Who?

[jason voorhees]

Who?

Well, after a lifetime of watching pro wrestling, comedy bits are important as well. Even though Ric Flair had so many of the greatest, most intense matches of all time, there would be the bits where he'd be running away and having his tights pulled, thus exposing his buttcheeks...thus, the heel staple of "showing ass." In addition, the comedy bits of always getting caught when he tried going to the top rope, flipping over the top rope head-over-heels, and walking away after getting punched and then flopping on his face after 5 steps - perhaps the inspiration behind Uma Thurman's 5-step punch in Kill Bill 2.

So for me, Rory's Mona Lisa bit was hilarious, and it was stupid, and it was retawtid (Run DMC pronunciation,) and it was goofy, and hell, for these robots it worked. They had glass jaws. Kind of like scary looking insects who you touch and they immediately turn to powder.

The danger was that they could appear anywhere, anytime, and Amy had an hour of waiting and dealing with them, then a week, then a month, then a year, then a decade, then a few of them.

I understand if people didn't like it, but I liked that they weren't the most intimidating and scariest part of the episode. What happened to Amy was.

[Ginger Yellow]

Who?

Totally. It's just that they made her out to have become this hardened bad-ass, someone who could jury-rig a sonic screwdriver and hack the interface, and then when she gets to show off her badassitude in action, it's a bit crap. That could work, but in practice it jarred for me.

[jason voorhees]

Who?

Fair enough. I felt it was enough, as she was using a samurai sword competently enough and Rory was using the Mona Lisa, and she didn't have Lone Wolf of the Seven Samurai to train her. I certainly felt she was on the same level or close enough to Bruce Willis rescuing Marcellus Wallace.

[Jon]

Who?

Carnivorous Vulgaris wrote:
[quote]Why at Last! wrote:

We're still left with the other conundrum: why are the best episodes now being written by people other than the Moff?

My guess would be that, as you've mentioned, his episodes are burdened with the responsibility of progressing the story arc (which isn't granting him a get-out-of-jail card, btw. After all, he's the one who wants to have an arc in the first place) and that he's, perhaps understandably, running short of ideas or inspiration given that now he's the showrunner as opposed to the fantasista who's given a once-per-season showcase for his talent.

All very true. And at the centre of Moffat's story arc shennanigans seems to be River Song. After all, he wrote the first ever episode she was in - Silence in the Library.

The last 2 stories have been free from the shackles of the stupid story arc and have therefore also been Song-less.

I'm not a fan of Arthur Darville's but agree he was very good in this last one. Previously I'd rather it was just the Dr and Amy but then no doubt it would get all slushy as it did when Rose was around. That was probably why they kept Rory on board, in fact.

What I don't like the most about the new Dr Who is the endless flirting between the Dr and his assistants. This didn't happen back in the day, did it? I vote for the next Dr to be in at least his fifties.

[ooh aah]

Who?

But then you'd end up with an old man flirting with his assistant, and frankly there's nothing worse than that. What they should have is an assistant in her 50's.

Actually there was never any flirting between Donna and the Doctor. That was the one thing about her character that I liked

[hobbes]

Who?

That was fucking brilliant.

[Wyatt Earp]

Who?

I dunno: it was proper Doctor Who and all that, but I'm a bit bored with the sci-fi cliche to the effect that is "a form of energy", when it isn't.

Mind, I don't get sneery about "Rise" by PiL, so I'm not really being consistent.

[hobbes]

Who?

So, in short, you could be wrong or you could be right?

[Crusoe]

Who?

I thought that was really quite good, up until the coda. It really didn't need that length of Peter Jackson-esque epilogue.

[Crusoe]

Who?

Oh, and Corden and cybermen? I won't be hurrying to watch next week's.

[ooh aah]

Who?

yeah that was really good, especially with the doctor having to face up to some home truths about himself and why he picks his companions. It was obvious after that, that Amy and Rory would be leaving, although I was expecting the big goodbye to be saved until the final episode.

[Wyatt Earp]

Who?

I doubt they're gone for good.

[Wyatt Earp]

Who?

Never underestimate The Timey-Wimeyness Of Moffat, for one thing. The Doctor presents them with a house. Now: where were they living when they received the blue invitations at the start of the series, when they hadn't seen him in ages? There's something loopy and paradoxical going on here.

