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

There *was* that one episode of House M.D. where they gave a guy CPR for 3 1/2 hours (not on screen of course).

i just feel like during the RTD era there was a big emphasis on the universe-as-circus aspect of the show; incredible, gorgeous, huge, boundless, teeming with life, bizarre, a little scary, and with the doctor as – say – p.t. barnum dragging us from sight to sight. the moffett eps during the first 4 seasons were a welcome respite; a breather and a palate cleanser between gobs and gobs of glorious hugeness and overblown spectacle. since Moff has taken the reins, however, i'm beginning to realize that i miss the hyperbolic pinwheeling about the universe, and sometimes wish for an episode that was just a little more ... majestic

Basically it wasn't camp enough to be a pirate episode.

I liked this episode, and I like that it wasn't yer classic swashbuckling nonsense. The ghost-ship twist was excellent, and the revelation that the siren wasn't evil was good too (although her nightmare-inducingly nasty look didn't quite mesh with that). I didn't mind the 45 second of CPR because screen time doesn't have to equal actual time (especially when it can harm the drama/tension) – imagine if she had spend fully two minutes blowing air into his lungs.

So here's me completely uninterested, not intending to watch this year at all, three episodes in and loving the taste of this hat.

lily cole's expression at the end reminded me of the hologram alien from mission to mars

next week's sounds great on paper, but why was it moved forward from its original place in the second half of the season?

however, i'm beginning to realize that i miss the hyperbolic pinwheeling about the universe, and sometimes wish for an episode that was just a little more ... majestic

if there's a way to do this without making it about either planet earth of the entire universe being on the brink of extinction then yes, but the latter plot points can be rested for a while yet imo (altho too bad in a way that "the darkness" probably can't come back)

It's TV. Did you really want a 70 minute episode with 25 minutes of CPR?

Shouldn't be beyond a tv writer to convey passage of time and application of effort without necessarily showing it. I still kind of don't buy Amy's relationship with Rory, she seems to give up on him or ignore him or just treat him like a mate until the script calls for her to be all love-of-his-life to sort out some peril. Though when your partner has stood by you for 2000 years, it's kind of hard to measure up to that level of devotion.

This was far from the biggest problem with this episode, though, and next week's looks better.

xp Be careful what you wish for...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRYNYb30nxU

why was it moved forward from its original place in the second half of the season?

Budget? Maybe the shoot was in the can but post on some other episode would have blown the budget, or maybe I'm talking shit.

xxp there's also the possibility that Amy doesn't get how long one has to do CPR (she's a kissogram ffs) and the Doctor was maybe a bit knackered from all the other stuff that had just happened. I dunno.

why was it moved forward from its original place in the second half of the season?

I'm hoping because it's really good, and they want to restore confidence after that lacklustre pirates episode.

It's weird that, given how good I think Moffatt's writing is, he seems unable to detect dud-ness in other writers. This one, and the Silurian 2-parter last year, just seem as though, even on paper, he would have known there wasn't enough THERE for them to really work.

It made more sense for Russell T Davies to let other bodgy scripts in, since his own stuff was all over the shop.

Oh good, I missed a Silurian two-parter. Excellent.

next week's sounds great on paper, but why was it moved forward from its original place in the second half of the season?

it was never in the second half of this season - it was in the second half of LAST season, and had to be moved back because they ran out of budget to do it that year. Gaiman's talked of having to rewrite it to have an alive Rory in it.

I did love the ending where they're now pirates in space.

with dude "driving the ship" by sitting there holding a COMPLETELY IMMOBILE steering column!

sorry yeah i think the Gatiss one was pushed to the second half because it was actually this pirate one that was moved forward, my mistake (it's one per week minimum ppl).

he seems unable to detect dud-ness in other writers

no less than RTD i think. the other problem is that no other writer is really challenging him the way he did with RTD for best episodes. think the best non-Moffat episode since he took over is actually Simon Nye's (Amy's Choice) but will be surprised if he does another.

in DW Confidential Moffat is pretty blasé about it being a formulaic episode ("If we're gonna do pirates of course we have to have..." proceeds to list all the cliches as if this were way more than important than the story being interesting and coherent enough)

Yeah--my favourite non-Moffats of last series were Simon Nye's and 'The Lodger', both of which were also good in that they weren't formulaic "turn-up-on-spaceship/in-history, find-the-monster, beat-the-monster, leave" stories

^^ on the Venusian hyper-credits

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Media/Pix/pictures/2011/5/6/1304694063880/Doctor-Who-007.jpg

vs.

http://www.vigyan.com/%7Eblbates/star_trek/voyager/doctor.gif

no less than RTD i think.

Chinball's was the only truly dire one last year I think. And even then the first half was 1000x better than his RTD-overseen episodes (42! Cypberwoman!). Eps like this pirate one and the WWII Daleks seem to come from Moffatt going "let's just let a big silly romp through now and again for the littlies" - they stand out as stupider than they otherwise would because he throws so much complicated forward-plotting and grown-up concern into most* of his own eps.

