Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 29, 2024, 02:35:19 PM

Login with username, password and session length

Doctor Who 2005-2017 : The RTD & Moffat Years

Started by daf, May 03, 2021, 09:09:11 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

olliebean

Quote from: M-CORP on September 18, 2021, 07:10:21 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GdAmDayfVM

Series Two poorly animated. Not as good as the series one pastiche IMHO due to its length and greater reliance on sex jokes, but still bloody funny and deranged. Worth it just to see
Spoiler alert
an Ood speaking with the voice of Frankie Boyle. And Neil from Art Attack in Fear Her. Yes.
[close]

Also, the similes:
Spoiler alert
'Why you as transparent as Blair's real intentions for helping Bush invade Iraq?'
[close]

15 seconds in and I couldn't take any more of it. Half an hour more and my brain would have turned to mush.

JamesTC

The Rings of Akhaten looks okay for the most part. They seemingly spent most of their money on having a ludicrous amount of alien costumes albeit with a few reuses such as the Hath (I can't believe I didn't need to look that name up). The CGI was lacking as a result. The main problem is that it was all a bit boring. The middle was like watching an episode of Songs of Praise. And a second episode in a row in which The Doctor and Clara are looking super cool riding a bike.

There were some good concepts there. Currency based on sentimentality is stretching it a bit, but at least it was interesting. It all just felt lost in a pretty vacuous story. What is this episode about? A sentient planet steals a girl to eat her memories and then they sing a song.

Oh look, a costume that would later be used in Red Dwarf (XI: Can of Worms). I also wondered if the set may have been partly reused from Red Dwarf X as it looked a fair bit like the India set, but Doctor Who hasn't recorded in Shepperton Studios in a long time so that is unlikely. All studio market sets look the same, I guess.

The Giggling Bean

Quote from: M-CORP on September 18, 2021, 07:10:21 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GdAmDayfVM

Series Two poorly animated. Not as good as the series one pastiche IMHO due to its length and greater reliance on sex jokes, but still bloody funny and deranged.

The first one had me howling. I rewatched it multiple times and still cracked up but this one, well I chuckled a couple of times, just dragged on and didn't tickle me in the same way...except for how they dealt with Mickey.

JamesTC

"oh fuck off" - Not a good sign when I exclaim that while watching Doctor Who.

The sad thing is, it was all going so well until the Ice Warrior arrived... and he stomped. Fuck off with stomping. It is shit when the Cybusmen do it and it is shit now the Ice Warriors do it. Hey, why not give them a shit catchphrase too. What about "Ice to meet you"?

Cold War is actually a nice little simple story. The design of the submarine and Ice Warrior are all really good. A way to bring back a big villain in a low-key way which is actually a little reminiscent of Dalek. The twist of the Ice Warrior abandoning the armour was a nice new twist which didn't override any earlier Ice Warrior story. David Warner is always welcome in Doctor Who.

I rather liked the resolution, too. May be a little deus ex machina, but it subverted what originally seemed to be the overdone thing of nicely asking the villain not to kill everybody.


On an unrelated matter, it is easy to get lost on the TARDIS Wiki.

purlieu

Quote from: Catalogue Trousers on September 18, 2021, 06:57:09 PM
D'you know, I honestly hadn't considered that until you mentioned it there?
It's hinted at with the Underground map lunchbox (I think?) that the Doctor gives the Intelligence the idea for The Web of Fear. What always bugged me is that he seems to only have the vaguest memory of what the Intelligence is, which always felt really... weird.

Mister Six

I dunno, from the Doctor's POV, he encountered The Great Intelligence about a thousand years ago. What's weirder for me is trying to build it up as a big bad for the season, but basically relegating it to a supporting role in two of its three episodes.

purlieu

Quote from: Mister Six on September 19, 2021, 01:31:48 AM
I dunno, from the Doctor's POV, he encountered The Great Intelligence about a thousand years ago.
I get that, but it's the only time he ever behaves like that. He recognises the Macra immediately, for example.

samadriel

Quote from: JamesTC on September 17, 2021, 04:05:06 PM
What if Wi-Fi downloaded us, huh? It is the most obvious Doctor Who idea ever. It feels like a parody. What if Netflix streamed demons? What if biscuits could dunk us? What if pants wore humans? What if pillows tried to take over the planet while we sleep?

What if carbon neutral = Sontarans?!?!

Mister Six

Quote from: purlieu on September 19, 2021, 01:44:44 AM
I get that, but it's the only time he ever behaves like that. He recognises the Macra immediately, for example.

