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

thought the whole 'clones running an industrial facility then getting upset about being clones' thing was a great idea, perhaps someone should make a film w/that premise

That was really good. More like old school Doctor with its 'trapped in a scary castle' setting. Relatively low budget too, so relies on some good old fashioned scares. Benefitted from the two part treatment too - not too frantic, with the bit part characters given a chance to develop. Good SF premise too. The Doctor fighting his doppleganger has the potential to be a bit naff, but hopefully they'll pull it off. Could the doppleganger be the Doctor who dies? Or maybe that's a bit too obvious, not to mention rather early a reveal.

Doctor Who credits in the style of Buffy The Vampire Slayer :D

amazed at how much I like this!

More like old school Doctor with its 'trapped in a scary castle' setting.

Yeah, I've been non-spoily teasing people this week saying how classic-70s Who it felt. A spooky castle! A small team in a base under siege! Horror elements! The threat is from within! And a cliffhanger!

I don't think the ganger is going to turn out to be the Doctor that dies - a simple plastic Doctor wouldn't regenerate - but they're definitely planting piles and piles of references, hints and red herrings about deaths, resurrections and alternate bodies through the year to make us wonder and have fun speculating on how it's going to go down. I really loved the downcast Rory, now used to karking it most every episode, saying "Welcome to my world" in response to the pretty girl's fear of dying.

OTM about this week being like an old school revival, it felt like a classic Tom Baker episode. Well written and I am pleased it is a two parter. Scariest moment was the stretchy neck bit in the bathroom, awesome stuff.

I was a bit harsh on Rory last week, but he was great in this, growing some nuts at last!

buffy who thing = crap concept, excellent execution

best thing about this ep for me was the slower pace a 2 parter enables, similar and not really any better than The Hungry Earth (which was ok)

big crush on jennifer (sarah smart)

my favourite of the series so far.

Yeah, The Hungry Earth was exactly what it reminded me of, with a bit of Warriors of the Deep thrown in. Enjoyed it, but the series arc thing is getting in the way of the storytelling for me.

Wow, that was that rarest of rare things for Who - real proper quality SF. Best bit for me was when they were all together and I was thinking 'hey what can't they all just get on', and then the ganger starts talking about 'his' son...

I don't believe the series arc can really be getting in the way THAT much seeing as episodes like this basically work on their own whatever, aside from the Doctor looking at Amy's pregnancy scan once an episode and Amy/Rory being all conspiratorial for 30 seconds.

Best bit for me was when they were all together and I was thinking 'hey what can't they all just get on', and then the ganger starts talking about 'his' son

Yeah that bit was amazing. Whole ep reminded me of Moon a bit, actually.

It's possible that the Doctor that lives could actually be a more stable ganger, and the 'real' Doctor dies, seeing as they're essentially the same person anyway. Timelord DNA in that vat could do anything. Get the feeling Moffat's trying to find a sensible way to write himself out of the 12-renegeration limit. Or alternatively, Amy and Rory, knowing what's coming, will need to preserve the ganger.

Two Doctors hanging out together is going to be fun though.

Also, <3 the Doctor's rubbish Northern accent.

Was The Hungry Earth the Silurian two-parter? Yeah they were kinda similar but this was way better on almost every level. Siluriun ep was kinda ruined by both the Silurians and the scientists being a bit shit.

'real proper quality SF' - urgh, get this stuff out of my kids telly. i think it was io9 that marked this story as the sort of stuff that was at home on ST:TNG.

I wasn't feeling this at all - but then i had a 3 yr old asking me 'where's the spaceship? where's the storm?' on 5 second repeat, so i missed much of the atmos and any nuance of the plot, and a lot of even who is a duplicate. having said that i guessed both that first lady was a duplicate, and (as they signposted it so surely everyone here did) that the doxor had been too.

base under siege feeling = dud tho. that combo'd with the massive continuity callbacks of last ep make me feel oddly JN-T about this series

Really liked Amy's hair this ep, looks great with her bangs pulled back.

She doesn't have bangs, does she? Great hair, anyway.

Started off like the Thing, then went a bit androids dream of electric sheep, but kept a Moon-ey sort of vibe throughout.

I'm still sure that the final kicker is that they are all gängers, and the real people shipped off very dangerous acid-land, years ago...

Liked the Doctor not knowing Scottish from Northern, seeing as he's traveling with a Scottish girl and used to be Northern. ("all planets have a north!" - eccleston, ep1)

Rory came correct tho'

I'm still sure that the final kicker is that they are all gängers, and the real people shipped off very dangerous acid-land, years ago...

This was also my hypothesis -- don't know how a goop-clone of the doctor figures into it all though!

I'm pretty sure that we've never met a fully human Jennifer, and that's why her ganger does the freakiest stuff.

This was kind of the like the Hungry Earth if the Hungry Earth had not been completely awful. I liked it a lot.

Full Party Animals reunion next week please, inc. Andrea Riseborough.

First time I've ever actually liked a Murray Gold score this week! Felt like a nice blend of pertwee era and hammer horror. Beyond the music, yeah, nice to see a bit of hard scifi but the cliffhanger was telegraphed what, 10 minutes in? And after that a bit too much of the episode felt like treading water until alt-doc showed up.