*The Beast Below excepting from the rule here

ugh cyberwoman was bloody awful

Could they just do one damn episode where they go to small country town and prevent the library from being closed down by doing a fundraiser or finding buried treasure? This shit is good, but so exhausting.

with dude "driving the ship" by sitting there holding a COMPLETELY IMMOBILE steering column!

everything is touch sensitive in the future, duh.

he flies it with his MIND

YES http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uswlqnfWshw/TchD3_oCifI/AAAAAAAAFPM/sYYSlBahg1g/s1600/staring+contest.jpg

love it

Ha ha ha ha! Brilliant.

Finally got around to watching this last night and I don't see what all the fuss is about. A perfectly serviceable filler episode and miles better than Fear Her, Love & Monsters or any of Rusty's HOOT!!!11!!!! scenarios. Something reflective being the conduit isn't any more outlandish than somebody using the fat of the people of Britain to incubate baby Adipose, and the crew being marked for death/treatment isn't any odder than feeding children chips cooked in a certain oil to make their brains work faster.

You know what stood out for me? Two ideas - a deserted hospital ship which tries to treat humans but not knowing what they are gets it wrong by making assumptions about what their physiology is supposed to be, and creates a 'base under siege' while trying to make them well; and a deserted spaceship where the crew have died and the servants of the main crew are using a gate through space and time to teleport people onto the spaceship in the hope it makes it work properly and creates a 'stalk and slash' while trying to get the right person.

Or The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances and The Girl In The Fireplace, as they were called the last time.

Wow, Blue Peter was kind of spoilery. She's had to wait a long time too, this was a Rusty competition iirc.

I don't watch Blue Peter but it strikes me that the competition was so long ago, the winner might no longer be a viewer.

The reflection thing is probably carrying over elsewhere in the series. Also, I loved Fangy Lily Cole.

Everything felt very forced and cold and herky-jerky, like a party where everyone is pretending to have fun. And the story didnt make any sense.

Finally watched this earlier and, ^^^yeah, spot on. It may have had everything from Moffat's pirate check-list, but the writer failed to do anything interesting or creative with them. But it was the fact that the whole thing had the increasingly manic forced jollity of a desperately floundering children's entertainer that killed it. Unfun.

Liked some things about it, disliked others. As some have said it had more in the way of actual ideas than most monster of the week episodes, even if a couple of them smelled a bit recycled. All perfectly watchable, and actually quite a nice let up after the brain-frying opening story. Bonneville was miscast though, I think. Good actor, not really at all convincing as a ruthless pirate.

something reflective being the conduit

Except that a) the first time she appears, it's from non-still, and therefore non-"perfectly"-reflective water; and b) the Doctor reacts to the reflection revelation by creating HUNDREDS MORE reflective surfaces than already existed. Smart work, there.

As much as I don't really want to defend this episode, I'm assuming that the smashed mirrors/windows were supposed to be too small for her to fit through. Although that crown wasn't exactly huge, either.

As much as I don't really want to defend this episode

I'm sorry for your loss :(

Is the astronaut in the first episode a version of The Watcher? Harbinger of regeneration etc.

this looks like The Bed Sitting Room

This looks like NOOOOOOo

Neverwhere

I actually quite liked this.

A bit hectic, but good.

Disappointed they didn't use a 'classic' series console room.

I liked it a lot - took a wee while to get going, but then (once Karen-off-of-Corrie was revealed as Tardis) it was proper good fun and tension and madness and jokes. Plus I get to chalk up another Rory death. Poor chap.

Also hokey River reference for What Can It All Mean arc stuff.

I totally loved this.

yeah was inventive and good, didn't do all the old new who stuff, but still fitted in with Moffat's 'what can we do with the possibilities' thinking.

i give this show a chance every year, it's still bollocks

tbf this wasn't as bad as the daleks in ww2 thing tho, that was beyond terrible

I really enjoyed this episode. It was written by Neil Gaimen so didn't expect anything other than awesome.

I didn't expect anything other than tedious goff wankery, yet was entertained.
"did you wish really hard" line was funny.

Fantastic! Personified tardis was a really lovely concept, and the execution all felt very fifth-doctorish. Favourite episode of the year so far.

this was totally great, LOVED ten minutes of running back and forth down the same tiny bit of corridor in the middle of the episode! :D :D

Disappointed they didn't use a 'classic' series console room.

budget innit. considering they had to move the entire episode from last year cos they'd run out of CGI budget, and use the fckn Ood because the CGI cost meant they couldn't build a new monster face, and that there was a whole new cobbled-together TARDIS console in this, building an exact replica of any of the old ones for 4 mins of screen time would have presumably been a cost too far

I totally loved this! And it was totally Gaimany, too, esp. her password.
Loved that delight was image of Amy getting married! <3

Did she take Rory's last name when she got married? Does Rory even have a last name?

he is now Rory Pond per the Doctor in previous eps

xpost to me:
also the super-white lighting wouldn't have matched up with the mood of the rest of the ep, it would have satisified nerds but not had the delight of recognition for the show's much much larger modern audience, etc etc

anyway I think Gaiman and the designers gave a very generous and effectionate nod to old TARDIS interiors with the roundels on the aforementioned corridor and the flats Smith was dragging around the asteroid