Sea Devils And Die: GeroniMoffat's Doctor Who In The 2010s

The Valeyard is to Matt Smith as The Watcher is to Tom Baker (under the new numbering system).

Theory: Hurt Doctor is nothing to do with The Doctor at all otherwise all Dorium's " fall of the Eleventh" stuff that Moffatt put throughout Series 7 is about Tennant EmoDoc.

all of this made me go back and scan through the plot synopsis for Head Games

It made me go back and read Time And Time again. Paul Cornell should feel even more aggrieved than Lawrence Miles.

Man I would have loved loved LOVED to see Miles turn one of his stories* into a three-parter

*okay, Alien Bodies

Theory: Hurt Doctor is nothing to do with The Doctor at all

Maybe he's an alt-whatever-his-og-name-is who didn't choose that Time Lord name/calling (there was a thing between The Doctor and The Master in The Sound of Drums about name choosing).

Obviously it's a terrible season, but I remember being RIVETED by it (to be fair, I was 8).

Ha, I vividly remember E1 of this this being the exact point where I gave up on Doctor Who (I was 10), because the idea of a 14 week courtroom drama just seemed so BORING to me. I dropped out and never went back. (well ok, not never, I came back for the original broadcast of McGann). Have watched it since though and yeah, it's not all that bad. There are far worse Colin Baker stories, at least.

late to the party, finally watched this last night.

That was a great episode! I've spent most of the season settling in for eyerolling/boredom followed by mild to extreme annoyance and I really didn't have any of that. Yay! finally!

irritations, they are but a few
1) I know AA/Sic kinda dug into this earlier but this whole showdown with the Great Intelligence would have paid off a whole lot better if he had been more of a constant thread through this season instead of only being in 1 or 2 other episodes. Even if REG isn't going to physically BE in all the episodes, make us think about him? But that would require having a more solid story through the season which they didn't always seem to.

2) Aldo mentioned this, and he was otm. Moffat's wankery. Listen Moff, Souffle Girl is not a thing. It's never going to be a thing. That line about the souffle is not a souffle it's just the recipe was MEH when you said it the first time, I'm not going to get on board with it and buy a tshirt of it the third or fourth time you say it. Impossible Girl, same thing. Quit trying to memeify all of your lines, you great git. I mean, that's 90 % of why Clara annoys me so much. Everything she says is like they're trying to make it a catchphrase and it drives me bonkers.

3) Sic otm re everyone standing around the Doctor's time dna or whatever, when it's BLEEDING obvious that Clara needs to get in it. Either do it right away because the audience knows that's what she's supposed to do, or add a wrinkle that the audience hasn't thought of for why she's not getting in there but don't just all stand around staring like a bunch of tits.

The rest of it? Yay. Soooo much yay. I loved how gothy and dark it was and how it finally did explain Clara pretty well (though honestly it annoys me that she's now part of their whole timeline when she's not interesting enough to deserve such a thing lol)

John muthafucking Hurt!! Weeeeee. I am excited for this story and I hope it pays off.

I like how they were all "oh noes, Clara will die and be replaced by a bunch of copies scattered through the Doctor's life" when it seems like each copy had its own relatively rich and full life (until the Doctor came along).

Something my wife pointed out was that the first line Oswin said in Asylum of the Daleks was "I don't know where I am" which I didn't remember and is actually a great piece of seasonwide narrative threading

Aldo mentioned this, and he was otm. Moffat's wankery. Listen Moff, Souffle Girl is not a thing. It's never going to be a thing. That line about the souffle is not a souffle it's just the recipe was MEH when you said it the first time, I'm not going to get on board with it and buy a tshirt of it the third or fourth time you say it. Impossible Girl, same thing. Quit trying to memeify all of your lines, you great git. I mean, that's 90 % of why Clara annoys me so much. Everything she says is like they're trying to make it a catchphrase and it drives me bonkers.

I really enjoyed this episode, but VG is otm on all of this. Clara is still a character that seems a bit vacant to me, and I think this is a big reason why.

poor Jenna, totally doing her best with super thin material (semi reminiscent of early Amy episodes where she just comes across as "young Donna Noble")

I still think it would have been fun for Dalek Oswin to have gone off in the TARDIS for a story or two

Quit trying to memeify all of your lines, you great git

QFT.

otm
Clara is like a kids' TV presenter and this doesn't help

They really missed an opportunity IMO by resolving all of this without having the Doctor and Clara run into one of her fragments first

How reasonable is it to ask for the science fiction and time travel elements in DW to be simpler and more coherent from now on?

I'm definitely not asking for 'hard sci-fi'.

Depends on how many ppl actually like the explanation behind the multiple Claras

I don't hate it.

That explanation is probably about as complicated as I ever want the show to be I think. Don't know if I'm showing myself up as a simpleton here, but tbh I didn't have a fucking clue what was going on throughout all of those finales with the Ponds. At least in RTD's time I could follow the finales, even if I thought they made fuckall sense

Theory: Hurt Doctor is nothing to do with The Doctor at all otherwise all Dorium's " fall of the Eleventh" stuff that Moffatt put throughout Series 7 is about Tennant EmoDoc.

