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

First DW I've really enjoyed in a *long* time. Completely convinced by Matt Smith by 5 mins in. Anyone know where it was set?

A fictional village of Leadworth - filmed as usual around Cardiff.

Really loved this, except for the music. I wish Murray Gold would have some sort of major life epiphany that makes him give up composing forever.

So good!

Loved it--Smith seemed just like the Doctor to me. A great start.

Guess which newspaper?

The revealing outfit prompted a flood of comments on online message boards, with a section of fans accusing producers of 'shamelessly sexing up' the long-running family show and labelling it 'slutty'.

Writing about Amy, one viewer in an online forum asked: 'Why did she dress up as a tarty policewoman? Surely that's not fitting for a family show.'

Another said: 'They've completely demeaned Doctor Who by replacing good episode stories with slutty girls.'

i liked the new title music, if only because they'd ditched the guitars and put synths back in.

the storm clouds and fire textures in the tunnels were too earthly though. it's science fiction, make it look fantastic, not everyday.

golly, this was swell. new tardis looked super cool, and preview of future eps was pretty jaw-dropping (daleks vs. fighter planes?). loved the character design of the aliens, espesh the snowflake-eye-ship.

Writing about Amy, one viewer in an online forum asked: 'Why did she dress up as a tarty policewoman? Surely that's not fitting for a family show.'

sooooo... been thinking about maybe giving this a watch?

aldo is not in the country so has not seen this yet.

aldo you will fucking love it BUT we keenly await another timeline update from you! :D

Coma patients speaking is becoming a little hackneyed

I read that scene as a homage to Seven Crystal Balls, but that might be over-nerding it. Although Moffat did write one half of the first Tintin movie, so maybe not.

Loved the fish custard business at the start, the rest didn't quite match up, but otherwise very promising. It seemed a lot smarter, like a BBC2 Doctor Who, if that makes sense.

was anyone else mis-stepped by the 'hit with a cricket bat, hits floor, cut to ambulance siren-blaring to hospital forecourt' = ok so doctor has been taken to the hospita... oh hang on.

other odd bits/echoes:
an alien fugitive being reclaimed by law-enforcing aliens, plus some hospital scenes. martha's 1st story
whisked away *before* a wedding.
very fanboyish continuity jokes/refs re swimming pool and other stuff (i forget)
lots of kid's dreamstuff in there (room you never noticed, childhood 'invisible' friend, corner of the eye/blink stuff)
lots of allusions to teh filthy stuff (as per moffat in gen)

A full 8-tentacle salute from here. Really liked the first episode a lot - wanted to see the next one immediately afterward...

Sold on Matt Smith during the "you know when parents tell you everything is going to be alright?" line (which Tennant would have made ridiculously overdramatic).

was anyone else mis-stepped by the 'hit with a cricket bat, hits floor, cut to ambulance siren-blaring to hospital forecourt' = ok so doctor has been taken to the hospita... oh hang on

yep

on rewatching there's definitely something in the scene the pic james posted comes from - the doctor turns the monitor off as if worried that amy will see the image of the crack on the screen

something odd about the end too with the raggedy-doctor dolls (is amy gonna go psycho-stalkey halfway thru the season?) all out and so close to the wedding dress

I loved this :) which was a happy surprise! Man i love doctor who so much

Before everyone gets carried away I don't think this was a much better opening episode than 'Rose', but then again Moffatt's got form so I have faith.

Matt Smith - terrific. I really like his occasional bursts of sarcastic zinginess, like when Amy asked him if the door would hold the aliens.

The whole ep - bit of a mess, I thought, too frantic and overstuffed, and the alien stuff raced past as if it wasn't really important (to be fair, in a scene-setting epsiode it isn't really). Could have done with having about three characters removed. Still, The End Of The World is getting a bit boring so nice of Moffatt to get it out of the way early.

The first 10mins - great. Moffatt is at his best when aiming directly at the younger kids, and this hit the nail on the head. He needs to do a story with household insects given alien powers. Spiders, maybe.

Amy - dunno, jury's out. Didn't really get much of a sense of her personality in this one, relative to Rose/Martha/Donna, and Karen Gillen's repertoire of wide-eyed terror expressions leads me to think she might not be a great actress.

Doctor being a dick to Amy's boyfriend - this is always classic, a nice throwback to the Ecclestone era. Amy having to be back the next morning for her wedding day is a good reason not to go back to present day Earth for the rest of the series as well.

You know.. what is the deal with Doctor Who Confidential? I think I give it a shot maybe once a season, but... why is it 45 minutes long when half of it is montages of scenes from the episode you just watched set to pop music? Also why do they seem to repeat the same factoids over and over again? I just watched the one for the first episode, and they explained how stop-motion filming works at least three times, how the Doctor REALLY becomes the Doctor when he finally gets a new wardrobe (you don't say) three times, and so on... damn my behind-the-scenes curiosity.

Finally saw this tonight, and showed it to a bar full of abotu 16-17 people there just to see it.

I enjoyed it. I really liked the fact that they worked cell phones in, and that the camera movements were very, VERY different from what we've seen before.

the Murray Gold stuff was bleah, but I figure that what we have to put up with until someone finally kneecaps him. I wish the opening theme didn't have quite so modern beats.

The new theme crowds out the bassline with these bombastic strings, and that's unforgiveable in my book.

Very much in agreement with everything Matt DC said. Felt like there was something slack about the direction, too. The panel-to-panel storytelling felt a bit confusing, too much going on at one moment, too little at the next. Maybe a reflection of the smaller budget?

What's up with the first ten seconds of the theme, btw? It took way too long to get to the melody.

has the budget been cut?

