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

that parallel was none too subtly drawn for the umpteenth time

Rubbish new dalek design imo, basically just gave 'em a fat arse. Enjoyed star wars meets Who meets ww2 though, ludicrous though it was.

The new Daleks were basically about the voice change, I think. They've tried to make them more bad-ass and hence the new butched-up voices. The old skool Daleks can be pretty camp at times, especially when fetching cups of tea and pretending not to know who the Doctor was.

Not brilliant, but it sets up the daleks to just come back whenever, rather than needing to set up a new bunch of hokum every time to explain why.

Think these eps suffer from the opposite of old who, trying to cram too much story in a short time. The Q&A aboard dalek ship where the doctor gets them to explain their plan a dreadful violation of 'show not tell'.

(or just a crap way of telling)

I liked how Amy defused the bomb using Love, but i was hoping she was going to use her kissogram powers to kiss the robot into a human

Not only the Spitfires in space and the Dalek spaceship escaping into hyperspace, but Dr Scots McRobot got his left hand chopped off and replaced with a leather glove.

Chris Hardwicke & John Hodgman's twitter exchange:

Nerdist: Getting ready for small Doctor Who watching party and very happy about it.

Hodgman: @nerdist it may seem like a small party, but it's larger on
the inside.

Though in a way it's undercutting the more emotional moments and character development a little, I do kind of love how these episodes have been like the old Who stories, but sped up to an hour, so it's just non-stop THINGS HAPPENING NOW, NO TIME TO WASTE! Very entertaining, though often going so fast I miss lines or exposition even, need to pause and rewind to catch things. But perhaps better than too much exposition or hand-wringing?

Candy-coated Daleks with new voices, can't really complain. WOULD-YOU-LIKE-SOME-TEA was excellent! Surprised how serious the Doctor's reaction and FINALLY being able to get rid of them once and for all was - with the previous stories (minus the Eccleston "Dalek") it felt like he'd just accepted that they'll always come back again somehow. Wonder if his stressing out over it will come back down the line (and not just in the obvious "Daleks return for the season finale" type deal).

i thought jocular amy was rubbish - i.e. "paisley boy" - she seemed almost like a different character this time around, a gum-crackin back-talkin dame or something which frankly i don't think she pulls off nearly as well as just earnest, confused amy. do not want.

and oh yeah if anyone has the strength to explain to me the reasoning behind how they defused the man-bomb i'd be grateful. totally didn't get it - i thought bracewell was a robot? in that case how could anyone prove he's human in the first place? (obvious visual gag unexploited - low angle shot sees bracewell's crotch pitch a tent as amy leans over him.. the doctor's like "ah. done and dusted")

also, how do we feel about the doctor refusing to save several hundred thousand jewish, gypsy, gay and politically left-wing lives in the concentration camps?

eh, i'll handwave that away with the doctor mostly tries to fix the problems caused by aliens, not by mankind to themselves, and certain events are fixed mumbo jumbo (like when he couldn't stop the aliens causing Vesuvius to erupt)

wisecrackin' Amy made sense to me - since that "12 years!" bit in the premiere, I got the impression she was a bit of a screwball dame, and i wish to see more of it

defused man-bomb was totally silly, basically a parallel of the whole "let's defeat the robot by giving him a logic problem he can't solve!" trope, replacing it with the "if we can convince him he's human / has free will, he can override his PROGRAMMING!" trope. Am too surprised Amy didn't land in with that "kissogram"

oh yeah one last thing - starting to think all those Star Wars rips in the last couple of Tenant episodes were totally intentionally now, like the show's going for more of that kind of action in the fighter scene (i mean, literally WWII in space...)

the iceland volcano definitely seems like it's tied into an as-yet-unwritten doctor who episode

this episode really turned me off amy, i'm not sure why. i feel like she was called on to carry certain emotional aspects of the show, and to do a little comedy, and she mainly substituted facebook pout faces for it

not that i'm, on a certain level, complaining

Too much "Oh we can just happen to save the world" in this one: Bracewell converting Spitfires to fly in space in five minutes, when he's in the Cabinet war rooms, not at an airfield. The Doctor just realising he could appeal to the humanity in Bracewell to defuse the bomb. I know we're not getting realism, but this was just silly and slapdash, after the brilliant set-up.

The Jammie Dodger was a nice idea, to begin with...but man, how long was it dragged out? And why? All it did was buy time, and that time was just spent letting the daleks explain their plan and then execute it.

Yeah, pretty rub ep overall, I thought.

That was no Jammy Dodger.

i;ve been craving fox's jam rings ever since

when will the Daleks stop feeling like they have to tell the Doctor everything?

hoping that Amy's failure to remember the Daleks is entirely do with her and not some 'none of that ever actually happened' reset.

at the end was Bracewell off to become Dorabella's robot lover? ban this sick filth

Did Fox's Jam Rings exist in wartime Britain? Continuity error or alternate reality???

Dalek's are shit at this aren't they - every fucking time they go and spill the beans instead of going "oh look it's him again just fucking kill him! Don't even say EXTERMINATE!"

hoping that Amy's failure to remember the Daleks is entirely do with her and not some 'none of that ever actually happened' reset.

I think it's more Amy's not from when we originally thought and it hasn't happened yet on her timeline.

Or rather I think the thing that made her forget, or changed events for her, hasn't happened yet (classic Moffatt timey-wimeyness, in other words).

that's all covered in the Johnston link

another Star Wars ref: his blue glowing laser tube gets blown up and replaced with a green one.