Different Doctor, different memories knocking around. There's s line somewhere from, I think either Smith or Capaldi, about how memories can get jumbled up from incarnation to incarnation.

Also, a big fuck-off crab is instantly memorable, whereas in The Snowmen he's dealing with a creature that is presenting itself in a different form to the one he was familiar with before.

(Also, god I'm an idiot - I only just made the snowmen/abominable snowman/yeti connection.)

Kelvin

I hate The Snowmen. It's Clara, and by extension Moffat, at their most smarmy and obnoxious. Probably the only Moffat episode I really dislike. 

Replies From View

Quote from: Mister Six on September 19, 2021, 04:14:58 AM
Different Doctor, different memories knocking around. There's s line somewhere from, I think either Smith or Capaldi, about how memories can get jumbled up from incarnation to incarnation.

Also, a big fuck-off crab is instantly memorable, whereas in The Snowmen he's dealing with a creature that is presenting itself in a different form to the one he was familiar with before.

(Also, god I'm an idiot - I only just made the snowmen/abominable snowman/yeti connection.)

Also whenever the second Doctor talked about that story some time later, he referred to "the Yeti".  Not the Great Intelligence.

Replies From View

Quote from: Kelvin on September 19, 2021, 05:09:42 AM
I hate The Snowmen. It's Clara, and by extension Moffat, at their most smarmy and obnoxious. Probably the only Moffat episode I really dislike.

I think it's the best appearance of Clara - a fantastic introduction for a version of the character we should have kept, revealing positive qualities before we knew how Jenna Coleman's acting limitations would stink the show up.

Lots of positives:  the Doctor is in post-Ponds grump mode, not entirely wanting to have companions again, so showing a less needy side than we sometimes get.  His TARDIS is parked in a cloud which is some fantastic children's storybook stuff.  We get the introduction of the new console room plus the first of many experiments in the camera travelling from outside to inside the TARDIS in one apparent shot, which here works pretty well.  Clara's Victorian counterpart is so much more interesting than her modern day version.  Her aloofness, her somewhat repressed responses, all can be hand-waved as deliberately stemming from her Victorian background rather than Coleman's limited acting.

Lungpuddle

I like the Snowmen. I have a theory that the Doctor is sulking not because Amy and Rory died but because Amy chose Rory over him, so while it was perfectly possible to return and save them he chose not to. I'm hoping now I've typed it out I can forget it, because it's a shit theory. I found The Snowmen fun at the time and still do, and I don't hate Clara (bit baffled at the idea that Jenna Coleman did a bad job too, to be honest). The line "I said I would feed you, I didn't say to who" or whatever it was made me chuckle, maybe because you can see it coming. When I first saw this one I was a bit excited about the mystery of why Clara had popped up before, which obviously hasn't held up, but it was a fun way to get the Doctor having adventures again without his attitude basically being "Oh, the Ponds/Williams are dead, I better get someone else."

Replies From View

Is anyone else distracted beyond all reason in The Bells of St John by how the edit doesn't quite work when the Doctor passes his coat in front of the camera?


I'm talking about where they conceal the join between the TARDIS being on the street and the TARDIS suddenly being on a plane.



Which is, by the way, a fantastic aspect of the series 7-10 TARDIS set.  They built it in a manner that allowed them to erect sets immediately in contact with the TARDIS doors, working to transition from both the inside and outside.  So in this episode the TARDIS doors could open to the inside of an aeroplane, but you also get simple things like the TARDIS being parked inside a school stationery cupboard, and being able to follow from one to the other in an unbroken shot.  This is all another reason why Whittaker's TARDIS was such a retrograde step.


But yeah, the join when the Doctor floats his coat past the camera:  eesh.  I can't let it go.  Brilliant idea but it needed more care with the camera placement.

Mister Six

Yes, it's immensely annoying, especially because I really enjoy that episode as a bravura romp, and it comes during a really thrilling escalation of drama.

JamesTC

Ghost Light An Adventure in Space and Time Twin Peaks The Return Quatermass and the Ghost That Simpsons Halloween Episode in the 3D Universe Hide is a an episode that certainly has ideas in there. I'm not sure what else it has.

First off, the whole thing of Clara getting all emotional and saying they are all ghosts is silly melodramatic nonsense that doesn't particularly serve a purpose to the rest of the episode.

Then The Doctor watches an old episode of Futurama which parodies Star Trek and realises explaining things with balloons is the best way to explain a problem to the audience.

