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

Best artist of ALL TIME' thing grated slightly,

Yeah. I'm no art historian, but doesn't Picasso have considerably more claim to the title?

Wasn't the rationale that van Gogh was an artist EVERYONE would have heard of? Picasso may be more famous but I don't see a particular story come to mind, plus dude was a major bastard to women so... meh.

Oh yeah, Van Gogh is a way more obvious guy to do a story about... Was just annoyed by all the hyperbole.

I don't know if it's me just being drunk but the incoherence of the show's position w/r/t messing about with time is ... confusing. Sometimes it's ok to change things, sometimes it's not, sometimes there are butterfly-effect-type repercussions, sometimes it doesn't make any difference ... while they were treating Van Gogh to a nice visit to the museum I was thinking 'well that's all very nice and a kind thing to do, but aren't you risking changing all sorts of events down the road?' And of course it turns out to be not a big deal. I know that incoherence is kind of baked into the show, and maybe I'm just being King Nerd but I'm getting brain whiplash. I know that it's Who and that I really should just relax, but man.

Really enjoyed the ep despite the monster being completely pointless and the music video stuff. The art direction was ace and I loved the guy who played Van Gogh, thought he was fantastic. I love the Doctor treating Amy to all sorts of things to make her feel better about a tragedy she has no idea happened.

Wellp, we all learned a little about Van Gogh haven't we kids?

I don't know if it's me just being drunk but the incoherence of the show's position w/r/t messing about with time is ... confusing.

afacr the entire business was explained this season as 'the doctor can physically feel it when something in time isn't right' - i.e. if it's going to make a difference to the 'correct' flow of time he'd be able to tell (which is a slight alteration on the RTD era's 'some things in time are fixed').

They definitely mentioned fixed points in time somewhere in this series, maybe in WW2? But given that they have already destroyed the Daleks and Timelords throughout time and space, and Tom Baker put the development of the Daleks back several hundred/thousand years way before that, they've always been able to rewrite time.

Essentially the fixed points = actual real-world history that can't be changed - ie no "why don't they go back and assassinate Hitler?"

lol @ this RTD quote re: Torchwood S4:

It's not going to be 'Lost' and take 20 years to find out what's going on. It's going to have a most remarkable conclusion after 10 episodes.

like i'm as pissed off about Lost as anybody, but let's not throw stones when we live in a house made out of the worst finales ever.

I think the last series of Torchwood, the week-long one, was up there with the very very best of nu-Who and possibly better than it.

like i'm as pissed off about Lost as anybody, but let's not throw stones when we live in a house made out of the worst finales ever.

The thing about the Lost finale is that I kept thinking about how it was as mawkish and cheesy as RTD's last DW finale.

RTD would've had Mr Friendly dressed as an uber-camp angel tho

Children Of Earth was pretty great altho most of the supporting one-off characters were quite crap (not Capaldi obv)

Children Of Earth was great because it felt more like OLD Who than nu-Who! It was no Blink or Fireplace, but 100-1,000,000x better than anything else Rusty wrote for Who. Except maybe Rose.

Did you not like Midnite, Kit?

it was easily the second best thing Rusty wrote for the show, but suffered awfully from his usual lack of actually thinking through his scenarios. the character stakes were really unearned, and the peril fell apart internally several times, IIRC starting from him wanting us to be unsettled by them first spotting something black and shadowing leaping about in the distance, and then expecting us to be freaked out by something invisible attacking them.

haven't ever rewatched it though, so I may not rc.

i too loved the guy who played Van Gogh
this ep was really not very well written though
v excited abt new torchwood omg

Yeah, if the Van Gogh actor hadn't been as good as he was you'd really see the seams in this one. Never seen Torchwood but given all the love here for it I'll check into it.

Yeah, if the Van Gogh actor hadn't been as good as he was you'd really see the seams in this one. Never seen Torchwood but given all the love here for it I'll check into it.
--Brakhage

Torchwood S2 is the one to watch. S1 is quite patchy, and you need to know a lot of the background for Children of Earth to have the impact it deserves.

S1 is mostly very bad. The first episode and maybe the last couple of episodes are worth watching.