I think it's more Amy's not from when we originally thought and it hasn't happened yet on her timeline.

remember how the doctor jumped '5 minutes' forward in the series -- only many years really elapsed? I wonder if he's right: if only 5 minutes did pass...

the cracks are losing some currency as cliff-hangers now. time to reveal a bit more than just another crack (tho now we've seen crack in present, crack in future and crack in past).

crackin 3 episodes

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/04/18/article-0-092EF776000005DC-205_468x490.jpg

remember how the doctor jumped '5 minutes' forward in the series -- only many years really elapsed? I wonder if he's right: if only 5 minutes did pass...

There's definitely something wonky, Churchill pointed out that The Doctor and Amy didn't turn up until a month after he called (yet he still managed to get back from the Dalek ship in linear time, I was fully expecting him to turn up in 1974 and wonder where Amy had gone or something)

me too. i explained it to myself that he wasn't using the time aspect of the tardis, just the space aspect. (as if the two were separable HA)

i thought it was a bit lame that the doctor waited until all but one of the british pilots were dead to realise that he could actually just hey, disable the daleks' shields.. and even then he had to be asked to do it by the last surviving pilot.

at least he could have been like woops sorry dude

This was a pretty badly done episode, IMO. How could the gravity bubbles get implemented in ten minutes? And the lasers too? Why was the Dalek ship an empty office building inside? How can a bomb be stopped by love, and isn't an oblivion continuum the thing that young time-lords stare into when they are inducted into the academy? I could be wrong about that, of course...

And I don't like the fat hunchback aspect of the new Daleks. I do like the colors though... reminds me of the comic books. Also the suspense of what the Daleks were doing on Earth and how they got there was done away with way too early in the episode.

Also, weren't the Daleks that were destroyed fro being "impure" the same Daleks that Davros had recently recreated from his very own cells? That sounds pretty pure to me... And Daleks are all clones and mutants anyway so that's kind of silly even if they were not from Kaled stock.

That piper-smith photo is 4 years old.

Aye, they've starred in a few things together so makes sense they could hang out together.

http://community.livejournal.com/ohnotheydidnt/42785872.html

Quite enjoyed this, it felt like Moffatt had to work out a way to make the Daleks a kind of constant presence in the universe rather than surprisingly re-emerging after having been destroyed throughout all time and space for the fifth time.

Amy not remembering the Daleks seems a good way of writing round the Rusty problem of having had the earth invaded nineteen times in the space of four years.

why did they need his testimony again? apart from for social network sites

Still not sure about the SUV daleks although I appreciate the reset. Much scarier as a constant presence.

Thought, could he have slipped into Rose/Evil Trigger Universe -> no torchwood, more cybermen, other ways to bring back timelords, the rani, the master etc.

why did they need his testimony again? apart from for social network sites

― mdskltr (blueski), Sunday, 18 April 2010 14:11 (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

dalek egg would not recognise the daleks as daleks as they were human blends and impure. However dalek egg would take the doctor's word for it.

> This was also the reason we all knew Davros was coming back as well.
> Diamanti Gallas (aldo), Tuesday, March 23, 2010 11:01 PM (3 weeks ago)

i think they made a mistake letting the one-armed dalek-related robot guy go...

I hope so, I reckon this is why 60s london was a wasteland.

I saw an FJ Cruiser today and immediately thought of Churchill daleks. Ed, you have given me a permanent mental equals sign between the two!

There's definitely something wonky, Churchill pointed out that The Doctor and Amy didn't turn up until a month after he called

it'll be a shame if they use this as an indication of the cracks IN TIME, since the Doctor always used to be complete rubbish at aiming the TARDIS properly on long jaunts (whether due to him not really knowing how to work it, or it having been in for repairs when he nicked it)

also pls NO MORE dramatic zoom-ins or close-ups on the end-of-episode cracks, the first one was nicely plain-but-not-overstated

feel like there should've been a scene where, as well as Churchill asking for the Doctor's help, he badgers him to reveal whether or not they do actually win the war. then again i guess the Doctor doesn't usually reveal to the people he meets that he can actually travel in time so he wouldn't necessarily know.

there was a bit where the Doctor almost said it without doing so - something about "you don't really need me to hang around" and so on

Another wrongness in time: Churchill mentioning Buckingham Palace and St Paul's Cathedral geting hit by bombs--didn't these two BIG buildings rather famously never get bombed?

Could be handwaved away by saying that the cracks in the universe have messed up the timeline.

How could the gravity bubbles get implemented in ten minutes? And the lasers too? Why was the Dalek ship an empty office building inside? How can a bomb be stopped by love, and isn't an oblivion continuum the thing that young time-lords stare into when they are inducted into the academy?

The answer to all questions is "timey wimey."

I don't think they want to handwave away the main plotline of the series.

Yeah, thought that one was a bit crap really. New fleet of daleks = much worse at shooting. Kinda agree with dalek that said positronic android brain (old Asimov idea?) being thwarted by memories of love was IMPOSSIBAL. Sudden appearance of space planes after ten minutes was laughable. More like the last series with running around + significant speeches + who cares what happens? we'll just invent some stuff to get round it, people won't notice because it's too exciting, whereas the last two episodes felt like they had stuff happening in them. The Doctor and Amelia relationship completely treading water (still a sense they were getting to know each other in the last two, this one it was like they'd been hanging round forever).

Shame, because I liked the Magic Lantern, (possibly only person?).

Assumed St Paul's thing was a deliberate parallel time bubble universe thing as well.

Wd very much like crack in time not to be a Master/Dalek/Cybermen plot, but some fundamental problem of decay or something (does the crack lead to the 'real' world? Maybe the Doctor was banished to this one as a result of his hubristic interventionism in the last series).

did they mention St Paul's by name - i remember "Wren's churches" which could be other buildings right?