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

i looked up that song and apparently it was the theme song for one of those Flavor of Love spinoff reality shows? catchy tho

i probably need to see more but i didn't really like the one or two Davison stories I saw, didn't warm to those two companions

Davison probably suffers a lot if you didn't grow up with him; too many of his stories don't know what to do with all of his companions, so you end up with things like Nyssa taking a nap for the entirety of "Kinda".

Ha, wasn't she supposed to have been sacked by the time that was filmed though?

Did they really have four companions at that stage? That seems to be overkill...

and a bit crowded in the TARDIS - it's not *that* much bigger on the inside when you all hang around the same wee control room every day.

I remember at least one scene taking place in Adric's room, so at least they had their own rooms.

Speaking of wee, does the Tardis have a toilet?

Yeah, but this is what makes her realistically of her generation. 20ish girls just do that now, don't they?

I don't know why it took so long for this to occur to me.

Getting back to the last episode it showed up how good the new Tardis set is, lots of different levels to run around on, the Doctor down underneath the control console, etc.

Also perving:

http://imgur.com/MDgcc.jpg

http://imgur.com/e6Ho8.jpg

I do wonder what would have happened if Amy had chosen the Doctor over Rory -- I know if it had been Rose, she would have brushed off Mickey dying and would have pushed to be with the Doctor forever. He probably would have kicked them both off of the Tardis, wouldn't he?

I quite like The Silurians, but it's very heavy going. On the other hand, there aren't many of the heavy handed modern political allegories that aren't - Global Warming DO YOU SEE all the Army are violent thugs DO YOU SEE.

Ingrid Pitt's Kung Fu Kick is my favourite thing about WotD. That, and the resigned look the Wet Vet gives to camera then goes "Oh no, it's the Myrka..."

Tegan/Adric/Nyssa are my least favourite companions of them all, particularly since because they know there's too many people one of them always has to be off doing something else. One of the best examples is maybe Terminus where, despite being Nyssa's last story she spends nearly all of it shut away in a room recovering from a disease she suddenly catches. I watched Traken/Logopolis/Castrovalva over the weekend and came to the realisation I maybe hate Tegan more than Adric, she's just so fucking smug. And whiny.

I don't know, I think if I was trying to get to work and some random alien killed my aunt and then another random alien accidentally kidnapped me, I would do some whining.

Adric is totally unforgivable though.

What was the point of that kid, anyway? He makes Wesley Crusher look like Han Solo.

I think they were trying to go back to the interpersonal dynamics of the original TARDIS crew, only with certain things inverted like the Doctor looking/acting much younger, everyone in the crew effectively being an orphan, an slightly older woman who wants to leave with two younger kids who want to stay rather than a slightly older couple who wants to leave with a younger girl who wants to stay, etc etc etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lL6hkpJveM

Anyone else think the SoftMints man has a passing resemblance to Matt Smith - in clothes, expression and general manner?

RUMBLED.

In other news, a colleague has revealed that he was the stylist for all of Karen Gillan's BBC publicity stills. She is apparently dating someone who works in fashion (I think a graphics guy).

"He makes Wesley Crusher look like Han Solo"

only wesley never died pointlessly trying to be cleverer than he was. CURSES. *roll silent credits*

that happened to be the ONLY Adric story I saw, what a tool

Real talk: killing Wesley Crusher would have made me definitively decide TNG > TOS

I DO NOT APPROVE OF ALL YOUR ADRIC HATES.

In case any of you haven't seen this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/doctorwho/

So, apparently the Clerics from the Weeping Angels story might be really really really REALLY important?

The last 10 minutes of this is Eps 3-5 of The Silurians. And I hate Amy.

BBC ethnicity conspiracy junkies ahoy today, can't refuse Meera Syal a shot in the TARDIS.

Also LOL Scottish Silurian.

And I hate Amy.

My man!

Yeah, need to see the rest of it, liked quite a lot of specific moments in this week's but wasn't impressed by the Silurian hostage, who was totally alien-by-numbers (looked much better before the mask came off). Weird pacing too, seemed to last ages. Don't really give a shit on the "one of you is going to kill me" side of things, three pretty uninteresting characters to choose from. Liked the big underground city lots though.

anyone who dislikes this needs their heads examined. Matt Smith is amazing. Shuttling sea devils in a graveyard behind a kid gone to fetch something = classic nightmare material. People being dragged into the earth = classic nightmare material. Rory excellent. Don't get the Amy dislike in the slightest - bolshie but ultimately slightly frightened but not going to show it lass. This was classic comic book material culminating in a massive subterranean city. What the hell's wrong with you lot?

Boo to the Amy haters.

This is just like when Tracer hated Discovery.

The old man is going to be the killer, isn't he? He's probably been wounded by some mind-control reptile venom.

Given the beginning, I'd kind of hoped that Rory would've had his own b-plot in which he has to deal with and solve his own separate mystery as a way to pull himself up nearer the Doctor's level.

<3 <3 <3 the Doctor asking the mom nicely to put away the weapons.

tbh I can kind of get the Amy hate; as little screen time as she got this episode, she was kind of uncharismatic and unlikeable. A bit too one note with the sassy bluster, perhaps.

they are indeed Silurians chap (not much of a spoiler considering the thread title)

considering that this reveal doesn't happen until 36 minutes into a 43 minute episode, it's a massive bloody spoiler, fuck off!

