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

Stray thoughts:

The monster in the pocket universe was very nearly a genuinely nasty thing that was then spoiled by its wanting to find its life partner.

Didn't like how human feelings of wub were then attributed across to the monster. Really didn't like that. Monsters and aliens don't always have to be humanised, and certainly not in such a sickly sweet manner.

You can have a) humans put aside their differences BECAUSE THERE'S A MONSTER or b) in some weird way we can relate to the alien/monster - they have some kind of recognisable motivation. Lost homeworld. Traumatised by war. Even some kind of love interest if handled well. Something like that. Both of these options vastly preferable to the frankly tacked-on, unbelievable and cheap notion of this disgusting, twisted, skeletal thing just missing its boyfriend or girlfriend.

Does anyone with kids watch a lot of contemporary kid's TV? Compared to other kid's TV, is the pacing of Who actually quite measured in context? Because it's the pacing that's spoiling it for me at the moment. Idea pops in. Idea shoots by. Another idea. Now this! Wow! Here's another idea that doesn't get a chance to sink in and develop because there isn't any time. But obviously Who has to compete with other things kids watch and I do see it as a kid's TV show first and foremost.

(Looking back at what I've just typed though. I know in the old series episodes would stretch languorously over at least two and sometimes as many as eight parts, and the pacing could be painfully slow and awkward. And obviously there's also been an attempt to bring in more sentiment and wub to what could be seen as a dry, serious series. It's just that given the choice between 'cheesy high serious' and 'cheesy emotional' there doesn't seem like much of an improvement)

Thought the best thing about it was that it was explicitly referencing The Ring/Ringu …

The photos that showed a blurred/distorted face every time; the references to the witch of the well; the well-shaped circle of coldness …

Loads of unresolved/unexplained stuff …
Why did it get suddenly cold at that point? Just to make us think "oooh spooky", as far as I can tell
The Doctor realising what the banging was – but the banging only happened when the Doctor had gone to the pocket universe. Previously we'd been told the reason the "ghost" kept appearing was because for her time in our universe was passing incredibly slowly - seconds being thousands of years – not that she was caught in some time-loop which meant the same thing kept happening, which would be the only explanation for why the banging kept happening.

sudden drops in temperature are one of the standard phenomena associated with ghost sightings - i don't think it was much more or less than that.

Yes, but it wasn't a ghost sighting. And we'd had ghost sightings earlier without sudden unexplained drops in temperature.

The monster in the pocket universe was very nearly a genuinely nasty thing that was then spoiled by its wanting to find its life partner.

Haha, yeah, much as I liked this episode the wub-wub-wub factor was way too high at the end. I really liked the monster, too, thought its movements were meant to be quite Harryhausen stop-motion lizardly and loved the gnarled weirdness of it in general.

Why did it get suddenly cold at that point?

The entrance to the other universe was "the well". The circle that the Doctor drew around the cold point became the circle of the pocket universe entry point. It was cold in the pocket universe.

The Doctor realising what the banging was – but the banging only happened when the Doctor had gone to the pocket universe

This... isn't true.

1/ The coldness was all around the house - remember the thermometer shooting down and the windows freezing? It wasn't just at the "well".

Yes, there was banging before. But then we discovered that the banging was caused by the "monster" banging on the doors of the "psychic house" which was created after the Doctor went to the pocket universe. "So that's what the banging was!" So how was there banging before the Doctor had been to the pocket universe, and before the empath woman had created the psychic house?

1/ The coldness was all around the house - remember the thermometer shooting down and the windows freezing? It wasn't just at the "well".

It started at the well ("warm, cold, warm, cold"), and then expanded into the rest of the house when the pocket universe freed itself from its position.

The banging in the actual house was from the OTHER monster. The banging of the pocket-universe monster was the same sound he had heard before, and so he makes the assumption (which turns out to be correct), that there is a second monster in our universe.

But the banging was the banging on the front door … it was shown (from the inside)

I don't know why I get into these discussions, people just *want* stuff to be inconsistent. Which is fine, you know, it's fun. But I kind of despair when it involves purposefully blinding yourself to plot points or clear signifiers.

But that's the point, Emily, I am not purposefully blinding myself to anything. I am just confused, and your explanation has not helped me. Though it has patronised me.

The monster in the pocket universe was very nearly a genuinely nasty thing that was then spoiled by its wanting to find its life partner.

Agreed. There was a lot in this episode I liked, but it was let down in the end by bucketloads of unneeded sentimentality.

