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

Roger roger.

Next week's is the start of a two-parter right?

Self-contained, with gentle touches of continuity.

Well, that was shit.

Some cheesy moments - Amy the model etc - but a fun romp with some nice touches of humour. Nice light interlude before the whizz bang super scary finale.

It was *full* of cheese and mawk. And mostly boring. I really hope the finale lives up to its potential, because this section of the series has been incredibly patchy.

I did watch it with a 6 - nearly 7 - year old, which makes it all the more fun. He was very excited by the trailer for next week: "DINOSAURS in Doctor Who?! A PTERODACTYL!!!!!"

I'm a season behind in my viewing, but I've checked the thread every Saturday just to enjoy the traditional Declaration of the Episode Being Shit. <3 you guys

Amy was advertising petrichor perfume... so... crimson (bow tie?), eleven (11th Doctor?) petrichor (smell of dust after rain), delight (?)

WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?!

I wonder if this will be the magic riddle than undoes the Doctor's death... that would be a bit crap though, more Magic: The Gathering than Doctor Who.

shit and mawkish are kind of built-in w/cybermen >:(

shit bcz THE CYBERMEN HAVE BEEN SHIT SINCE PERTWEE = fact
mawkish BCZ cms are anti-emotion = it is anti-them -- wish they would unleash eg ENVY or PRIDE or ok not lust kiddies watching but GLUTTONY! use corden the way he's built, have him eat till he busts out of the cybershell

the minor characters were all pretty good; i didn't hate this, but it wasn't very involving ftb CYBERMEN, they are still actually worse than the fkn daleks

The cybermat was proper nasty. I prefer the way Moffat has used the Cybermen to RTD's armies. The one armed cyberman in the previous series was properly scary, but I don't think he's actually much a fan of them, seeing as they're basically cannon fodder in A Good Man and are all knackered and ineffectual here. They're such a familiar and uninteresting enemy that using them sparingly like this is much more effective.
I thought Matt Smith as toy department employee was lovely. Nice K9 reference too, with the robot dog not being much fun.

nurse gladys was in old who (as a fantastically camp pirate queen). what other minor roles in nu who have been actors who've previously appeared? crib bins any more?

Nurse Gladys goes further back - she sings the song that runs through The Gunfighters.

It's fine the Doctor being in Colchester the day before he dies. We know he has unusual travel arrangements.
But Amy and Rory?
a) He was only just gathering the envelopes for the invitations the next day (ie the day he dies). How the FUCK do Amy and Rory make it to the middle of nowhere in Utah by scheduled airline THAT SAME DAY?
b) If he bought them a house in London, why the FUCK were they shopping in Colchester?

He went back in time to tidy the house, I'm sure he could do the same with Amy and Rory. And also sort them a cracking deal with Trailfinders.

What's confusing me is the timeline now. So if we're back to the day BEFORE the Doctor dies, then is this a different Doctor? Have all the events of the season not happened yet? Or are there two timestreams going on? Are the Silence messing with stuff behind their backs?

the silence are messing with stuff behind OUR backs

So, he goes back in time to send them an invitation? And then he forward again to Amy and Rory, fresh from their schopping trip in Colchester, and tells them he needs to take them back in time so they can get to Utah in time to fulfill his invitation? But then his wistful look when he saw them in the department store suggested he wasn't going to be involving himself, otherwise he'd have run over and said: "All packed for Utah?" or something.

I know it's only a TV show, but this is getting silly. And if they hadn't felt the need to shoehorn in a glimpse of Amy and Rory to remind we stupid viewers that their work here on this planet is not yet done, this ludicrousness wouldn't even have arisen.

aaaaaaaagh

Where did it say it was Colchester? "The Lodger" was set there, but this ep fairly early on made it clear that they had moved, with, I thought, an implication that it was maybe London.

(I'll add that I may have missed something there so could be wrong - I watched it post-pub and therefore enjoyed it much more than everyone else seemed to! Paper-thin plot, rubbish resolution, but it made me do a LOL several times and Smith/Corden do genuinely have great chemistry.)

I really, really want a new Doctor.

Nah, Matt's fine. Even at his worst he's light years beyond Tennant.

WAHT

WRONG

I must warn you I can and will leap through your computer screen

Haha!

Amy & Rory in Closing Time are a few years later than the end of The God Complex. In The God Complex they are a few months older than in The Impossible Astronaut.

The Doctor has a blue box that can travel in time - I agree it is unfair of the show to have sprung this twist on you so late in the picture.

Also, Matt Smith is one of the three best Doctors ever.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solway_Firth_Spaceman

Agreed. Smith is fantastic.
Ok, so that clears up the timeline.
The prequel is really creepy and fun. Suggests that the Silence aren't aliens at all? Plus THAT text on the pyramid adds a further element to their play on the whole Roswell mythology.
More Mortiis lookalike Viking guy and chess... I'm starting to think those rumours have something to them. Would make sense too. I won't spoiler it though. Go and google it if you want to know more.

