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

2/3 through and about to do myself

I expected more from toby shithouse tbh

sigh, *whithouse*

just heard the line delivered at 36:28, going back to shithouse

the theory that the budget was reduced came from both production staff and BBC executives saying basically every year that the budget has been reduced

probably explains the show's recent and growing obsession with america

You not like it? Was a bit slow and didn't really deliver on the wham-bam-action stuff, but I was glad to have a more complex, moody episode after the whizz bang shenanigans of the first two. Mercy as a theme throughout this series? Also, as some vigiliant nerd on the Graun webiste pointed out, the flickering lights we've had in each episode so far are what happen when the Angels are coming... Nice subtle touch that, far less clunky than the "OH LOOK ANOTHER CRACK!" stuff of yore. For all that Moffat is an arrogant sod he does actually seem to have taken the criticism of the previous two seasons on board...

Wow that got dark.

I liked it a little more than the first two episodes, they felt geared towards a slightly younger audience and were a little whizz bang "dinosaurs on a spaceship". Looking forward to the rumored Angel episode.

the doctor's mercilessness at the end of the dinosaurs one didn't feel that for-kids at all to me. the first would have been fine but i saw the twist coming a mile away.

ditto this twist, actually, except luckily it wasn't about the twist at all.

Unless I'm mistaken, everyone's motivations kept getting changed mid-scene?

Liked that one quite a bit. Reminds me of "Boom Town," another one nobody except me seemed to like.

They nicked a plot device from Three Amigos - I didn't imagine it, did I? They did nick a plot device from Three Amigos?

Amy seems to have a short memory. "We don't roll like this" - er...yes, you do. You did it last week (or at least the Doctor did).

The 'coming next week' sequence seemed to give away a bit too much of a possible way to write the Pond's out. Or perhaps it was another red herring.

Amy seems to have a short memory. "We don't roll like this" - er...yes, you do. You did it last week (or at least the Doctor did).

a) Amy prob didn't know what the Doctor did last week

b) last week was ten years on from the Ponds' first TARDIS adventure - this one might have been from years earlier than that

there was a date that I never managed to read that flashed up at the beginning of the scene in the Indian Rocket command place last week. What was it, thought it looked like it was a few years in the future but I'm not sure what it was.
Anybody catch it?

b) last week was ten years on from the Ponds' first TARDIS adventure - this one might have been from years earlier than that

have we been given reason to believe that this set of adventures are happening 'out of order' for the ponds, or the doctor, or both? or is this just a suspicion based on moffat's great love of timeywimeyness?

no reason at all, just that given SUCH a huge jump forwards (last year's Xmas special was two years after the previous episode for them - don't think we got a specific year in Pond Life or Asylum) it's possible

Indian Space Agency was in 2367

No, we don't know whether these are in order or not. The only thing we can say for sure is that Rory says he's 31 in last week's epsiode which means the Amy and Rory that are picked up for that episode are from 2020 (which is coincidentally the same year as the other NuWho Silurian story). I reserve the right to mention this date again in two weeks when the series ends. I didn't see or hear anything in this which suggests when these Ponds are collected, or even which Ponds (see also Two Ponds theory to explain last season's timelines).

I'm quite enjoying this series' structure - 'Doctor turns up, discovers problem, solves it, buggers off' is very much more my type of thing as I really couldn't give a shit about series arcs (or, in fact, even the notion of series finale epics) - but the scripts have just been average at best. Next week looks like it has lots of promise but I don't hold out much hope for the finale in two weeks as I think the concept is overplayed. (See? I worked hard to make that sentence absolutely spoiler-free)

I thought Indian Space Agency was concurrent with Ponds which might be why I didn't take that in. Not that that would make much sense if supposed to be now/present world & Indian space Agency was leading world power.

Actually, it explains Amy's "this isn't how we roll" comment if she hasn't lived last week's episode yet.

apart from the Ponds' age, the Doctor says he's 1200 years old now. he was 900-something at the time of The Impossible Astronaut.

The Doctor's age is not that reliable tbh, it varied massively through the 'classic' series and I don't think has even been consistent in NuWho.

I didn't mind that ep. Enjoyed Ben Browder as Sheriff (Farscape nerd reporting for duty) ... found myself humming the High Noon theme by the end for no good reason. Bit dark, bit silly. Not bad!

Calling the horse "Susan" gave me major lols

Moffatt deliberately makes the Doctor's age unreliable, bcz the Doctor himself has no way of actually measuring it

Rather enjoyed this one. Less hyperactive than usual.

Boring moral dilemmas are boring.

Interestingly, have just watched elsewhere a comparison of the opening titles this season and they've been getting darker each episode. Some other things to note are flickering lights, and we know what they indicate in NuWho...

http://youtu.be/gNaLVAHXJzk

Other things from every episode are eggs (first episode self explanatory, second episode features dinosaur eggs, third has a spaceship shaped like one) combined with choosing to use the word "terminate". "Eggs" "terminate". Well, the Doctor has been getting more ruthless and killing people since he took his anti-dalekisation bracelet off. He's also been mistaken for a medical doctor in both - was he in the dalek episode? Maybe by Oswin?

Might that not just be what happens when you introduce yourself as "The Doctor" and people haven't already heard of you?

