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

I loved this one. Adventures in space, nice characterisation, self-contained story. I realise I've failed at nu-Who fandom, but it's nice to enjoy a story in itself without giving a fuck for arc shit.

I await the avalanche of posts telling me about the clues I missed...

Mitchell and Webb were fucking dreadful, Hale and Pace all over again. But everything else was fun.

Yeah, good fun. The Doctor could've saved Solomon easily right? Vindictive!

That was DELIGHTFUL

Walder Frey had to die. xp

this was by a long shot the least awful Chibnall episode ever, I will actually watch it again sometime. but still too much of him playing Moffatt notes clunkily, like in the first Pond Life. Murray Gold needs to STFU, still.

And the thing looks as if teal & orange ate a big meal of teal & orange and then vomited teal & orange all over teal & orange. in the spaceship scenes there was barely another colour on screen at all, and the other scenes were desperately heavy with it. if you're setting your story in a variety of locations and timezones and whatnot, it might help to differentiate them somewhat, just a little?

other production design pissweakery: not knowing how to spell "progress"; thinking Minority Report screen-waving is so cool that a TEAM OF SPACE-MISSILE EXPERTS would not keep a COUNTDOWN OF THEIR SPACE-MISSILES PROGRESS in a prominent visible place on their monitors, instead needing ONE SPECIFIC TEAM MEMBER who knows where that window is hidden to have to bring it up to check any time they want to know; having a thousands-and-thousands-of-years-in-the-past spaceship use the same floaty-touch-screens as a thousands-of-years-in-the-future, instead of distinguishing them to look like a) a different species' tech, b) a different time's tech, c) tech designed to be sturdy and survive for milennia in transit.

and the ark design made no fucking sense either - there's no way that ship design could have taken off, so did they ferry each dinosaur up there one at a time? was theur transmat technology so powerful it could get hundreds and hundreds of dinosaurs OFF THE PLANET? if they were able to build an entire ark off-world, how were they not able to find a new planet to settle in SEVERAL MILENNIA? we've seen that the entire universe is chock-full of planets with Earth-like atmospheres.

not that the design was built for long-term travel anyway - any meteor shower would probably have hewed one of the pods off, let alone how many they ought to have encountered in these thousands of years

anyway nice to have the prob;ems not be mainly from the Chibster


that said, how many times have we seen the Doctor basically str8 murder dudes before? Tennant at end of Human Nature 2 debatable, Pertwee caps ppl in Day Of, did Baker ever actually kill anyone or did he just want to all the time?

liked Mark Williams, but why didn't he go to his son's wedding? - it's not like he would have been anywhere else, since he'd never travelled

basically str8 murder dudes before

oh there's programming the human race to kill Silents on sight

actually Tennant blew up or watched die heaps of baddies now I think abt it

Colin Baker shot a dude who fell into a vat of acid in "Vengeance On Varos" IIRC

yah I meant Baker comma C full stop obv, ta

annoyingly i can no longer turn off the part of my brain that is angry about the sexual politics of nu-who; and as such the ending stuff with Nefertiti and Ruper Graves pissed me off disproportionally, given his character was canonically a dick but heaven forfend we not pair off the spares (and because it just cemented her characterisation as 'fierce and proud but gagging for it', which: retch.)

also the mitchell and webb robots were super boring, and the fact that everything involved in the story had to be from earth was jarring. but the rest was pretty fun, and i liked the little bit of arc stuff where the doctor and tardis no longer exist on databases.

I really enjoyed this ep!

and i liked the little bit of arc stuff where the doctor and tardis no longer exist on databases.

this doesn't make sense though, Oswin only wiped Dalek databases. dalekbases.

(though I'm hugely in favour of ppl just HAPPENING to not know who he is, which I hope is the case here)

that was kinda silly and fun, plus it seemed to be filled with harry potter character actors.

this doesn't make sense though, Oswin only wiped Dalek databases. dalekbases.

it's almost as though this might become a plot point

yes maybe! but it would also be fine if they just have the Dr run into ppl who haven't heard of him from now on, instead of doing cross-episode connections

When Solomon googled the Doctor, the Doctor looked quite scared, genuinely unsure what would come up. There was palpable relief when it was blank. So I'm thinking this is a plot point. Is it possible that 'silence' has fallen with the question - Doctor who? - being asked by the Daleks? That silence being the Doctor's anonymity. Mind you, wasn't that question supposed to be asked at some the battle of Tramadol or whatever it's called?
Regardless of the big question, is it possible that the underlying arc is going to be the Doctor's anonymity and that having terrible consequences for him and/or the universe?
Kinda like the rationale for saving the Daleks at the end of Genesis; they helped make the universe what it was, bringing planets together etc. Without the Doctor being a thing, bad shit goes down.
It's like they're flipping the messianic Doctor idea of the past few seasons on its head in more ways than one. It means we can have more stand alone adventures, while setting up something big.
Who knows, this could be completely wrong, but it'll be fun to find out.