My daughter has a TARDIS playset and yesterday she had the Doctor team up with her My Little Ponies to defeat Harley Quinn and the Joker. As bonkers as that is, I thought I would prefer watching an hour of that to most of what we've had so far this season.

oh god, I've just realized

nu-Who 10/Rose 'shippers are the bronies of Who fandom

They totally are.

So, I rewatched this. It's better than I thought it was on Saturday, but still SO MUCH EMO.

I really hate that it starts out so so so creepy and then turns into something so forced and maudlin

like, why couldn't the creepy thing be trying to match back up with the alien in the house so that they could pull the heads off of everyone on Earth and suck out their precious heartblood together

Exactly. I am sick of love being the answer for everything, it is so trite.

I loved the early 70s aesthetic, the acting from the guest stars and the creepy ghost story vibe -- I guess that's what makes me so ranty about the ending.

also how many stories in second half of this season are going to be about the Doctor using the TARDIS to stalk someone or something

I do like that Clara isn't actually that plucky or even that trustful of the Doctor though

I don't know, there's a certain Poochiness to some of her lines but I don't think that's the actress's fault.

Basically she's like someone put the 2nd Doctor companions Victoria and Zoe into a blender

enjoyed this episode much more than yall, didn't mind the turn to 'it's a love story' cuz it was so silly and w/ all those mooning glances i was worried they were gonna free the ghost by having those two admit their feelings or something so was relieved it wasn't that direct. enjoyed the catfight between clara and the tardis most of all - tardis not liking her have any significance to larger plot or no? and was empath being honest w/ doctor when she said clara's just an ordinary girl? not really sure how ppl couldn't follow the plot here though beyond usual handwave time travel plot holes.

the Clara/TARDIS catfight was great and a good way to pick up on both the inherent weirdness of Clara's existence and the threads of the TARDIS as a sentient being laid out through the books and nu-Who that were made explicit in "The Doctor's Wife"

<i>My daughter has a TARDIS playset and yesterday she had the Doctor team up with her My Little Ponies to defeat Harley Quinn and the Joker. As bonkers as that is, I thought I would prefer watching an hour of that to most of what we've had so far this season.

― The last of the famous international Greyjoys (Nicole)</i>

That is so awesome! I remember as I child I would have all sorts of cross-over adventures with all my toys. Ghostbusters and the X-Men was a common team up, but I vaguely remember when I was very young I had created some sort of meta-universe which combined Where's Waldo and Carmen Sandiego (since they were perennially being looked for I guess)... lol. I wish I still had the imagination of my childhood, but I'm not gonna front - I've largely grown up into a boring linear-thinking person.

when I was a child, I used to put all of my toys into a classroom and teach them math

When I was a child, I lived next door to a bonkers, white-haired English mad scientist who worked with ultrasound and never carried money. But a few of you knew that.

Also had baked play-doh versions of the Watership Down rabbits living in a 'warren' constructed in my top dresser drawer.

when I was a very small boy, very small boys talked to me

okay I just read the AV Club review and A) I didn't realize that the current theory was that Clara was The Rani and B) with the reviewer's "maybe Clara is a human TARDIS theory, it's kind of sad that no mention of the exact same concept from the BBC books or Compassion was made in the review or the comments

also C) I am a sad, old fan

They have classic Who on Amazon Prime, but annoyingly they only have random serials, not complete seasons. But this weekend I watched The Ark Of Time, Pyramid of Mars, and am halfway through Robots of Death

makes me so wistful

oh man The Ark of Time and The Robots of Death are THE BEST

Ark In Space? love it, but has some of the worst effects of the era.

okay yes that is what I meant, in fact it didn't even register that I was typing "of Time"

Ark of Space was fun. Yeah the effects are lolsome. Bubblewrap-slug and bubblewrap-asparagus-hand! Also the splotches on the guns when they fire hee hee

Pyramid of Mars was quite thrilling right up until the end and then...wait you just sent Sutekh back into the time tunnel with some jiggery pokery? Kind of unsatisfying/boring way to end it after all that excitement. Voice of Sutekh (Gerard Woolf) was wonderful.

Robots of Death is really exciting -- and the costumes, especially on the robots are incredible.

