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

That would be a terrible idea

Agreed, which is why I can easily handwave it away. Doesn't mean it isn't a writing inconsistency though.

didn't Melissa solve this upthread? only the Actual Angel has proper working eyes...that we've seen.

And the groups of Angels are only moving when the lights are out, right?

Which does rather provoke the question of how they themselves see.

Just a thought: that diary really doesn't belong to River Song, does it?

That's a good point. The Church guys seemed to know a bit about it too...

I'm about THIS close to going down to Ladbrokes and placing a bet on who it does belong to.

Amy Pond has kind of gone from hero to zero over the last couple of episodes :( Pout, pout, allure, sigh, be useless, make lame joke, pout again, sigh, get really scared, almost die, have brilliant idea written into the script for you, pout, pout, allure, sigh, duhhh, pout

Oh that was great. I especially liked that Amy closed eyes alternately -- I was thinking Sally should have done that while watching Blink.

Pity about the brakes thing -- it would have worked so much better as a joke if she'd said "It's not supposed to make that noise; you just can't drive/u r doin it rong" and left it at that.

what, like the one on the back of your eye?
The trailer has a bit with the face of an angel coming up in her eye, so I think that might become a thing.

Don't see how the fourth wall thing is an inconsistency: the angels are affected by anything living looking at them. We're looking at them, ergo they don't move. Are there any other things in Who universe that are similarly affected by a quantum-type "observation" but aren't affected by the eyes of the great british public?

It was a great opening scene, but I seriously found it difficult to care about this one, or even pay attention. Not just because of Karen Gillan's MySpace style of acting but it was like... what's happening and why are we here again? Gallifrey runes or something? Oh I dunno let's blunder into a big cave full of the most deadly things in the universe armed with a bunch of flashlights that we know will go out and a bunch of guns that we know will be useless.

Isn't that Dr Who tho?

I guess so, but this time around there was no sense of why any of it mattered. What were the stakes? Who knows?

I said to mr spacecadet "this cave is very pretty but why are they in it anyway" and he said "they have to make the planet safe so the human colonies can arrive, duh" and I still didn't see why they had to go in and not just wait for something to come out, but hey, it WAS very pretty

Hmmm. Well I suppose one answer to that (but I guess it's not really what you're getting at) is that there's a load of humans living on the planet. (leading to that quite good line 'You're like rabbits! You get everywhere! I'll never have to stop saving you!').

Caring... well, I kind of wonder, not necessarily in your case, Tracer, whether the over-the-top end-of-everything-all-the-time, convergence-of-all-plotlines aspects of the later RTD/Tennant series might contribute to that.

As for the relationship between Amy and the Doctor, would definitely agree with you in the daleks one (and with people who pointed out the Donna/Tennant + unused episode nature of that one), but I thought the relationship was really good with the last one. I get a feeling of Amy and the Doctor both feeling their way round each other still - with Amy appearing more confident than perhaps she is (like after the Ringu moment) almost blase, like a girl pretending to know more than she does because she doesn't want to appear silly, and the Doctor trying to look after her but in a way that isn't too overbearing and doing this a bit cackhandedly (ie, in quite an unTennanty, lolEnglish sort of way). Amy's got loads of questions, but she can't really ask him, she's sort of found out that she doesn't get clear cut answers that are useful to her etc.

Writing that down, it seems like quite a lot to be taking from it, I realise, maybe too much, but I feel it's there nevertheless, and I'm enjoying it much more than anything between Tennant and his assistants. (Ecclestone/Rose was also quite good tho).

xpost sorry. trigger finger happy.

there's a load of humans living on the planet

Oh yeah. I completely forgot about that. Which is my point, really. It's not that there aren't technically high stakes it's that I never felt them. In "Blink" the stakes are purely personal but they're gigantic. Humanity won't be wiped away or anything but it just feels tense the whole way through.

Yep, wd agree with that.

Blink is unique for a Who episode tho structurally, conceptually. It's like complaining that Aliens lacks the tension of Alien (Moffat's used this analogy himself to describe the difference between the two WA stories).