As for this ep, good fun, but messy. Excellent, really nasty old-school baddy, shame he couldn't have had more screen time. Good to see strong female characters, but as pointed out above, Nefertiti as sex-pot let things down. Mark Williams a good addition. Peep Show robots shit - obviously going for a Douglas Adams thing, but lacking the wit or bite. Adams would never have gone in for the cutesy shit either. The Doctor leaving Solomon to die was pretty harsh, but not unprecedented. I suppose it could be argued he made a utilitarian decision: if he couldn't take Solomon with him to be handed over to the authorities then there was no choice but to leave him to his fate. And he did commit genocide. On the other hand, the Doctor didn't really offer him mercy either. Again, maybe this will tie into the anonymous Doctor = bad consequences theme. If he can't be arrested, as it were, then he starts to make rash decisions which will ultimately come back to haunt him. After all, this Doctor has made rash and brutal decisions before, like blowing up a Cyberfleet to make a point. His darker side still lurks...

Yeah, the robots were terribly written and acted, and entirely unconvincing as the threat the whole plot hinged on. They looked quite cool though.

Easily the worst episode of Moffat's tenure. "We're riding a dinosaur! On a spaceship!". Having your characters shout about how wacky and bonkers and LOL RANDOM the episode is really doesn't do it any favours. Very poor.

there sure was an uneasy mix of genocide, camp and slapstick - but i enjoyed it immensely more than eg the hollow pastiche that gatiss wrote last season

Anyone know if any classic villains are being resurrected this year? (Were any last year come to think of it?)

there weren't.

cybermats!

the threat the whole plot hinged on = a) missiles and b) dinosaurs surely? I never got the impression that the robots were anything other than comic relief / the dopey will of Solomon.

Expected to hate this but it was quite an enjoyable romp. Agree with the absolute HATRED for the Peep Show robots, but also... why? Why were they like that? Solomon hardly seems like the sort of guy who would build that shit for comic relief.

Surprised that anyone is even discussing whether the Doctor's anonymity is going to be a major plot point... well, duh, of course it is.

Solomon said he got the robots cut price, hence their goofy patter. The idea of giving threatening evil robots camp C3PO-R2D2 banter isn't necessarily a bad one; the problem was in the execution. Thinking back to how Douglas Adams wrote robot henchmen in Doctor Who, he turned comic ideas into threatening monsters. The robot parrot in Pirate Planet was initially hilarious, but he was quick to establish how deadly it was. Its showdown with K9 is gold.

I never got the impression that the robots were anything other than comic relief / the dopey will of Solomon.

They were the only reason anyone did anything Solomon said!

Haven't watched it yet - was out in the country last night and will iPlayer it tomorrow - but this is the inverse of Earthshock, right?

Earthshock: spaceship crashes into Earth, dinosaurs are wiped out, annoying companion dies.
This one: spaceship doesn't crash into Earth, dinosaurs survive, annoying companion lives.

Also, doesn't it imply that the Silurians detected Adric's spaceship, filled their own spaceship with dinosaurs, launched it and put themselves in suspended animation in deep caves in Derbyshire in less time than The Doctor could tear his eyes off the TARDIS scanner and save his bestest E-Space mate.

well in fairness it was Adric, I'm sure if Nyssa had stayed behind they would have saved her

That was great. Stuffed without feeling overstuffed. Propelled forward by the sheer momentum of nonsense. Yes, the robots were rubbish, though.

Solomon said he got the robots cut price, hence their goofy patter. The idea of giving threatening evil robots camp C3PO-R2D2 banter isn't necessarily a bad one; the problem was in the execution.

Ah, yeah, I do remember him saying he got them cheap, now. I'm sure it is possible to pull off goofy-yet-menacing, but it was all so much of that shitty fanservice nudge-nudge bullshit that I can't stand.