Time Lords can age, right? Instead of Hurt coming between McGann and Eccleston, how about if Hurt IS the McGann Doctor, having aged and done whatever he did to renounce the name?

xpost I'm right there with you. They never made an ounce of sense to me either.

I thought they made sense but really fuck the Doctor/River romance

^^^

oh veg veg soooo very otm

otm
Clara is like a kids' TV presenter and this doesn't help

maybe this is why he never dies on blue peter

Listen Moff, Souffle Girl is not a thing. It's never going to be a thing.

ha ha I know someone who cosplayed Souffle Girl before 7b

how did I know that you would have something to add to that

like a pinch of cinnamon to a recipe

<3

coriander amirite

We know that Melody Pond was able to age from childhood to adulthood, but whether that was because of her human DNA or not is up to someone else to fanwank.

Read a theory somewhere that "the fall of the eleventh" is what we just witnessed, because now his secret is out and we know he's not really the eleventh regeneration, he's the twelfth, hence the eleventh has now fallen. Sounds rubbish but also sounds very believably Moffaty.

By the way what happened to Clara's magic computer skills after that first episode?

wouldn't she have lost them when the reset button was pushed in that Shard office?

Don't think so, because that was meant to be the explanation for the Dalek asylum version of her being a tech genius. Maybe I just got that wrong, maybe the Dalek asylum splinter spent a few years doing comp sci before she went off to save the doc.

ahh, that makes sense

Read a theory somewhere that "the fall of the eleventh" is what we just witnessed, because now his secret is out and we know he's not really the eleventh regeneration, he's the twelfth, hence the eleventh has now fallen.

but but we saw tennant regenerate into oh wait this is moffat sigh okay

The only regeneration unseen by the viewer is the one between eight and nine, plus there are wardrobe cues backing me up, so I'm going with THAT ONE.

The only regeneration unseen by the viewer is the one between eight and nine

also two and three tbh

omggg john hurt is 2.5

no wonder he looked confused

The only regeneration unseen by the viewer is the one between eight and nine

Assuming Hartnell really is the first.

Boringly I imagine Hurt will just get ret-conned out of the Doctor timeline by the end of the show though...

yeah, he'll be timey-wimeyed out of the show like everything else in this god forsaken reboot

Assuming Hartnell really is the first.

morbius dot retcon

Assuming Hartnell really is the first.

I'm mega-down with Letts and Holmes being pre-Hartnell faces for real, but it seems unlikely that Hurt would be - he didn't become the person he is until after travelling with Ian and Barbara for a year, so even older versions would have done far less to have earned the name "Doctor"

what if Hurt is actually Romana

i would squee my brains out

Wasn't there something said by the Doctor about him naming himself the Doctor for a reason. Occured to me it might have been in some kind of tribute to whoever John Hurt is, like he was a hero of his, who may have let him down rather badly.
So did this Hurt character represent something other than an earlier incarnation per se?

But then again they were inside the Doctor himself weren't they? In some way I don't quite get. Must rewatch the episode, which I tend to do every Friday anyway.

yeah has been a bit of a letdown of a series. Didn't really seem to flesh things out properly or something. Seemed to be some interesting ideas that could have been much better used.
had the thought on watching Clara at one point taht she looked like an example of that idea in pet breeding taht making mature animals retain the cute features of baby animals. There was something about the size of her eyes taht I noticed, like they were just too large. Epitome of japanese cartoon round-eye character. If you see what I mean.
I had major hopes of her when she fiorst appeared too. Maybe the next season will be better if there is one. Hopefully there will be a continuing theme and it won't simply be dispensed wityh in the 50th Anniversary edition.
Actually, noticed that the Doctor Who magazine is doing anniversary issues based on reoccurring characters or enemy races, or at least I noticed there wasa dalek Special with 50th Anniversay in the title.

FWIW, in future series I'd really like to see less 'things of extreme importance to the Doctor and his mates which then end up not mattering very much or changing anything'.

I'd like to see more episodes where it really matters what happens to some people on a space station who are being attacked by a big thing made of moss, or what happens to some people in the 16th century at the mercy of a twisted alchemist. And where this big thing made of moss or twisted alchemist don't really have anything to do with what the doctor's name is or whatever.

Why, cardamon? Well I get the sense sometimes that the universe of DW becomes thinner when villains pop up centred entirely around the doctor's personal business, without having much of history or story themselves.

(Incidentally it would be nice if the alchemist didn't turn out to be aliens or actually science because that bores me and also bores the small relatives with whom I watch the programme. But I think I've blathered about this before.)

'things of extreme importance to the Doctor and his mates which then end up not mattering very much or changing anything'

This isn't the fairest characterization of Moffat's schemes considering that the Doctor is basically the savior of the universe and anything that threatens him threatens existence by proxy and that the reason why they end up "not mattering" is because the Doctor and friends fight against them and fix/defeat them.

Also this season has been packed full of villains with agendas separate to the Doctor - you could maybe argue the Daleks in that they summoned the Doctor, and the GI at the end, but that's about it?

Moffatt-era Who has been really really bad at creating incidental characters you care about, dude who thought he was a robot aside. It'd help if so many of them didn't seem to be interchangeable middle-class TV thesp nobodies.