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

Only just had the chance to catch up with the first two eps, pretty fantastic all round. All the gloss and pace of the RTD era, but far less glib and lazy. I think I may prefer Smith to Tennant already - over-confident funny looking nerd is so much more fun than over-confident handsome capable dude.

This felt like an old Peter Davison/Sylvester McCoy four-parter squashed into 40 mins tbh, but I don't really mind the overabundance of ideas.

Yeah, there were easily enough ideas for a two-parter here. But bring it on, I say. Excited for the future of the show.

loved the Dalek WWII propaganda poster in the preview, if the Beeb (Terry Nation?) have their act together I suspect there is significant geek $$$ to be made in selling prints

As soon as I saw it I wanted one, so I think you're right.

I saw the last one, with the space whale, I thought it was pretty decent overall, although I wish they'd SLOW DOWN a bit, and I found the ending a bit abrupt & borderline nonsensical. I saw the trailer for the next ep & was like oh shit, not the daleks again, give it a rest at first, but I have to admit, the khaki ww2 daleks were funny & a cute conceit so I'm looking forward to it.

Really enjoyed the episodes, although in retrospect there were a lot of things that seemed "outside" the plot, but nevertheless it was very good. Matt Smith has officially won me over, he was much less Tennant-y in this ep versus the previous one, and he deadpanned a few lines while in the mouth that gave me genuine lols.

I wish they'd SLOW DOWN a bit

There were a few lines early on when things were being rapidly explained that I literally didn't understand even after rewinding a few times. This also happened with Tennant episodes but usually only when he was launching into one of his purposefully nonsensical tech explanations.

I may prefer Smith to Tennant already - over-confident funny looking nerd is so much more fun than over-confident handsome capable dude.

That's a good point.

Yeah, not bad. The episode's shortcomings are saved by the two leads, who I find really watchable, likeable, whatever.
The Smilers, like the scarecrows in the Family of Blood episode, didn't make much logical sense, but were a neat idea as something creepy to stick in the minds of children watching. They would've been creepier though, if they just had a manic grin as one fixed expression. A frown, even the demonic grimace, aren't as unsettling as a dead-eyed, malevolent smile on those kind of things.

while having rediscovered Colin Baker as only failing due to poor scripts

And with being a really really horrible actor?

I still got a few manic Tennanty vibes off Smith, but I'll agree that he had moments of quiet deadpan that would work as his Doctor Thing.

Properly freaked out when that one hoodie human's head turned around to reveal a Smiler.

Also complaining about the music is for losers. I'm a winner.

Just seen it, fucking excellent, fuiud

And with being a really really horrible actor?

I can see what you mean, but I don't agree with you at all. The utterly dislikeable Doctor has been done to a much lesser degree before and since (Hartnell, Ecclescake and Tennant in the Christmas Invasion) so IMHO the fact he does it overplayed in neither here nor there. The remainder is sub-Tom, sure, but has the same contemptuous tone , with maybe the boorishness and superiority of Hartnell. I can live with that.

Mel is still kind of shit, though.

Anyone else get a slight Buckaroo Banzai feel from Smith's outfit?

http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/b/bukbanzi.jpg

Really enjoyed this, and yeah, the kid-oriented-but-with-stuff-for-adults things really works for me. (As for Colin Baker, at the time I assumed his being unlikable was a symptom of his regeneration going wrong and his personality never settling down, but rewatching them more recently this idea wasn't as strongly run with as I remember, so Maybe not).

What with the Magpie Electricals thing, Moffat's hardly pretending the RTDavies years never happened. He's just quietly outwriting all of Davies work.

yeah i wondered about the Magpie thing having not realised that the Doctor's new monitor as first seen in The Eleventh Hour also had a Magpie Electricals logo on it. Would expect to see one in the next ep too now esp. with it being by the Idiot Lantern writer and set in a nearby time.

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

― one of the jones boys (sic), Monday, 5 April 2010 22:54 (1 week ago)

hmmmmmmmm

Hmmm indeed. I did find it a bit odd that nobody knew who the Doctor was in the 11th Hour. The 1990 date on the NHS card is interesting, but the smart phones and wi-fi don't exactly match up. Not sure what to make of this reading, but there's clearly some funny time-wimey-wibbly-wobbly stuff going on. It also raises the question, why did the Tardis go back in time during the regeneration? Perhaps the regeneration and the banishing of the Time Lords has caused some sort of crack in space in time...

There was also the weird blue line of mist across the pair of them in 11th Hour, is maybe also time crack? Gave myself lulz anagramming Amelia Pond - the best two I got were Opal Maiden and (groan) Oedipal Man.

The NHS card date thing has to be intentional because why show it at all/do they normally have issue dates on them? But what can it mean.

why did the Tardis go back in time during the regeneration?

could've gone into a parallel universe theoretically, where everything is the same but just a little bit different e.g. Blackberry Storms in 1994. Uh.