I like the general theme of "self-contained stories where Amy and Rory question whether they want to keep doing this but see what happens to the Doctor when they don't" that they have going

I am semi hoping that they meet the new companion when they leave and that knowing the Doctor will be traveling with a humanizing influence allows them to feel better about turning to their own lives but that's really the sentimental fan in me talking; I'm also kind of hoping they both blow up

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2012/sep/15/doctor-who-karen-gillan-arthur-darvill?INTCMP=SRCH

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2012/sep/15/doctor-who-town-called-mercy?INTCMP=SRCH

oh the theme is clearly the dr's xmas list, mentioned in eps 2 and 3

http://imageshack.us/a/img651/9366/f3vjy2xuiu6r0tnqspedzq2.jpg

that is terrible

I want one

So, the "I'm 31" comment is explained - it isn't from 2020, they have spent 10 extra years alive in the same time frame due to travelling. Just so we're clear, that means they are 31 when their friends are 21 and their friends HAVE NOT NOTICED they are 50% older. A couple of years I could have understood, but 10? Also Amy says she is working as a travel writer - what happened to modelling? Did she just suddenly give it up when they decided to stay together after AotD? (Although suddenly being 30 overnight might be a good reason, equally though given how famous she was supposed to be would that just not put her on the front covers of papers or at least have them sniffing round for a story wondering why she had miraculously aged that badly?)

I guess I quite liked it but it just felt like another telling of The Lodger. Steven Berkoff horrendously underused and seemed to have turned up in a spare Darth Vader costume (including the panel on the back of his head). Was anybody keeping a clock on how long the people who had died were dead before they were magicked back to life? Long enough for oxygen starvation to the brain? And why were people being kidnapped from the hospital anyway? What was the little girl robot actually for?

Chris Chibnall never fails to disappoint. So many loose ends. And I'm thoroughly confused as to primarily WHY previous seasons have ran in "real time" for the most part - modern-looking Earth = present time Earth (with some exceptions), but now we're in 2020? I'd say its setting us up for some big missing-time subplot, but hopefully its not just left as is.

It explained the 31 thing but not as you have it - all the references from Rory's colleague to his being away for months suggests that the Doctor didn't always return them to the point where they left off. It's been established that the Tardis isn't always reliable - and neither the is the Doctor's own timekeeping. But when he wants to get it right he does.
So I suppose that what was 10 years in the Ponds' life was maybe half that in earth time? This also allows for all the off-screen adventures they have. The Doctor enables Amy's travel writing career for one. Then you have all the stories in the novels etc, although whether they're canon or not is moot.

No, we're not now in 2020. We're in 2016 or thereabouts I think (and the season finale next week is clearly dated as 2018 in a newspaper apparently) as the last series took place over about 2 years and a year passes in this episode alone. But Amy & Rory are several years older than they're supposed to be - Amy says ten years have passed for them since the 'current day' events of The Eleventh Hour but "not that long has passed on Earth".

Except Amy says he does always return them to the same point and this is made explicit by Mark Williams asking how long The Doctor took them away for "this time" despite the fact all they've done is walked from one room to another. Also the Doctor doesn't enable Amy's travel writing - he asks what she does (for the first time, apparently) and is surprised to find she's a travel writer. I would guess having been a world famous model enables being a travel writer far more than a man in a blue box who you describe yourself as having no interface with your 'real' life, or which your job is a part.

Also, Brian Cox and The Apprentice in 2020? Really?

On a sadder Whovian note, Kate Lethbridge-Stewart looks about the right age if it's around 2015.

Ok I see, we're just moving around the not-to-distant future then. Amy's "it's been 10 years" comment through me but then I realized she meant time on earth plus adventure time, which could easily be 10 years. No wonder the Doctor has no idea how old he really is.

*threw me

love the hell out of that episode. I spotted a load of annoyances and loose ends too, but who cares, it was a pond episode, it was about the ponds, and it was heaps of fun

I like to imagine that once in a while they can have some fun and everyone stops panicking about timey-wimey and just enjoys it

Also, Brian Cox and The Apprentice in 2020? Really?

I liked this... didn't make much sense time-wise though. Even better would be a Dragon's Den segment where some guy is trying to sell them something stupid like cube-cozies, with Duncan Bannatyne saying something like, "We all have thees cubes, and we all know they don't do anything. This is an absolutely idiotic product, it won't sell and I'm stupider for seeing it. I'm out!"

I bet cube-cozy patterns/completed units are already up on ravelry and etsy, though. :(

I liked that a lot, even if the end was a bit quickly set up. I don't know what they've been feeding Chibnall this year, but it's working.

I would guess having been a world famous model

To be fair, all we know is she's a model who was used in an ad for a perfume. There's no reason to think she's famous. The girl who asked for her autograph last series did it when there was a big poster of her face nearby.

that was fun and silly

wondering what the deal with the ppl who blew up on the ship was

Amy & Rory supposedly got them all off the ship

Also Amy says she is working as a travel writer - what happened to modelling? Did she just suddenly give it up when they decided to stay together after AotD?

In the other Chibbers ep they discuss how she's dropped several jobs

This was totally a Rusty tribute ep - giant run-around with lots of bits that frustratingly don't make any sense along the way, an ending that contradicts the rest of the episode's set-up, the entire world being menaced as explained through news TV, celeb TV cameos, knife-turns into ~touching~ emotional moments in the middle of the world-threatening action, etc.

Except that Murray Gold was turned down lower than in any episode this year! And wasn't flogging the same three themes over and over that I noticed.

they could easily have thrown in a hand-wave about extended exposure to TARDIS energy making people appear to age slower. it would also cover how amazing Sarah Jane looked in School Reunion! :D

the brig tribute was lovely