Another funny thing was the Bishop guilt-tripping the Doctor about having to tell the dead soldier's families. What makes him so sure he's going to survive this himself ha.

I quite liked the episode, but I had allowed Angels + River Song to let me expect something as brilliant as Blink and the library eps put together, and it was rather limp compared to that. Blink was always going to be a one-off (think I said upthread I was nervous about bringing the Angels back for that reason), but the library episodes were also pretty tense and compelling while much closer structurally to a standard plot, so I still had slightly higher hopes.

(Thought the colonies weren't there yet but were due soon - which doesn't actually change the argument on the thread, just shows that the "why are we doing this?" really wasn't spelled out, if it was all loaded into one throwaway line whose details are pretty unclear to me now)

In "Blink" the stakes are purely personal but they're gigantic. Humanity won't be wiped away or anything but it just feels tense the whole way through.

Yes it would, the Angels were after the TARDIS then they would have fucked up all time for all time.

Didn't really give a shit abt that TBQH and it still felt tense!

Can someone remind me what that thing was in the Tennant finale about the weeping angels being or being related to timelords or something?

The "you can't kill a stone" thing annoyed me in Blink. You'd think someone would at least try taking a sledgehammer to one of them.

Oh wait, it was nothing.

Rassilon declared that the two Time Lords who opposed him (who covered their eyes in the same way as the Weeping Angels) were 'monuments to their shame, and will stand witness as the Weeping Angels of old'.

xp

According to the Doctor, "[The Weeping Angels] are as old as the universe (or very nearly), but no one really knows where they come from."

from wikipedia - can't find anything Timelordy there.

I dunno, that line about the Tardis brakes -- quite a good joke, surely? And I also got the sense that Riversong was lying about it anyway, to show the Doctor up in front of Amy.

Best episode of the season so far -- thought (whoever said the opposite upthread) that it certainly matched up to Silence in the Library. Still not convinced by either Matt Smith or Amy yet, but that "rabbits" line did feel like a definitively Smith-ian, rather than Tenant-style delivery. A bit less snarky, a bit more sing-songy. I'm not sure that adds up to a whole personality, yet, but we're only four episodes in.

Also, glad this episode wasn't quite as BREAKNECK RUSH as the last few. I like that Smith speed-talks his Exposition Moments, but I wish he'd enunciate a little better sometimes.

Agree about the slower pacing being good. Though I found all of the episodes fun, everything could be such a whiz-blur that I often felt inclined to stop caring about the plot mechanics altogether. I think someone may have already made the comparison earlier in the thread, but they'd feel like those old Who four or six-part serials crammed into an hour.

that's modern tv though - all shows eat up loads more plot than they did 10 or 20 years ago

Y'all know that was Mike Skinner off the Streets as the tripped out security guard at the beginning?

> that's modern tv though - all shows eat up loads more plot than they did 10 or 20 years ago

i find the opposite. things like flash forward have one plot point an hour and 35 minutes of filler (and 15 minutes of adverts)

that said, i've just watched the entire Sapphire and Steel and if that was any slower it'd stop.

wtf was that beginning bit all about tho? It had a pleasingly Avengersy feel to it, but nothing really seemed to come of it. One minute they were in a piece of parkland, the next they were in a spaceship. Parkland in the spaceship? Who were the dinner suited people? Who were the dinner-suited people? Maybe I should stop asking so many questions and just see if it turns into something I guess.

the park was a hallucination caused by the lipstick. thought this was great. the tux guy was the 'owner' of the dormant Angel i guess. why River was on the ship in the first place (other than to try and destroy the Angel before being detected maybe) idk.

Ah, thanks. For some reason I just assumed the noisy birds were the hallucination and the park was real, which is a bit we tar did.

that said, i've just watched the entire Sapphire and Steel and if that was any slower it'd stop.

See, that's what I love about it.

