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

Nightshade was pretty good

'Yep, wd definitely agree with that. It's also a handicap for him - he loves establishing the uncanny or unheimlich, and is great at it, but the introduction of science, often introduced late as being part of the solution, is often so hurried and chaotic as to require a complete change of mood.'

Am finding this really predictable now too - 'ancient mystical magical thing is actually aliens/science'.

In my opinion it worked properly once and once only, in Quatermass and the Pit, (the original TV series by Nigel Kneale, which I've decided *is* Doctor Who more or less give or take) where tea-leaves, demons, ghosts, witches and all were simply manifestations of the evil Martian intelligence in the crashed prehistoric spaceship. It was a slow reveal and then the use of Blitz footage gives it reality.

The whole idea just has diminishing returns, Pyramids of Mars notwithstanding, and I remember thinking, as a kid (so this isn't just the thing where adults whinge about goings on in a kid's TV show) - 'So Dracula is actually a scientist, so mummies are actually robots, so dragons are dinosaurs?' and how this populates all of world mythology with a stupidly large number of secret aliens running around.

It's like ... there's not even any genuine urge to deconstruct superstition anymore, it's just a cliche. As if they're afraid to just have something dark, ancient and evil that can't be explained. And there's a whiff of Richard Dawkins about it too, and Dr Who ought to be far, far from him, I feel, anyway

* where tea-leaves, demons, ghosts, witches and all of human history and evolution

Nightshade was pretty good

yeah I meant TV, even the first The Time Travellers is miles better than any of his legit episodes

His Dickens episode was decent.

http://tybe.blogspot.com/2012/12/doctor-who-christmas-special-snowmen.html

Doh.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/897fa46855862dbea02b3f7c90278d0f/tumblr_mfq95e0WcD1qbypg1o1_500.jpg

the only deductive story I know that is a true solution of both the uncanny and the rational is Chesterton's The Honour of Israel Gow.

Read this on the tube today after mention here. Thanks! Quality. Couldn't help re-fashioning it in my head as campy Hammer movie. The potatoes, the potatoes

Campy horror movie fits - all that opening scene with the lowering sky and brooding Scottish castle. The apparent spectacular evil of that which is only venial, like a monstrous shadow cast by an insect on a light bulb, is part of the story's success I think. More commonly, for me anyway, the rational explanation of the supernatural has a touch of the let down about it, no matter how necessary in a detective story/Dr Who. Incidentally, another story, well novel, that plies a similar area is John Dickson Carr's MR James detective/ghost story The Burning Court. There's a touch of the Moffat about JDC at times, in that the surprising effects which you're hooked in by are frequently, if understandably, 'explained' with egregious fudge. (There's a great one at the beginning of TBC where the narrator comes across a picture of a woman in a history book, executed 200 years before at the Burning Courts of Paris. It is a picture of the woman he is about to marry.) The novel's worth reading in part because of the way JDC uses genre legerdemain to waltz with the reader. With Moffat I sometimes get the impression of a juvenile doing rapid kung-fu moves at a distance as a prelude to a fight. A great deal of exciting motion but not much that's convincing. He could do with some of the graceful romance and charm he gets to his fairy stories injecting some simplicity into the science - with the story arcs especially the solution is either to complicatie beyond comprehension ('well I suppose that might be how it worked, my brain hurts') or chuck in a singularity joker ('I just flew down to the corner shop why because a black hole at the end of the universe up my ass'). Paradoxically the necessity of putting all that caviling to one side means I will tolerate almost anything in nu-who apart from Murray Gold and RTD finales. Speaking of which, I do like Moffat's tendency to go quiet and small-scale (that S2? finale with the solitary dalek) rather than the 'daleks, on the hill, fahsands of 'em' you got with RTD.

Baskervilles was indeed v poor at that but it's Gatiss

ah, ok, thanks sic.

Yeah, I think that solitary dalek ep is one of Moffatt's best. But god

...(cont) those RTD finales just kept getting worse and worse.

(that S2? finale with the solitary dalek)

S5, The Big Bang

Thanks sic, think I did a Moffat-style post RTD reset there.

Finally watched this.

Clara/Oswin is smug & boring to me. I'd much rather the episode had revolved around Madame Vastra and Jenny.

― this will surprise many (Nicole), Wednesday, December 26, 2012 4:28 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I actually didn't mind Clara/Oswin, but yes, I would vastly prefer Vastra & Jenny.