Aldo, without spoiling the ep, it's not set in prehistoric earth time...

Not that your speculation isn't interesting

The Silurians still set off from prehistoric earth though, surely? Otherwise they'd have had no dinosaurs to save. It's just that the ship decided to turn back a couple of million years later (or something) and the dinosaurs were still alive (or something, somehow). Er actually I don't know what was going on.

Yeah, it was a bit confusing that. I suppose it could be the Silurians escaping Earth, but then the Adric comet didn't exactly give them time to gather together the dinosaurs and scram. Maybe another that planet that also has the same dinosaurs as earth? Just lazy writing I guess, a result of having dinosaurs on a spaceship and working backwards.

nothing about the Ark makes sense

cybermats!

o yeah, good one

It's just that the ship decided to turn back a couple of million years later (or something) and the dinosaurs were still alive (or something, somehow). Er actually I don't know what was going on.

I think the Doctor (or Solomon) sez that the Ark was pre-programmed to return to Earth when Solomon boarded/killed the Silurians.

As for the dinos, I assumed that they had also been in cryo and that all of Solomon's genocide woke them up.

Hmm. Plot-wise, almost a return to 'Classic' Who. The Doctor turns up as something threatens the Earth, does some Doctor-y stuff and the threat is resolved. There's some wandering up and down corridors - although we normally associate that with padding, which shouldn't really be needed in a 45 minute programme - and the classic mistaken identity trope.

Loved Rupert Graves and could watch whole series with him as a companion. David Bradley was great, just psychotic enough without overplaying it.

On the other hand, I love The Romans and think Doctor Who can work well as comedy. But this doesn't feel like comedy, it feels like zings and snark for the most part. The Peep Show robots felt like a weak Douglas Adams pastiche. Brian clearly must have known the Doctor before, as he was at his son's wedding (as was Brian, although played by a different actor). Amy's fan-worship of Nefertiti was barking - "we learned all about you in school, I'm a huge fan". Of what? All she's famous for is, with her husband, changing Egypt from a pantheist religion to being purely Sun-worshippers. Is that really what the kids are learning these days?

Timings of things are weird now too. Amy makes a big long point of saying it's 10 months since they previously saw the Doctor. Are we supposed to believe that this is post-Asylum and all the divorce stuff is forgotten? Or is it in fact before then in their time stream, putting at least a year between Wedding of River Song and Pond Life?

Oh, and how does a golf ball bounce like that?

maybe it was a concrete floor, golf balls get mad action off of them

Yeah, but it bounced for ages. Went round corners and everything.

I did like this though.

magic spaceship gravity?

Timings of things are weird now too

Meant to ask you about this, as Rory said he was 31, and I thought they were much younger than this when we first met them, Amy had "only" been waiting 12 years for him to return from when she met him as a wee girl (and she's the same age as Rory, isn't she?)

When hearing the 31 I assumed this was meant to take place much later than Asylum of the Daleks.

Yeah, come on, are you honestly going to demand proof that golf balls can bounce really really far? Can you really not suspend your disbelief about that stuff while watching a FAMILY SHOW ABOUT A TIME-TRAVELLING ALIEN? There are things that should be critiqued as being contradictory within the show's own milieu (timings, for instance, yes), but there are a lot of other things that do not matter in the slightest. This is one of them.

Your point about Nefertiti kind of stands - she was pretty much just a strikingly beautiful Sun-god loving Queen who had been found on loads of artefacts. But I think she was also known as a fighter-among-men, so... I can let that go to an extent.

xposts to aldo

(and she's the same age as Rory, isn't she?)

they have to be within a year or so of each other, per Let's Kill Hitler

I know, complaining about golf balls was just kind of a sarcastic sneer at myself. I'm not really bothered about them. And most of me thinks they were only there to justify a zing about testicles in any case.

Rory was in the year below her in school, I'm sure it says in the Mels flashback. Amy is 7 in the first part of The Eleventh Hour and waits for 12 years so she is about 19/20 at the start of her first season and is 21 when the Doctor heals her crack and reboots time (they get married on 26 June 2010). Being 31 means this episode takes place in 2020 - the same year as her other encounter with the Silurians, which could be an explanation for the other Amy & Rory in that story.

most of me thinks they were only there to justify a zing about testicles in any case.

Ha, true.

is 21 when the Doctor heals her crack

o_O

Cheers, that makes sense.

lol emil.y beat me to it