[ooh aah]

Who?

yeah you're right. They'll probably be back for the finale, but I thought that this was to be their last series, hence why this was it. However the more I think about it, I've absolutely no idea where I got that impression from.

[jason voorhees]

Who?

God Complex - Season 6 - Episode 11
** 3/4

So the Doctor was watching The Shining while listening to Hotel California as thinking about how to twist the plot of Nightmare on Elm Street around. Before he decided to delve into some Greek myths.

As good as the first half-hour was, and boy was it really great and engrossing, it really comes down to how idiotic the premise was. So a elderly minotaur, who is forced to work during his golden years as social security was eliminated on Mount Olympus, is sad to work in his personal Wal*Mart teleporting various species from across the universe into a fabricated hotel from 1920s Earth...that other species from other planets may not have any idea of what it is supposed to be...before they would somehow find their fears in a room - an idea that they came up with in the end of The Shining with the people in the bunny suits - and would get picked up in a spaceship by a Judoon-looking rhinoceros whom the beauty would be so overwhelming for the Doctor to get achey-breakey over before it's shown to be a Ladytron album cover. And oh yeah, the squinty-eyed big-eared rat-toothed Jew with the oldest culture somehow survives by being a backstabbing surrender monkey.

My problems with Moffatt were with that Space Whale episode. Here you had such great villains, the evil-faced Jersey-shore carnival mannequins, and they were only working for the space whale. Just stick to a hotel. What's wrong with it being The Hotel California ? Why does it have to be a fucking minotaur ? Why do they need to feed on religious or superstitious faith ? How did this get through the script meetings ?

I loved the ending...until you realize Amy is giving a wistful hug to a crazy man she pined after for her entire life and the man who FUCKING LOST HER NEWBORN CHILD !!!!!!!!!!!!

What About the Moffatt Children ?!! What do they think of their dad's message that it didn't really matter if they got kidnapped by the Nazis, he'd have a lot more fun ?

HOLY MOTHERFUCKING JESUS THIS IS STARTING TO SUCK

FUCK IT, NO STARS. THOSE 2 AND A HALF AT THE BEGINNING ?

DONESKI.

NYETSKI NO GOODSKI

ZERO. POINT. ZERO

[Eggchaser]

Who?

But other than that, you quite liked it?

[jason voorhees]

Who?

Yes. It was like a great meal that was poisoned. I'm still burping up bile from it.

[Purves Grundy]

Who?

Busy days. Only just got round to this.

I'd always wondered what would happen if the Garm met the Nimon.

If that thing with the kid a few weeks ago was a second go at Fear Her, trying to get it right, then this was like a revisitation of Sylvester Mccoy's time as the Doctor. And it was even more successful than whatever that drab thing with the kid was called.

Like many of McCoys' stories I reckon that 99% of the audience would be hard pressed to explain exactly what was going on at the macro level. I certainly couldn't. Something about a malfunctioning prison and fear brainwaves and heaven knows what else. Like a few of McCoy's best stories that impenetrability didn't matter so much because the decorative flourishes were so brilliant, unsettling and entertaining. Like a couple of McCoy's stories it also looked stunning and was excellentlydirected.

And like many of McCoy's stories the whole thing was really just a frame on which to hang some exploration of the two leads' characters. Except that this time around they were dealing with engaging characters. And this time round they bothered to cast people who could act in the roles in question. And this time round they realised that the key to restoring some mystery to the Doctor's character is to have him acting in ways that are quixotic, unexpected, surprising, but ultimately always coherent and right, rather than just by throwing leaden hints of semi-divinity about the place.

A lot of the harm done by RTD's messianism got finally undone there, I reckon. The Doctor is just a madman with a box again, and that's always been what he was best as.

The coda? There's no pleasing some people. It was a properly lovely scene, I thought, between one of the three greatest pair-ups we've ever had (Baker & Sladen, Eccleston & Piper). But hardly confusing. Like yer man above says, less confusing than finding Amy & Rory retired from travelling and living in that house back in the spring. I mean, yes, they appear to be stuck in some sort of a time loop, there, moving in and soon to receive the Doctor's invitation having already gone through that in their personal time streams, but I'm sure that will be dealt with (which reminds me - did they ever explain them seeing themselves across the valley in that Silurian thing last year? I can't remember).