I am bizarrely fond of Countrycide from S1, and the PJ Hammond episode isn't awful either (which from memory has some important Jack arc stuff in it).

I liked Random Shoes and Out of Time from the first series. Everything from They Keep Killing Suzie onwards is worth a watch, really.

^sounds about right. There are a few decent episodes in the first series - it was just barely enough to keep me hooked enough to do S2, which felt a lot better as a whole. "Countrycide" made me want to throw a shoe at someone, though.

Cyberwoman in S1 was so bad that my entire cru stopped watching Torchwood for ever (except that I got fr33 pr3v!ew DVDs of CoE [six months after it came out in the shops])

i thought Children of Earth was risky and interesting and i mostly enjoyed it, but there were some noticeable writing/structural issues. i don't know, i say "structural issues" but i guess i really mean "why does Torchwood have to be so ridiculously stupid and unprepared in order to move the plot along?"

see also "Countrycide," where an immortal man and a mortal woman are walking into a potential gunfight, and the mortal woman is sent in first just so she can got shot and have sexual tension with her doctor.

Yeah, Cyberwoman was where I was going to chuck it. I'm glad I didn't - S2 was really good, especially when SPOILERS Owen turned into an emo zombie END SPOILERS

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4011/4686557958_02edbfd27d_b.jpg

hahahaha WHUT?

the japes we get up to in this house let me tell you

That's awesome!!

Inside doctor looks like he's doing Amy Pond-dancing or kung fu moves.
Outside doctor looks v sad

He's on the outside looking in. :(

Hmm.

Why was a regular spaceship causing time dilation?
Where did The Doctor's earpiece come from?
Why did it look pre-credits like it was all an accident, then look like it was planned, then like it was an accident again?
Why was there a single storey building at the end of a terrace (a hint about how they're going to explain Amy's childhood home having one more floor inside than outside)?
Also lol football and James Corden just before England's first game of the World Cup, which the BBC didn't get, which is followed by a James Corden show. Coincidence, much?

On the plus side, loved the giant Pertwee gadget.

> Why was a regular spaceship causing time dilation?

It was a proto-TARDIS, was it not? Bigger on the inside, similar console layout? Maybe Ace was experimenting…

I quite liked that even though I'm not entirely sure why the power of WUV was enough to shortcircuit the whatever-it-was.

Huey Lewis had it all figured out.

That was pretty good! The Doctor's air-kissing was hilarious.

Was there something significant abt that weird portrait in the hall?

Wasn't it Charlie Caroli?

It looked like a Nick Cave /William Shakespeare mashup

Xpost: otm Aldo! I think you're right.

Loved it! Wanted to know more about the proto-TARDIS, though: whose was it?

"Ah, Mr Jourgenson, will you hold, please? I need to eat a biscuit."

The headbutt mindmeld was hysterical

they really have put more references to previous doctors in this series than the entire rest of the run since 2005, love it though!

Definitely a good thing

yeah i wanna say w/all the hilarious parts (headbutt mindmeld, air kissing, eating a biscuit, being completely oblivious to awkward social interactions, it's modern art society is terrible) this was yet another fantastic non-plot focusing showcase for Smith as the Doctor, i'm pretty much sold on this guy as being his own great incarnation at this point

Otm. This was the ep where it really hit me how well Smith inhabits this Doctor.

Oh and can I go a little silly over Doctor in a towel? Cor blimey.

Tumblr is your friend.

:D

Yeah, Matt Smith is killing as the Doctor, he just needs a new companion.

The Doctor needs to shower?

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l3xwamBynt1qa10u7o1_500.png

Clearly, the SAD is shaped to resemble the crack.

No, it's the other way up.

This was fucking ace, maybe even slightly better than The Eleventh Hour. Two milliseconds of awful Rustyisms (power of wuv, obv, & it's not enough for the building to explode and kill some people - no the entire SOLAR SYSTEM must be in peril... for two seconds of cheap drama. but even the power of wuv was actually set up to make story sense!), loved everything else.

Hope they explain why the ship was all TARDISy later, and Smith is in my top three Doctors of all time. Loved his sting before the credits here, as in Amy's Choice.

Oh, what did he say pre-credits after the bit about this not being some moon? "I think I see a..." mumble mumble Britishes speak up pls.