^ was reading the last-week bits of the thread immediately before watching the episode :(

Thought they could have done a bit more with the scary stuff - corpses disappoearing, holes in the ground that eat you, darkness suddenly descending, all A+
Ideas but not brilliantly put together, felt a bit sub-Mofatt. The kid was great though, Silurian a bit rubbish.

Thought the dissection reveal was a bit bungled as well. Maybe the whole episode was toned down a bit, it could easily have been deemed too scary.

I like Amy, especially her weird mix of take-the-piss-out-of-the-Doctor flirtatiousness and her weird belligerent entitlement issues. She's better than Martha and Donna, not as good as Rose in her first season though.

Thought the dissection reveal was a bit bungled as well.

yeah - it should have been horrible and was just kind of... perfunctory.

The old man is so obviously 'the one who'll be the killer' that I can't but hope it's not him. My dearest hope is that it'll be the first time on telly that an enemy has said 'i know which one of you kills me~' and then no-one does.

I haven't seen it yet, but A bit too one note with the sassy bluster is like ding ding ding ding

Better than Donna? bwahahahahaha. No.

Apparently the production team were getting concerns towards the end of filming that Amy was just a series of one-liners and people would have trouble liking her.

An awful lot of rumours that you will need to watch last night's Confidential to see a deleted scene from the episode in it for the rest of the series (and, in fact, the parts of previous episodes that relate to the series arc) to make sense.

If so, that's a colossal botch.

that sounds like the usual cobblers

Amy's sassy bluster > Donna's sassy bluster

The thing that's been driving me nuts through this is how 40-45 minute episode length mean we get less of the development/expository stuff Aldo is talking about; no wonder some are complaining the characters lack a certain...dimensionality.

Matt Smith is very good but he is following an actor who was a total geek spod about the role, borne of being a total geek spod about the series when he was a kid - and it shows.

Without being too spoilery, it helps explain why the Amy & Rory from the Dream World in the last episode are on the hillside waving to them and will be required to explain what's supposedly going to happen next week (or at least how it can happen while everything else does).

Somebody on OG has expressed pretty well the problems I have with Amy:

My issue with Amy is that Moffat has created a good skeleton for a character arc. The young girl obsessed with the Doctor who never really grew up, who now faces a choice of growing up or continuing to live in her childhood fantasy. That's a pretty good story, it can take you to interesting places, and in theory it should be great.

The problem is, it's as if Moffat just couldn't be bothered to fill in the rest. He left it as a structure, a skeleton. Between the points of her character development across the series, she just wanders around spouting off one-liners, not seeming particularly engaged with her surroundings. So while the structure is there, the actual character isn't.

Character is more than just a backstory, or a structured "arc". It's writing someone who is believable as a living, breathing person, who reacts to things, who has hopes and dreams, opinions ... who just feels real (see Rose, Martha, Donna). And Amy doesn't feel real. Away from the character arc, she seems little more than a character designed to appeal to the most basic likes of sci-fi fans - "wit" and a short skirt. Dull dull dull.

Also some others have looked at her dialogue and it's something like 70% questions, 25% zings and 5% for the rest, and most of that is whinging at The Doctor because he's done something that inconveniences her.

I wouldn't surprised if those ratios were pretty much the same for other companions, though, surely? Donna was like 90% zings and she was awesome. I mean,

Amy's sassy bluster > Donna's sassy bluster

is just nonsense. Donna clearly couldn't give a fig about most of what the Doctor was on about, which gave her this enormous leeway to just be unimpressed by him, which, when you're talking about someone as self-regarding as the Doctor, guarantees instant hilarity (AND makes the Doctor have to try to explain better to her - and to himself - why things matter).

Anyway, there's no accounting for taste in companions so I'll leave my save-a-Donna efforts here for the moment I guess.

I don't particularly care that Amy has a great backstory that's just been left in a rucksack by the door (I didn't give a shit about Donna's backstory, or Martha's, or Rose's). I think what bugs me about Amy is that if Moffatt "couldn't be bothered to fill in the rest", it's the actor's job to do that, to make the character feel real.

What does it seem like Amy wants?

What's her response to the fact that a magical character she spent her entire childhood writing stories about has turned out to be real?

Sassy zings?

Realised a massive fuck up in last night's - they start drilling because of the blue grass, which is caused by the Silurians drilling upwards. Except the Silurians don't start drilling until after the humans have, because it's that that wakes them up. Oops.

Deleted scene here: http://blogtorwho.blogspot.com/2010/05/hungry-earth-deleted-scene.html

btw, no fucking way is that "dressed for Rio". She was wearing tights! and a wool jumper!

This was the first episode where I understood the dislike for Amy, she was really bloody annoying. I don't get her relationship with Rory at all.

xpost WIBBLY WOBBLY TIMEY WIMEY!

Old school Silurians were weirder and creepier. This was generally fine though, if a tad unimaginative. A definite Pertwee vibe - reminiscent of The Green Death as well as its obvious precedents. The final reveal was good.

Old school Silurians also went and hid in an emergency shelter station in Derbyshire because they thought an asteroid was going to hit the Earth. Not in a giant fucking city a hundred miles or so away.

This series hasn't quite lived up to its promise for me. Nothing has topped the first episode. None of which is Smith's fault, incidentally, he's doing a great job.