Ooh, that Solway Firth thing is interesting. Adds to the season's play on alien hoaxes/sightings. In fact it's all humans - perhaps working for some ancient evil force - engineering it all.

Awww, I thought that one was quite sweet really. I actually quite liked how the Doctor undercut the mawkishness with science and then decided he couldn't be arsed.

I think Smith is very good indeed, he can do both comedy and gravitas better than Tennant, and I like how this Doctor's basic selfishness and, ahem, lack of emotional intelligence contrast with Tennant's more touchy-feely Doctor.

The Amy & Rory cameo was rub though.

There are at least 4-6 Doctors I'd rank above Tennant.

And I really quite like Eleven/Matt Smith despite my antipathy towards series 6.

Lot of confusion out there regarding River. Seems fairly straightforward... River is captured again and brainwashed into killing the Doctor. Then they put her in Stormcage, which is seemingly run by the same army types Kovarian is in charge of. Presumably they wipe the exact details of who she killed. Or maybe she does. Argh timey-wimey.
Eyepatch would seem to be a device for remembering the Silence and also mind control?

Also, I don't think we're dealing with two Doctors, or specifically a ganger Doctor. That's surely a misdirect and too easy.

So the Rory and Amy that we see know all the events of the series because they've already lived through it. They do a pretty good job of kidding on, especially on the whole River/baby thing which it must now turn out never was a surprise to them.

I liked this as a fun knockabout thing, but three basic problems stick out.

1) 19th April was a Tuesday, which means Sophie can't have gone away for the weekend.

2) the events of this are only 8 months after The Lodger (which is during summer 2010) which isn't long enough to have a baby that age.

3) going away for the weekend is a bit frivolous considering this is at the height of The Miracle and the Not Dead have thrown the world into crisis (see also why you then shouldn't be scared of a cybermat eating you).

I don't know, the Doctor says he's dying 'tomorrow' but that doesn't necessarily mean that it is the same tomorrow that horrible fuckface Corden is going to experience, right? So Corden could be further along in time?

Also, are Torchwood events canon in the Who universe? I figured Who events would be for Torchwood but not necessarily the other way round.

It's tomorrow when he holds up a paper which proves it is, yes.

I couldn't care less about Torchwood: Miracle of the Giant Earth Vaginas but the BBC commissioned both and Jack Harkness referred to The Doctor during the latest series so they have to be in the same Universe.

It's tomorrow when he holds up a paper which proves it is, yes.

Okay, I didn't spot this. Fair enough, this is stupid.

I'd assume that Rusty doesn't even bother to check these things with Moffatt, or he can't because one is writing ahead of the other, but then that's his fault really. You can't expect Moffatt to be required to write around what's happening in a less popular and less important spin-off.

xpost The Doctor has the big blue box that travels through space and time. Amy and Rory, at the point this episode takes place, do not. Therefore their travel arrangements are a matter of legitimate concern.

It must have said it was Colchester somewhere. Because I didn't know The Lodger took place in Colchester, so there was no reason for me to make a link back. And I'm not in the habit of using Colchester as a default location for what have you.

I think the paper was the Colchester Times or something.

The Doctor has the big blue box that travels through space and time. Amy and Rory, at the point this episode takes place, do not. Therefore their travel arrangements are a matter of legitimate concern

You do not need a tardis to get from London to Colchester. You can get a train. Or you can drive there in Rory's new misogynist car.

lol

I am watching the Horror of Fang Rock before bed. It's one of my favourites and arguably top 5 ever. NuWho will never get this good.

So the Rory and Amy that we see know all the events of the series because they've already lived through it. They do a pretty good job of kidding on, especially on the whole River/baby thing which it must now turn out never was a surprise to them.

how is signing an autograph for a small child kidding on that they don't know some stuff that happened to them a year or three ago?

What, they don't remember they've had a baby? Or that the kid was stolen? Or that their mate turned out to be their other grwn up mate? Or their grown up mate turned out to be their daughter? Family events must be for shits and giggles round your place.

If this happens after The God Complex then the A&R we see here know all of this series and ergo the above. So it has to happen before, in which case why did Amy never mention being a superstar model during the entire series?

The newspaper the Doctor holds up in the episode (the one that refernences someone form Britain's Got Talent) clearly states the date of it is 19th April 2011. That fairly firmly dates the episode.

idgi. how does signing the autograph prove that they don't remember the events of the series? they've gone on with their lives since being dropped off by the Doctor a year or three ago, Amy's had a job as a model (or curator of a perfume line, given the name of the perfume), Rory's had to adapt to being second fiddle in a new way, etc

xp where is the date shown in The Lodger?

Didn't Amy look straight at the Doctor but fail to recognise him? (I'm unwilling to trust my own judgement here since I was so INCREDIBLY bored that I may have been dozing at that point)

I don't think she did, no.