Anyone know where it was filmed? was it a real castle? Looked like one (those wooden walkways looked very touristy).

yeah I wanna go!

Was a bit annoyed when Amy was going "oh, you're a medieval history expert are you?" to Rory, because course he is, he lived through the middle ages and she knows he did. Felt weird when that just went unaddressed though.

rory was A+ in this ep. Also love whatever that substance is they used for the malformed faces...looks like pliable candlewax almost, so cool and melty-creepy looking

Rory would've been looking after Amy in a box for most of the Middle Ages so I suspect he'd have missed most of it.

Great episode - as stated above, properly sci-fi. it helped that it was a little less manic compared to all the recent ones and glad they allowed Rory the nurse to take over from Rory the doofy husband.

also I really like this season's glimpses on life in the tardis, like that bit in the beginning with Rory and Amy playing darts.

> Anyone know where it was filmed? was it a real castle?

Confidential seemed to suggest it was 3 or 4 different castles - outside of the one, corridors from another, crypt from another...

and all in wales iirc

Just wanted to say how annoying I find River Song. Very.

I didn't like the fact that they listen to Muse in the Tardis.

just puttin' that out there...

I just added it to the list of mythological allusions in the series.

Could barely get through ten minutes of this. Once the "yes, the gangers are alive and they're cross and oh, look, there's a douchey boss contradicting the doctor shocker. But he touched the stuff so there'll be doctor ganger along in a minute" tedium mounted I skipped to the ending and was not happy to find there's another chunk of this.

You all seem to like it, so should probably give it another go.

I liked it, and I've been sort of 'meh' about this whole season. Everything has felt a little madcap/slapdash/derring-do + convoluted for me so far, and the timey-wimey stuff isn't great at sustaining my long-term attention when it's not coupled with good monsters and compelling mystery. my patience, too, has grown a bit thin with the whole SM teasing reveals of broader mysteries that'll only come to fruition in the last episode (or two) – it's supposed to feel like delayed gratification, i suppose, but at this point it's a little unfun and taunting.

as said upthread, this had a tom baker feel that i loved

The thing I liked the most about this is that there isn't really a "villain" so far aside from the captain.

The thing I didn't like is how yet again they have a two-parter with a group of humans and a group of others interacting and it's the women who can't get along.

the silurians, pt 2? i think i /loved/ the first half of that two-parter last year, and felt totally betrayed by the second. here's to hoping...

I didn't really like it either, stet. You are not alone, as the Face of Boe said.

Could barely get through ten minutes of this. Once the "yes, the gangers are alive and they're cross and oh, look, there's a douchey boss contradicting the doctor shocker. But he touched the stuff so there'll be doctor ganger along in a minute" tedium mounted I skipped to the ending and was not happy to find there's another chunk of this.

Pretty much exactly my opinion. Any time there's a two-parter featuring uniformed workers in a dingy pit or something I'm guaranteed to lose interest, but as soon as the Doctor touched the cloning goop it was incredibly obvious that there'd be two Doctors. What did surprise me is that that foregone conclusion was chosen to be the cliffhanger. Also, mostly humourless.

btw I don't feel bad moaning about this episode, given that I loved the other four this year.

red leader cleared for moaning. mian away sir

mian? moan

thanks i will :) the clone goop was too similar to the Sontarans methods of same. presumably this was intentional (like that's the best way to do yer cloning) but an alternative approach would've been nice. so many 'since this before' type things going on in recent episodes tho so not that big a deal.

the slower pace was refreshing but at times it did feel too slow moving - something about the Doctor announcing he was going to get the TARDIS, then him getting there to see it had sunk before returning back...all felt a bit laboured. and yet another indeterminable pregancy scan - what's the point? why would the outcome be different? similarly, the constant glimpses of CyberBarber without further development wear thin quickly (just as the time crack stuff had started to before The Time Of Angels).

since?! seen

okay...moaning pad now closed for launch

If I can just quickly slip in boredom with and hatred of every single Sontarans story ever.

and yet another indeterminable pregancy scan - what's the point? why would the outcome be different?

That's enormously overdone. We don't need to see that in every single episode, we know it's happening, time babby blah blah just get on with it ffs.

On that, this morning at the tram stop a little girl who looked EXACTLY like the kid in the astronaut suit stared at me for ages. Just stood there and stared at me, completely expressionless, didn't blink once. Really really creepy.

You should have shot her, just to be safe.

oh man it's too late now.

btw Algerian Goalkeeper agrees with me re the Sontarans.

i quite liked The Poison Sky, in spite of it all

why would the outcome be different?

well it has to resolve sometime. at least this time he was kinda checking in the background while converstaion was going on, it wasn't a drastic closeup with soaring Gold

i meant more what made the Doctor think he might get a definite answer the third time, but maybe he's been doing elimination processes in the background, trying to see if the machine is broken &c

he knows something is super-wrong and weird, of course he's going to keep an eye on it

a bit like how they kept showing the crack last season, they're overdoing the amy is/isn't pregnant thing. and frances barber.