Agree that Moffat keeps packing too much stuff in, but would still rather this than the weak episodes we're likely to get from other writers. Comparisons to 'Rose' are probably pointless as that was largely carried by the overwhelming excitement/expectation and ended up being one of the weaker eps of that series. No opener has ever gone on to stand out as one of the series highlights which is fantastic given The Eleventh Hour's overall quality.

big grin at the doctor sending amy a message to "duck!" - possibly the only person capable of sending such a message would be a time traveler - and it is just too delicious to refrain from using TWICE

(by moffat i mean - that was straight outta "Blink" right?)

(and in Blink he actually adds "no seriously, duck!!")

Good to see "wibby-wobbly, timey-wimey" back as well.

In this one he is driving a fire engine towards the window of the hospital where they've told him they're standing tho? No major precog needed there. Although, yes, it seemed like a reference to Blink. xpost

Am I the only one that suspects the 'too much stuff packed in' was all being planted for later episodes? As I watched, I noticed that most of the 'extra stuff' were allusions to mystery that I imagine could/will be explored later: the identity of Amy Pond's parents, her mysterious never-seen aunt, the identity of the suitor, the old woman who says 'I've seen you somewhere before...' , the creepy raggedy doctor dolls, etc., etc., etc.

I have the faintest idea that all of it will matter.

Also, I loved loved love the use of the color red in the episode. There's a fire-engine red item in practically every shot.

I sort of get the feeling that Moffatt can't really arsed to have a whole family knocking about, Rusty-style. Still, Amy having obsessed over the Doctor as some kind of magical figure since childhood is going to lead to a much more interesting dynamic that "ooh I fancy him".

The crack in the universe is going to be a running thread throughout the series, isn't it? I hope they build it up into a proper mystery to be unveiled right at the end.

I guess what I really enjoy about the introduction of Amy is that she is nearly as much of a mystery and a free agent as the Doctor. She could end up being good, bad, crazy, capable, enfeebling, epic and continuing (a la Jack Harkness) or little more than a one-off, as opposed to Rose/Martha/Donna/Wilf who all arrive on the show as fully drawn figures.

Did Moffatt create Captain Jack himself or did he just write the first ep in which he appeared?

wiki sez he was a collab b/w barrowman, gardener, and davies

the old woman who says 'I've seen you somewhere before...' isn't a mystery, surely - the old woman thinks she's seen the doctor before because she's known Amy through her entire phase of raggedy doctor picture-drawing/doll-making/story-telling?

but idk i originally assumed the old lady was her aunt so what do i know

no she did indeed recognise him as the raggedy doctor

the whole 'cracks' thing is surely just more of the 'rift' issues that enabled both Cybermen returning, Torchwood etc. it would be daft to try and make it a separate thing but this did seem to be hinted at (the Doctor not knowing why...at least he didn't say "oh yeah, that whole darkness thing").

When he said, by the duck pond, "this is too soon, I'm not ready, I'm not done yet", that was him quoting Tennant from the Christmas specials, no? Rewatched it last night (with a transfixed five year old this time), and it did seem like a lot of the tennantisms were more intentional than I'd maybe first assumed.

Liked the episode. Stupid question from probably not listening at the right moment: thought Amelia said she didn't have parents and lived with her aunt, but had a freshly carved apple from her mother?

(Got a bit tired of previous ongoing companion-family sagas, so quite like to think that the obligation to be back for "stuff" the next day means her own timeline will be avoided for the whole series, and then just whisk her back to get married in the last episode. While trying not to be 12 years late again, obv. Seems fairly unlikely, I realise...)

the whole 'cracks' thing is surely just more of the 'rift' issues that enabled both Cybermen returning, Torchwood etc. it would be daft to try and make it a separate thing but this did seem to be hinted at

I thought Moffatt wasn't going to include any of Rusty's stuff and focus on building his own universe, as it were?

xpost I think Amelia just said that was what her mother used to do because she didn't like apples either. Good line as well - 'I'll keep that for later', actually kept it for 12 years later, when he used it again.

On podcast with (ahem) Richard Bacon, Matt Smith alluded to a lot of setup in the first episode, so the overstuffage may well be part of that.

phwoaar

thought Amelia said she didn't have parents and lived with her aunt, but had a freshly carved apple from her mother?

think the implication was that she did have parents, we just don't know what happened to them yet. maybeeee they got zapped back into the past by weeping angels.

"Also, I loved loved love the use of the color red in the episode. There's a fire-engine red item in practically every shot."

That's interesting. Perhaps the director is a Powell & Pressburger fan? Scorcesee did the same thing in Mean Streets as a homage to P&P. In response Powell said, "I like it, but you've used too much red."

think the implication was that she did have parents, we just don't know what happened to them yet. maybeeee they got zapped back into the past by weeping angels.

This would be awesome, and she'd be able to bump into them at some point as well.

you know, it's possible that amy/amelia's first meeting with the doctor (via the blue box) was not actually the first -- it could explain why she was not at all scared of him.

er, then why didn't she recognise him?

in answer to steve, cos he just regenerated

however she wasn't afraid because santa sent her a policeman to save her from the crack.

Still, Amy having obsessed over the Doctor as some kind of magical figure since childhood is going to lead to a much more interesting dynamic that "ooh I fancy him".

Yeah, this is good. I had the sort of fear with Donna that the fact she admitted in "Partners in Crime" that she'd been carrying around her clothes in the back of her car and sort of stalking him by turning up where bad things happened meant that she had expectations beyond just hanging around doing stuff when she finally did catch up with him, but that never materialised. I hope they stay away from this with Amy as well.

oh, i don't. i hope she's batshit for him; plunges off the deep end halfway through the season. how often has that happened? a treacherous/unstable companion?