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

"to take over the world"

I mostly enjoyed that! loool @ "sandshoes & grandpa"

squee'd at the brief Capaldi moment & the excellent cameo at the end

They have signed a completely watertight nonsense treaty!

If we take the cameo at the end of this literally.... It is someone who may or may not be a future Doctor basically standing around saying "I may or may not be a future Doctor, you know"

looootta moffaty timey wimey bullshit though. kinda had to choke that down to stay on board

Funny, Eccleston not taking part in the anniversary celebration and I'm just channel surfing and find that he's narrating a documentary on D.H. Lawrence on BBC2, presumably pure coincidence.

Enjoyed what I saw earlier anyway. & this is a very interesting thing on the genesis of Sons & Lovers.

Just watched Davison's Five(ish) Doctors reboot thing on the red button, a perfectly entertaining way to spend half an hour. Won't spoiler, but I did laugh at Rusty's cameo.

Yeah. I assume the times don't line up for a direct comparison, but I went out to see Thor: The Dark World earlier (partially shot a stone's throw from the Tower) with Ecclestone hissing and scenery chewing and it can't have been a worse gig on offer here.

(Also I should maybe clarify that I meant Ecclestone instead of Tennant (or along with, I actually didn't mind Tennant that much here))

Also! RP Billie Piper!

as an episode of NuWho, 7/10 with bonus points for cameos and callbacks, but as the Anniversary Special that the world's tuned into bcuz "Hey it's this massive global institution that's lasted half a century!", well it didn't really deliver. Plot with Zygons could've been any episode, use of Billie Piper not as Rose Tyler was utterly gratuitous. Would've preferred it if McGann had been used / Eccleston had been persuadable

― Windsor Davies, Sunday, 24 November 2013 08:22 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

100 agree. my expectations were already low after this year's string of toss, but too much of this dragged on like a wet weekend, apart from the occasional moment of fanwank delight and genuinely funny line.

also, with capaldi enigmatically saying 'THIRTEEEEEEN' and hurt being acknowledged as ~the~ ~doctor~, does that mean smith is #12 now?

Isn't that one of the ornate time lords saying thirteen?

it sounded awfully like capaldi to me, but i'd have to go back to be sure tbh

It was Capaldi.

A fine line between "we're putting this in twice so it doesn't seen so egregious the second time" (taking 400 years to solve something) and "fuck it, the joke seemed to work okay the first time, let's have it on again" (mistaking Queen Elizabeth for a Zygon).

I'm impressed that they did totally sell to me that they'd actually end with the three of then taking collective responsibility - I wonder if that might at all be a reason for the odd show time (10 to till 10 past).

Technically the circular firing squad shouldn't work in 3D, but I can totally see the Daleks setting up space artillery at all points of the space compass..

One more rewrite might have helped: what in the bollocks is "This 3D painting of Gallifrey is Queen Elizabeth's Credentials about?"

why would the daleks not have expected three doctors at once? what with him having a time machine and having done the several doctor thing previously? that was not 'brilliant', david tennant at approx. 1.03, that was bloody silly.

although i'm sure sic stands ready to disabuse me

fyi i rewatched End of Time this afternoon

bcz i still love tennant I CANT HELP IT

Oh I watched the first part of that before leaving for concert call. Donna is still great obv.

BTW thank GOD that they had Billie Piper do something besides Rose

getting characters to repeat lines that have been said in earlier shows is brilliant, witty writing and you shd definitely do it as often as possible

Rose finally grew into her new teeth <3

xxpost Would've been better if they'd left well enough alone though, if it comes to a choice between Billie Piper not playing Rose and someone else not playing Rose then I know which I'd choose. Fuck including her out of some sense that she is still integral to the fabric of NuWho, that shit should've died with 10

bit harsh

windsor davies otm again. i don't understand why she was there, apart from nu-who hat tip.

'we need billie piper!!'
'why?'
'shut up, that's why'

Yes that was definitely more pandering than having the UNIT taskforce leader be the brigadier's daughter.

xpost to VG - idk, was fun while it lasted but she's behind Amy, Donna (and even Rory I suppose) on my list of companions since the reboot, don't really know why she merited inclusion tonight. But then I hate all that back-pedalling back-from-the-dead stuff, Rose should've been written out for good in Doomsday and I'dve been fine with it (Bad Wolf reveal from Turn Left notwithstanding, because that was pretty good tbf). "omg guys it's Billie Piper!" not a good enough reason to have her around

y'all know it would have been better if they'd called Matthew Waterhouse out of whatever hole he hides in these days to play the weapon of ultimate destruction personified

my theory is this:

- eccleston pulled out at the last minute (as per reports)
- hurt was brought in to ~be~ eccleston's doctor for time war purposes (after some rewriting obv)
- piper stayed on, but played something-or-other against hurt instead

that would also explain the time war remorse being sort of spread across two doctors and a war doctor, rather than wrapping up what was basically the kernel of eccleston's year.

