's episode contained references to suicide that couldn't have been excised without wrecking the episode.  Just as they couldn't have removed Bad Clara shooting a missile at an aeroplane in series 9 without mucking up that episode's themes and cliffhanger.  So presumably whatever's being cut this week can't be pivotal to the story or the series arc.

[AsparagusTrevor]

Apparently they've just dubbed over the word 'terrorist' with 'hippie'.

[Replies From View]

Apparently they've just dubbed over the word 'terrorist' with 'hippie'.

Stupid.  I'd like for them to put the original version on the DVD, but the decapitation sequence in Robot of Sherwood wasn't reinstated so I suspect this won't be

[Bad Ambassador]

But the decapitation was never broadcast at all. I suspect this is a temporary measure only, probably just for the signed repeat.

[Replies From View]

But the decapitation was never broadcast at all. I suspect this is a temporary measure only, probably just for the signed repeat.

I thought we were talking about an episode that hasn't been broadcast yet.  An alteration to this coming Saturday's episode.

[Bad Ambassador]

Misunderstood. As you were.

[Attila]

Apparently they've just dubbed over the word 'terrorist' with 'hippie'.

'The answer, my friend, is blow it out your arse'

(ps -- not a smack on you, Asparagus -- just an irresistable chance to quote San Francisco International)

[weekender]

Go on then, I'll go first.

Enjoyed it a lot but was spending a bit too much time wondering if you could actually place a pyramid at the intersection of China/Russia/US.

Also wondered if there was such a place as Tursistan, or whatever fictional place it was that made me laugh.

Just seems like a placeholder episode for now, and with that it mind it will either be good or alright.

[BritishHobo]

Loved it! Fuck this is going from strength to strength

[BritishHobo]

Interesting that Moffat did not write next week's episode. Can't wait to see where it goes though.

[pigamus]

I loved the end, but the rest of it seemed kind of like a vehicle just to get you to that point. Some of the acting was terrible. Bill was wasted again, until her setpiece moment.

[Kelvin]

I thought it was okay, but felt like pages and pages of the script, or ten minutes of footage had been cut for time. Everything jumped around so much, even within scenes; stuff like Nardole suggesting bacteria straight away, and that being instantly identified as correct by the Doctor, without explanation. It just felt like the natural rhythm of a plot had been replaced with bullet points.

Still, entertaining, though. And like a lot of Moffat's best scripts, it contained enough mysteries, and enough good ideas, to keep me engaged.

[Delete Delete Delete]

Wasn't the point thats the Monks were setting the Dcotor up, so Bill would try to rescue him. So through the simulation they saw he would get to Bacteria, so they made the threat Bacteria.

[Norton Canes]

Holy shit, that was a chore.

[canted_angle_again]

I can say little more than it felt like a middle and it left me wanting more Capaldi was as amazing as ever Bill was under used but at the same time I couldn't see any more space for her in the script.  I love Nardole but he was also underspent. This felt like a middle and it was a middle so I guess I can't expect more although well played for having a midget and having no midget jokes.

[Alberon]

Treading water through most of the episode. The middle of a trilogy (even one as loose as this) often has an uphill struggle and with this feeling contrived and largely irrelevant it left me a bit bored.

Roll on next week, which on the basis of the trailer seems a bit of a rerun of the one where the Master took over the world with the Toclafane and kept a CGI Doctor in a birdcage.

[Chairman Yang]

One thing I've noticed is that in order to leave a gap for a twist, all of Moffat's baddies will talk in that one weird foreign dialect. 'Does power consent?' Is such bizarre syntax I can only assume it's hiding something.

'Love us, love our decrepit faces and weird video games! Love us or we'll fucking melt you' I think the Monks are supposed to Intergalactic Nice Guys.

Actually if it turns out they're just a bunch of passive-aggressive weirdos that'd be amazing. 'I don't get it. We saved your planet, just like The Doctor. Why won't you put out?'

Edit: Oh my god, they totally are! They even play endless dating simulators!

[Bingo Fury]

From the drubbing this episode is getting elsewhere online, I seem to be in the minority for really enjoying it. I felt it retrospectively improved last week's by giving a context to the simulations and I liked the inexorability of the threads converging at the end to make the Doctor's companion, of all people, the one who hands the Earth over to its alien invaders.

I'm not blind to the flaws, of course. Dan Miller's laboratory did indeed have the worst health and safety procedures in the Western world. The military probably did give in too quickly, on the basis of too little evidence, but they had to have done that by the end of the episode one way or another. Oh, yeah, the abrupt settling on bacteria as the probably cause was a victim of getting it all packed into 50 minutes too. More annoying for me was the miraculous sonic screwdriver suddenly failing in its primary function of opening doors at a crucial moment, and the Doctor, who had just declassified all the secret documents in the world with a tilt of his sunglasses, being unable to override an air exhaust purge thingie.

But I found it so dramatically satisfying, putting the characters in the kind of situations that I really like seeing them in, that I can overlook most of the above, even if they niggle a bit. Was it really too talky? I didn't notice, to be honest.

[BritishHobo]

Aye, I really liked it. I can understand some of the criticisms, but I just really enjoyed the weird journey towards Bill having to consent.

Also maybe I'm just stupid, but it kept me on my toes about whether it would​ spill into another part or not. Mid-way through I thought there was too much to wrap up, and they'd have to end on a cliffhanger, but then it could easily have ended in the lab if the Doctor had been able to get through the door quickly.

Thought that was a really clever payoff to the blindness. Not particularly sound logically, aye (the sonic screwdriver can't turn some dials?), but I loved the Doctor being ultimately stumped by something so simple, and all because of his own arrogant desire to keep his pain a mysterious secret. Him pathetically spinning a couple of dials to the wrong number​ was great.

[Spoon of Ploff]

Also wondered if there was such a place as Tursistan, or whatever fictional place it was that made me laugh.

Of course there is. It's next to Eastmantown in the Upper Cataracts on the Australio-Hong Kong border.

[weekender]

Great, thanks for that.  You learn something new every day!

[Straight Faced Customer]

Interesting after having such a Moffatian episode last week, we then get a very RTD-era ep.

It had that familiar zippy feel, the occasional wooden acting, and a little bit of horror where someone actually dies and you know they ain't coming back in either ghost or resurrected form. Having various foreign powers in the room with barely any character to them also sealed the tribute.

To cap it all off, I swear the version on BBC Iplayer last night was a working version, as it had all the cinematography we've been used to since series 5 removed, meaning it looked just like an RTD episode.

Did anyone else catch that as well on Iplayer? This morning it's been fixed up though.

[Attila]

Watched it early doors this morning. Have been sifting through eBay for an embroidered baseball jacket ever since.

[Natnar]

I couldn't help but think of this as some gritty epilogue to My Parents Are Aliens. After countless years of raising orphaned kids a tired and worn out Brian gets a job at a lab and nearly causes the end of the world before dying horribly himself.