At it's core it is a pretty good idea. A time traveller from the future lost in the a pocket universe tied to the past. I just don't feel like it is executed anywhere near as well as it could have been. It initially seems to want to be a ghost story, but that aesthetic and approach is completely dropped early on. I feel like the Clara storyline being forced on the episode was to its detriment. I'm not a fan of the TARDIS being sentient, so it is just as off-putting here as it was in The Doctor's Wife. Maybe I would have liked this more if I didn't know the resolution to Clara's storyline already.

The ending was nice and sweet but was too abrupt. I wanted a nice shot of the two monsters reunited with some lovely sunset behind them.

JamesTC

Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS is primarily a corridor. The weird thing is that the first episode of Castrovalva was also primarily a corridor yet it felt much more expansive. I'm not sure what it was that made this feel so small despite having the odd "big" room in the TARDIS. They had the Eye of Harmony and it still didn't feel expansive to me. The location work near the end was good to make it seem bigger.

The episode improves when The Doctor and Clara reunite but then we reach the whole "it was just a prank bro" reveal. It feels like a missed opportunity as a big red button reset episode. I don't mind a big exciting episode which needs to be reset as it would otherwise change too much. This all just seemed rather tame yet still had a big reset at the end.

The reveal that the monster was a dead Clara was good. This isn't the first time Doctor Who has done time zombies. A three parter was originally planned for Season 27 before it was cancelled which was later adapted into the great Big Finish audio Night Thoughts.

Is it too much of a nitpick to say The Doctor felt off when he pretended he had activated a self-destruct on the TARDIS?

Clara running away from an explosion:

purlieu

My biggest problem with Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS is that nothing could ever live up to that name.

The descriptions of the TARDIS interior in the various BBC and Virgin books are incredible (there's one where the TARDIS is collapsing and Tegan can actually see the entire interior from above, which is a really memorable moment) and... well, the episode isn't.

JamesTC

Ahh Strax is great. Bin the rest of the characters and just have him going around misunderstanding stuff. My suggestions to fix Doctor Who. One, Strax needs to be louder, angrier, and have access to a time machine. Two, whenever Strax is not on screen, all the other characters should be asking "Where's Strax"?

The man dun fainted.

The Crimson Horror is basically fine. It does the job. I admire the fact that they tried to structure things in a different way by telling the story through the Paternoster gang's perspective until they recover The Doctor although I can't help but feel the sheer length of the flashback to how The Doctor got there takes away from the structure somewhat. The little red alien was sufficiently shit looking to somehow actually be great.

The man dun fainted again.

The episode was trundling along pretty well until the TomTom joke. That is the worst fucking thing I have ever seen. I've just watched the Budd Dwyer video, watched Vic Morrow get crushed by a helicopter and listened to Christine Chubbuck's suicide but that joke was more horrendous. Why couldn't Strax simply shoot the child?

The main dun fainted again... again!

The Doctor gurning and going "ouch" when the weird old lady with the parasite fell to her death was strange. You can't even blame it on post-regenerative weirdness, like The 6th Doctor with the acid bath.

purlieu

The only Gatiss episode I properly like, an unusually structured story with a decent mystery in it.

Catalogue Trousers

It's a pretty good episode. As long as you ignore the embarrassing sonic/stiffy joke.

JamesTC

The Cybermen are my favourite Doctor Who villain. I can't help buy feel a sense of dread every time they appear in the new series. How much more can they ruin them? How about merge the Cybusmen with the Mondasian ones so they are now all the same. Oh no. Even worse they just took a load of ideas from Star Trek and used them for the Cybermen. Oh and they gave them super speed. What the fuck?

This is just awful. Sorry Nightmare in Silver but it is just my favourite monster being ruined before my eyes. How many times can I say "oh for fuck sake" in an episode? When the Doctor was converted into a Cyberman and started acting wacky? When the Cyberman dropped his hand and it started walking like Kryten's did? Mr Clever the Cyber-leader Doctor? A new shit catchphrase? Of just fuck off.

A Cyberman playing chess? Doctor Who did it!

Can't help but feel it would have been lovely if they added some sort of gap or glitch in between McGann and Eccleston in the run through between regenerations, considering what is revealed in the following episode. Not enough to give it away a week before but enough for people to look back on and realise it was an easter egg.

One and only bit I liked was the Doctor stopping the takeover using a golden ticket. I guess the resolution was inventive in tying up Cyberman resources on the chess problem.