Ultimately I liked this episode, some very funny bits, but man, STOP with the "human emotions are the only thing that can defeat the enemy" storylines already.

I kind of wanted them to resolve everything by letting Strax blow everything up

Yeah, it would've been great if with all that early talk about grenades, a grenade finally appeared.

run of episodes featuring sontaran(s) that bore the absolute shit out of me remains unbroken

The Sontarian was the best thing about it!

I agree

I can see not liking AGMGTW bcz it's too busy, but not bcz it's too boring

ooh I forgot about that one, can't remember whether I liked it though

Strax was even better in that than he was in this

STOP with the "human emotions are the only thing that can defeat the enemy" storylines already

OTM. This is SO LAME at this point. Also he needs to ease off "Doctor? Doctor WHO?" like immediately. Even Rusty knew to avoid that one.

I thin they're allowed to make a 'Doctor who?" joke exactly once per series.

less.

IIRC the question is being asked because the silence has fallen.

YDNRC IIRC, other way around

So today/tonight. Also:

Ahead of tonight’s premiere, “Doctor Who” revealed some of the all-star cast that will mark the 50th anniversary. David Tennant and Billie Piper will join current Doctor and companion, Matt Smith and Jenna-Louise Coleman, while John Hurt (“Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” “Alien,” “Harry Potter”) will also co-star.

eeeeeeeeeee :D

please let Eccleston have a change of heart

Good god she's pretty.

So, I should get familiar with The Abominable Snowmen I guess, but it's one of the mostly missing ones. Are there audio tracks? Decent reconstruction? Novelization? Anything like that?

Ah - http://www.recons.com/recons/lc25.htm

(CGI yeti? urgh).

my face is permanently fused to my palm

uuuuuughhhh @ this

that was… not bad

remembering most viewers have nfi how wifi works,and so don't need to suspend the extraordinary amount of disbelief that we do

that was… not bad

― Esteban Buttiérrez (Autumn Almanac), Sunday, March 31, 2013 10:34 AM (16 minutes ago)

A quite stylish and filmic looking episode, but otherwise just another nonsensical, hyperactive runaround. I happened to see a Chris Ecclestone episode recently - End of the World, or whatever it was called - in which the Doctor sat down and had a normal, quiet conversation with his companion. I can't imagine Mat Smith doing that anymore.

I'm not against hyper per se, but it sometimes feels like, among the hyper, the show loses the courage of its convictions. Standout moment for me was when boss villain woman revealed that she'd been indoctrinated by the Great Intelligence as a kid.

Standout moment for me was any moment with Jenna-Louise Coleman on screen

But seriously, it wasn't awful. Definitely not the worst opening episode and I think The Doctor/Clara relationship has potential. But I should mention on that point that I don't retract in horror at the idea of The Doctor and a companion flirting or moving into vaguely romantic territory or whatever the way some others seem to, and it's been frequently mentioned (or skirted round) in interviews that this could happen here.

Not really too aware of what the "ARCS" are for this series or of the plans for the Anniversary, but they should probably just make the programme being advertised in this fan-made trailer tbh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8g5BrLm7uQ

Web Of Fear is way better than Abominable Snowmen (not that Snowmen is bad)

It was practically a re-run of the 'Rose' Christopher Eccleston opening episode, with the Shard standing in for the London Eye this time.

Yeah, I said that - with the "next time" teaser also looking mightily similar to the second ep of Ecclescake's series as well.

Gaiman has written the penultimate episode of this series, by the way.

As long as he doesn't chew on anyone's postcards, that's fine.

debate is raging on my Twitter feed on whether or not nu-Who (I think both this latest episode specifically and the recent period in general?) is sexist / at least v dubious wrt gender roles. I've seen only bits and pieces, not enough overarching plots and such to judge, so what does ILX think?

Moffat era is a bit.

I think Moffat gets a bad rap for this -- there is sexism in his writing but I will argue w/anyone who thinks that RTD was less so. How was Rose sobbing on a beach that her life was worthless until the Doctor came along was in any way progressive?

I wouldn't say it's progressive, but writing a storyline doesn't have to avoid emotion. Catherine Tate obviously the best of the companions on that front. I just think Moffat tends to reduce women to sassy puzzles that need to be figured out. Rory probably the most emotionally complex character of this era.