Yeah, what the hell was that blue mist?? I noticed it, too.

i assumed that was just a clunky directorial choice to emphasize the importance of the 'moment' where they really connect as doctor and companion.

Or maybe Rory is the crack in time... Or maybe he's slipped through the crack from 1990...

Midichlorians?

No, that's what that crap oooh-oooh music is for. It was a line of mist but I'm not going to nerd out and check for the 'crack' aspect by re-watching.

I am glad to have started a trend.

I noticed the blue thing too, but assumed the same as Gubke.

I did notice all the cars being older (specifically the fire engine), and wasn't sure whether the "how do you know it's a duck pond if there's no ducks?" line was a further pointer that not everything was right.

******************************************************************************
STUFF THAT FOLLOWS COULD BE CONSIDERED SPOILERY IF YOU CONSIDER TRAILERS BROADCAST ON TELEVISION OR INTERVIEWS WITH THE MOFF TO BE SPOILERY
******************************************************************************

The spoilery thing that Moffatt announced before the series started that the 'big bad' for this series was in every episode, plus the spoilery rumour (which I won't reveal) about who/what the 'big bad' actually is, makes a lot of sense based on what we've seen thus far.

One of the big problems I see that he has to write soon is the reappearance of River Song, or rather the event in the forthcoming episode. The easiest way out of it is a bit of handwaving that she sees The Doctor in a different way to everybody else, but it definitely doesn't seem 100% consistent with her first appearance.

Yeah I could never work out quite how River Song recognised Tennant in the last series, and why she didn't seem that thrown by his appearance.

Well it took her awhile to figure it out, didn't it? And once she did she was pretty overwhelmed with emotion IIRC!

(Leading to classic Tennant "Oh you adore me too, huh?" type behavior)

I would like to be directed to both those spoilery things, Aldo.

Well it took her awhile to figure it out, didn't it?

No she seemed to immediately know who he was and was on familiar terms, despite surely knowing that the Tennant Doctor had never met her?

I think "eccentric guy suddenly turns up in place he has no right to be with bemused companion in tow" wd probably be good enough clues for her.

Yeah it's also that it took her quite a while to twig that she'd brought him to the library too early in his life.

Even if Matt Smith is the first doctor she meets, it doesn't preclude her having met the Tennant doctor at a point we did not see on screen, after the library episode but before regeneration.

it was kinda like she'd met or seen Tennant's Doctor before but only briefly. maybe she just recognised him from an image she'd seen of the Doctor's previous incarnations, like the footage they've shown twice now of the Doctor's different faces.

^ which always bugs me in a fun way because WHO filmed those images of the Doctor etc. lol

Hmm, perhaps the jagged line is The Master... It was never quite clear what happened to him in End of Time. He wasn't necessarily sucked into oblivion with the rest of the Time Lords. Perhaps he's now existing in a rift in time and space and he's masterminding the whole thing. Quite an elaborate back up plan though...

xpost to myself - later in his life but earlier in her life. Oh, the problems of time travel. Though that can sometimes happen on the High Barnet branch of the Northern Line, too.

also the number 30 bus

Suzy, you have spoilery webmail.

They could have sold me this. Cheers BBC!

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/d11s01/d11s01e01_to_victory.pdf

^^^right next to the Keep Calm and Carry On poster, yes?

I like my spoilery webmail v much, Aldo. Thanks.

http://imgur.com/INdli.jpg

Some of this is awesome.

Finally watched the last episode - really liked it! So many ideas, plot moved kind of ridiculously fast! stuff like the "record" button explaining that Amy just recorded that message now, i mean, damn, I totally missed that. There was so much going on it made the flow of the episode a little off, but I'm with the rest of you who are really into the children's fantasy vibes these two eps have been going with.

All the Who universe callbacks are great, and this reminded me functionally a bit of Eccleston's second episode, the one where a bunch of aliens watch the Earth burn, which also went into explaining a bunch of the new incarnation of the Doctor, last of the Time Lords, fresh companion reactions, so on. That one I think also introduced the "cell phone outside of time".

The fact that it actually led directly into the next story was AWESOME, though I'm not sure exactly why, since it was totally unnecessary.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v478/josiahrowe/dalektea.jpg

<3 <3 <3

DON'T TELL HIM, PIKE

"would you care for some tea" lol

the orange dalek is my favourite

no matter what else, i love the colours

Nice merchandising guys.

Srsly tho, this series keeps getting better.

Yeah, liked that. Time is defintiely fucked though.

I'm pleased that Moffat is being a lot more explicit about the Grand Finale story arc, actively developing it each week rather than RTD's one cryptic reference and nowt else approach.

where was the crack?

new daleks are too big, too clean, too bright. i liked when they looked like landrovers, not mini coopers.

The colour palette on the Daleks was v. deliberately 50s UK design I thought.

There was a crack in the wall of the War Room, think it was there anyway.