So the last "new" Matt Smith episode I see is also my least favourite. Such a shame. At least I know the next three are a big improvement.

JamesTC

Ahh Strax is great.

I only saw The Name of the Doctor for the first time a few months ago when the steelbook of the specials came out. Feels a little more satisfying now with the build-up as well as the background on The Great Intelligence. That being said, I liked it when I first saw it too.

Clara's whole story is a good one. I can see why people dislike Clara for littering herself through The Doctor's timeline, but the way I see it is that she isn't the genesis of The Doctor or anything like that, she is just a person who chased the bad guy through his timeline.

It really is an absolutely masterful reveal. The "name" that is teased in The Name of the Doctor is... The Doctor. A secret incarnation that no longer uses his name. Perhaps a little too explicit in the explanation but that is an extremely minor nitpick in an otherwise fine setup for the 50th.

I think this is a great example of how utterly shit Chibnall is. Not that it needs a comparison to Moffat in order to reveal this. Here we see Moffat build up the mystery and excitement of one of the biggest unknowns in the show's history, what is The Doctor's name? And then he doesn't reveal it which in many ways only builds on the mystery without treading on the past whilst also emphasising how important his identity as "The Doctor" is. Meanwhile, Chibnall completely obliterates everything in order to add an infinite number of Doctors and turn the Doctor into a completely different alien to his race because he had a fanfiction when he was a child about a continuity blip in a random 70s episode. MORON.

GoblinAhFuckScary

looking forward to some season 8 opinions. i've surprised myself by how much joy i've had thus far. time heist was a liiiil bit of a slog but i'm genuinely having an absolute ball

purlieu

I don't hate Nightmare in Silver as much as some people do, but I agree that the wackiness is over the top. I quite like Mr. Clever as a name.

The Name of the Doctor is a wonderful episode, although I do dislike the Clara thing. I think mostly for suggesting which TARDIS to use. She just becomes too important. Which wouldn't bother me quite so much if she was actually a good companion.

Time for the biggy now eh? Day of the Doctor is actually one of the few times I've yelled at the TV screen in joy. A wonderful episode.
I don't envy the season 8 & 9 trawl though, when I rewatched them last I found them an absolute slog.

GoblinAhFuckScary

Quote from: purlieu on September 21, 2021, 12:07:02 AM
I don't envy the season 8 & 9 trawl though, when I rewatched them last I found them an absolute slog.

have never understood the vitriol for the capaldi seasons. people seem to hate practically everything about them from the music to the acting, editing blah blah. i'm not laying this at your feet but i never vibed with a lot of the hate. just seemed like contrived nerdom

JamesTC

Quote from: purlieu on September 21, 2021, 12:07:02 AM
The Name of the Doctor is a wonderful episode, although I do dislike the Clara thing. I think mostly for suggesting which TARDIS to use. She just becomes too important.

The feeling I got was that events had been manipulated by The Great Intelligence and that was one of them she needed to correct.

purlieu

I liked a lot of 8 when it was first on, possibly because there were some clever plots, but once I knew what was coming the surprise had gone and instead I could only focus on the incredibly grey, uninteresting look of the thing, Clara being awful, nobody quite knowing how to write Capaldi's Doctor, the moon being an egg, CyberBrig, Danny Pink being Are Brave Boy with an impossible great-great-great grandson, Maisie Williams and Rebecca Front being unusually wooden, a bunch of two-parters that felt as long as a 1960s six-parter and fucking Sleep No More.
There's still plenty to like in there, but also a lot that I find tedious. Series 10 I absolutely love, though.

samadriel

Quote from: purlieu on September 20, 2021, 09:05:56 PM
My biggest problem with Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS is that nothing could ever live up to that name.
I think The Invasion of Time set a pretty low bar for the depths of the TARDIS (although I loved it as a kid simply because it was the depths of the TARDIS. "Yesss, utility closets and hospital corridors forever!").

The EDAs had the Butterfly Room, a meadow inside the TARDIS where the Doctor's living butterfly collection lived. They also had a Volkswagen Beetle parked in the console room, which is cool.

Replies From View

I've generally loved being shown parts of the TARDIS beyond the console room, especially during the Davison years, but there is a risk that the more that's shown, the more the inside of the TARDIS starts feeling like an entire world or universe of its own.  And I'm not entirely sure that helps the exploration outwards.


Also, I think the TARDIS should feel comforting and safe.  Making it feel too unknown and vast can work against that.