Pyramids of Mars has one of the most devastating scenes from the Fourth Doctor's tenure, when Sarah is all "well we don't have to do anything, we already know he doesn't destroy the Earth because I'm here!" and the Doctor's all "o rly *shows Sarah a desolate wasteland* enjoy"

yeah god that was brutal

man Tom Baker was so damn good as the Doctor

He's so warm and simultaneously distant, it's kind of fascinating to try to figure out how he does it...and I love the way he can sometimes smile and look so completely malevolent, it's great

I think overall I like Davison's portrayal of the Doctor more but I can't in good conscience argue that T.Baker's era didn't define the show, given its breadth and the sheer number of fantastic stories across all 7 seasons

I have a very paternal feeling towards him, I would watch him almost every day after school when I was a kid so it's like he was a surrogate parent or uncle in a weird way. Just seeing his face makes me smile

Pyramids of Mars is a favourite of mine too

I think there might be a relevant point somewhere along the lines of:

- oh look, these ancient egyptian mummies are actually robots
- oh look, this ancient egyptian god is actually a malign martian alien
- but: Sutekh is SO pure evil that that doesn't feel like a massive let-down.

I often feel that gods and demons and ghosts that turn out to be aliens become very dull in the process. I think it has something to do with the fact that often the aliens are quite cliched for aliens. They live on another planet and fly around in spaceships, like all the other aliens do, and this is supposed to be an exciting reveal?

Quatermass & The Pit is probably the ur-example of this, but another one where it works - the ghosts that have always haunted Hob Lane or is it Hob End are Martians in the end, but then literally *all of human culture* turns out to be alien, thus breaking down the barrier between 'human' and 'alien' ...

I think for this reason I much prefer it when people turn out to be aliens. The familiar face falling off, tentacles underneath, great stuff. One of the reasons why the wubbing monster on this episode disappointed me was, I think, that it started out alien and then was made nice and human.

mating partners is not exclusively a human trait, you speciesist fuck

A friend pointed this out on his blog. I should have spotted it myself.

On the other hand, maybe Moffat looked at the first draft, in which an Alien Soldier was trapped on a sub with Human Soldiers (and was eventually beaten by the Doctor holding his nerve and threatening to blow everybody up) and said "This is great Mark, really really great: it's just that in Doctor Who, everyone including evil green space vikings has to have a sensitive side. And I really, really like the idea of reintroducing an Iconic Alien Race by just showing how threatening one single individual who thinks he is the last of his kind can be. But we did that once before. Could you go and dig up the first season story with the Dalek in it and make this one more like that?"

Which would explain why Ice Warriors have become scary pathetic creatures in a big metal suits; and why "what does the Ice Warrior look like?" was done as a big reveal, and why the situation was finally resolved through dialogue, and why we had the wholly gratuitous and nonsensical scene in which the companion is locked in a dark room with a chained up monster just before it gets loose.

If you were going to do the Naked Ice Warrior plot, wouldn't it have been cleverer to have a green slimy thing running loose around the sub for 30 minutes, and then finished Act III by revealing as a total out of the blue surprise that actually it's an Ice Warrior? But that, I suppose would have risked the mainstream audience crying out "An Ice what?

Hello, I am slowly catching up (partly because I now understand there's an actual grat episode to catch up with):

if the big bad eats the stories/soul, then surely the person doesn't have them anymore?

I don't know how that follows, the use of memory as payment seems to be that the recipient gets your memories, and you give away the object because you can't give the same memories twice. EG Clara after giving away the leaf hasn't forgotten her Mum and Dad - she remembers the Doctor being there at her Mum's grave.

That said I was not fond of:

.The singing
.The inconsistency of the Translation Circuit - The scooter owner is barking at them, but Merry and such are speaking perfect English?
.The generally English tourists on holiday paternal attitude to the aliens
.The general sense that the Doctor's using the sonic screwdriver wand as a tool for the force of his will - the pushing back of the Vigil's force field / holding up of the door.

.The general sense that the Doctor's using the sonic screwdriver wand as a tool for the force of his will - the pushing back of the Vigil's force field / holding up of the door.

I thought this had been a thing in nu-who for a long time now... I vaguely remember him giving it to Rose and her asking how to use it and him in some technobabbly way explaining that you just hold it and think of what you want it to do.

Yeah, but the idea that it works better because you think harder is what I'm complaining about.

OIC

I liked that one.

Yeah. Running up and down corridors (of the Tardis!) - that's all we needed.

(that wasn't sarcasm, btw)

That subplot - older brother convinces younger brother he's a robot - thought was brilliantly done. The atmosphere.

Information stored as liquids in the library I liked too.