Rewatched Blink last night (so great, even better than I remembered it), then this, in preparation for tonight. Even on second viewing there were some bits that went too fast for me to work out. Where did River Song get that book about the angels from? She says something about getting it from some old guy, then the doctor says something really fsat, which I listened to four times to try and decipher, but which always sounded like "and then you raped his girlfriend!".

tux guy owner of Angel.

meets femme fatale on shore.... they fly away in space ship.

they dance. femme fatale tells tux guy to hold on to something when dancing.

femme fatale sneaks off to burn words into black box.

that's where we come in and why tux guy and river are in evening dress.

I am guessing its a Poseidon Adventure-style ships banquet.

Yep, seems reasonable. Hyperwealthy art collector intergalactic travellers probably hold quite sophisticated balls n banquets. I'd hazily surmised something similar myself. Slightly confused by the 'Hallucinogenic lipstick? SHE must be here!' = 'Oh, I danced with you earlier' thing, but none of it matters, it just seemed so elaborate I expected a bit more to happen around it than them all blowing up their ship out of shot. I guess some of the story will be filled in as we find out more about River Song.

blowing up crashing.

Loved that.

Presumably the people who thought the points I brought up last week THAT ENDED UP BEING THE PLOT were ridiculously pedantic absolutely despised it as badly written. ;-)

Watch for time being unwound explaining away Rusty's time issues in a future ep. It can be 2010 after all.

A rift in time that eats you and means you NEVER EXISTED is a bit Neverending Story but also very scary and the basis for what's looking like a fantastic arc to the season. So River kills the future Doctor at some point and maybe that's what causes the crack?

Love how it's all fitting together as one long story - next week's looks terrific as well.

Also loved Amy trying to shag the Doctor. If you're going to go down that route then making it funny is way better than making it drippy.

I liked the giant Victorian Cyberman ref as well. Writing the Rusty era out of the Earth timeline seems sensible.

Amy not being able to open her eyes then tripping over in the forest = way scary.

Still a bit perplexed by the duck pond thing though.

Still think your view has it backwards. Up to now there was no fourth wall- we (well the rest of us) accepted the reasonable dramatic device that we didn't see them move cos that's how our heroes perceived them. Breaking out 'the viewers get to see it' was the powder he'd kept dry in your eyes (ahem) but just the creepiest thing ever to everyone else because at THAT point he's seemingly broken an implicit compact w the audience. Spooky and knowing and well timed.

Plus yes it does raise, in retrospect, issues of consistency. So when is it they can move again?

But I'm not of a mind to mull over that.

Finally enjoyed the ep! Slightly spooked by doctors sudden fiery outbursts now. Also by amy's sudden attack of lust. But enjoyable for it

No ducks duck pond will be like the bees in tate's season. Or the dog in the night that didn't bark

head hurts...so much to process

Again, so good. Time vortex memory wipe with energy sapping stone angels - what's not to like?

The whole relationship between the Doctor and Amy is perfect - completely agree with Matt DC. Obviously she'd fall for the Doctor, (he's flash) but at an immature stage of their relationship, and it becomes something to grow out of. Love his avuncular role.

The blind man's buff with the angels could have gone on a bit longer, or at least not ended with her getting teleported out I thought. Trailers for the next episode reveal a bit too much for my taste - you want to tantalise but not reveal, surely.

Anyone think the vampires look a bit like flesh versions of the angels?

Good spot on the angels/vampires thing.

Amy completely consistent with her character btw, casting notes referred to her at one point as "the village bike".

I am thinking hard about River's diary and am now prepared to lay money it's this:

http://img.search.com/thumb/b/bf/500_year_diary.jpg/150px-500_year_diary.jpg

and she's just happened about it at some point, having never travelled with the Doctor at all.

In best Blue Peter tradition, she has just covered it with sticky backed plastic so he won't recognise it. The reason she knows "Hello sweetie" is a trigger that means he rescues her when she jumps out of the spaceship is because he wrote that it did, and the reason she knows his name is because the silly old fool wrote it in the "This book belongs to..." space.