Anyway, here's hoping that the Doctor really is just a mad man with a box again. It was always so much more fun that way.

[David Agnew]

Who?

I'll watch it again on Saturday, but I was knackered on Saturday evening and struggled to stay awake before it started, so missed a fair bit of the start, but what I saw was magnificent. PG's point about it being like a frame to build around the main characters is totally spot on (yet Rita was one of the most well written supporting characters since the series returned), the resolution even being the same as the Curse of Fenric.

Purves Grundy wrote:

Like many of McCoys' stories I reckon that 99% of the audience would be hard pressed to explain exactly what was going on at the macro level. I certainly couldn't. Something about a malfunctioning prison and fear brainwaves and heaven knows what else. Like a few of McCoy's best stories that impenetrability didn't matter so much because the decorative flourishes were so brilliant, unsettling and entertaining.

Some of the stories where that happened though (Dragonfire, Ghost Light) were written and filmed as four parters, then hacked and broadcast as three. (The first episode cliffhanger for Dragonfire happens for no reason in terms of what we see - the reason the Doctor ends up over the cliff ends up on the cutting room floor, as does the whole point of Ghost Light)

A lot of the harm done by RTD's messianism got finally undone there, I reckon. The Doctor is just a madman with a box again, and that's always been what he was best as.

Have you read Mad Larry's latest? "And not in the one who currently claims to be the Doctor, either. As Tat Wood pointed out in About Time, the Doctor is perennially "passing": since 1963, he's been a Thing From Somewhere Else pretending to be human, and getting it slightly wrong. Scripts for the modern version try to play this up (sometimes absurdly so, particularly in the case of stories like "The Lodger", where he gets it so wrong that he seems to have no memory of twenty-first-century Earth whatsoever), yet the impression we get of the Smith version is a young man being wacky in order to look alien. It's the inverse of the previous ten sub-lives. At the same time, Moffat's vision is of the Doctor as an absolute legend, as that wonderful, superhuman being who will make monsters scared and shake the universe."

It's the wrongest thing he's ever said. (and allegedly the whole story arc is to bring the Doctor down from being the Lonely God that RTD created)

I expect we've not seen the last of Amy & Rory. I almost expect Rory to die saving the Doctor from the Astronaut (who I still think has to be The Doctor - how else can the Astronaut be Impossible?). If not it's a well written exit.

And the house? Is that the same one they started the series in, or a new one? The car is new (and it's nice of the Doctor to finally give Rory something he's always dreamed of), hopefully there's nothing in that.

Do Amy & Rory not mention the Doctor's impending death, because they don't realise that Flesh Amy told him (even though future Doctor invited them)? Has the Doctor placed them in a time that they can go and help him? As much as I've found this story arc annoying, that last scene suddenly made me want to find out.

[Purves Grundy]

Who?

Jesus, Gareth Roberts really is a fucking awful writer.

[jason voorhees]

Who?

This'll cheer you up.

[jason voorhees]

Who?

Closing Time - 2011
*** 1/2

At least Moffatt did a lot more to show he has some fatherly instincts. It was good to see the Tenth Planet Terrors back, along with the Cybermats. I absolutely love the chemistry between Smith and the big guy, and this did very well to advance their story.

Not sure if I believe the bit with emotion turning the cybermen into the guys with the business suits at the end of Judas Priest's 'You Got Another Thing Comin. But I loved it. Loved the writing as well. Thus making Purves and I the Siskel & Ebert of Doc Who reviews.

[Disco Child Ballads]

Who?

I think I agree with Purves. That was a disappointing episode, especially after the previous two had got the series back on form. Roberts remains responsible for what I think is the worst story of the revived series: The Shakespeare Code.

[ooh aah]

Who?

It was just a bit boring wasn't it? It wasn't creepy or scary, and the cybermen were almost an irrelevance. And I don't get the Amy signing autographs bit. Nobody becomes famous for advertising perfume. In fact they often get people who are already famous to advertise that sort of thing

[Wyatt Earp]

Who?

Smith's so good, he almost hauled it out of the mire. But then the mire overwhelmed him.