Tennant was okay, but I think Smith's grown to become the best of three nu-Who Doctors. Eccleston was good at being angry and indignant, but not so good at comedy, Tennant on the other hand was good at that with his manic-depressive persona, but subtlety wasn't really his thing, whereas Smith can pull all that off, he can be funny and manic as well and sad and subdued. Like, in this episode, when Eleven says he's had 400 years to think about what he did to end the Time War, you can really believe he's older and wiser than the two other doctors, despite Smith being younger than the other two actors. I don't think Tennant could've pulled that scene off quite as well; he's a very theatrical, broad strokes type of actor, but that scene relied on the sort subtlety that works on film/TV. This is why I felt Eccleston not being cast as the third Doctor in this episode was a real shame: Smith's Doctor feels sorta like a synthesis of the previous two, and it would've been nice to see that balance onscreen.

in that behind the lens special, hurt says he was brought in 'incredibly quickly', 'very very quickly', in 'all a bit of a rush' etc xp

Yes that was definitely more pandering than having the UNIT taskforce leader be the brigadier's daughter.

Wasn't the daugher character established much earlier, maybe already during the Tennant era?

xxpost Yeah was wondering where this leaves Eccleston's Doctor. Survivor's guilt was his defining characteristic, now all of a sudden not relevant or necessary. Unless this can be explained by Hurt's Doctor not remembering any of the events of this episode? So what, he goes on believing that he did commit genocide and everything goes on as before until you get up to date with Smith again? I didn't really follow that tbh

exactly what you said, otherwise they'd've had to handwave away all the guilty feelings stuff from the last 3 Doctors

nothing like undermining any possible emotional heft yr characters might have by making it obvious that any event no matter how traumatic is gonna get retconned out of existence as soon as it doesn't suit

yeah, that bothers the hell out of me

at some point they'll be all 'what, no river song is actually the doctor's grandpa' or some dumb shit

doesn't bother me cos tbh as enjoyable as the Smith/Tennant double act was, everything else about this made me happy to not bother in future ah shit i've just remembered Ben Wheatley's doing one

my theory is this:

- eccleston pulled out at the last minute (as per reports)
- hurt was brought in to ~be~ eccleston's doctor for time war purposes (after some rewriting obv)
- piper stayed on, but played something-or-other against hurt instead

Yeah, that's what I was trying to say upthread. Introducing a new character who feels the same emotions Eccleston had been established as feeling (war guilt) and having Piper play against him despite having no connection to him whatsoever feels pretty weird, this episode would've made much more sense if it was Eccleston instead of Hurt. There's only one little thing that goes against Eccleston being the Time War era Doctor: in his first episode he looks at his reflection and comments on his face, which implies he's just been reincarnated. But that could've been retconned.

xp in the same retconny nonsense vein, what they did to rose has bothered me for a while. she was always the everyperson in this story, and gradually she became a god, a hero, a bloody bad wolf thing etc etc. with clara they didn't even bother with the pretence, they had her be a supercharacter before she really did anything.

that, to me, was what this 50th anniversary story missed: a character to be filled with the naive, human wonder of what's going on. that's the essence of doctor who. to forego that entirely in favour of 100% time lords and scientists and aliens removed the whole experience way too much. it wasn't about the viewer, it was entirely about the folklore.

entirely entirely

Introducing a new character who feels the same emotions Eccleston had been established as feeling (war guilt) and having Piper play against him despite having no connection to him whatsoever feels pretty weird, this episode would've made much more sense if it was Eccleston instead of Hurt.

yep, stands out like a sore thumb. there wasn't even any planned interaction between piper and tennant, despite them being on the same bloody set for a decent amount of time.

if you was being charitable you could say that well what do you expect from the 50th anniversary tribute except fan service? on the other hand for me it just feels like the show isn't for anybody except those people any more

he goes on believing that he did commit genocide and everything goes on as before until you get up to date with Smith again?

That seems to be the gist of it... Except that I still feel the events of the "The End of Time" wouldn't have played the same way they did with Gallifrey's fate now changed, which means Ten shouldn't have died in that episode, which in turn creates a hell of a paradox.

As neat as "Father's Day" was, I'm not sure if in retrospect it was a good decision to introduce those bat monsters who fix time anomalies. Because they haven't appeared ever since, and they certainly should have done so in this episode.

if you was being charitable you could say that well what do you expect from the 50th anniversary tribute except fan service? on the other hand for me it just feels like the show isn't for anybody except those people any more

― uk cheese board (Noodle Vague), Sunday, 24 November 2013 12:08 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

in all honesty, my answer to that question would be an everyday person person's wide-eyed view of an eccentric alien. it seems obvious to me, and given that that's how the show got started three times—susan in 1963, chang lee and grace in 1997, and rose in 2005—it's not even a stretch to do that. it would have serviced the anniversary beautifully. but no, let's do aliens and wars.

this episode feels more like trial of a time lord pt 2 or something

thanks for reminding me the Time War stuff was some seriously underwhelming Star Wars shite too

the Time Lords didn't even seem all crazy and Gotterdammerung like they were supposed to be

Also, I'd like echo Andrew said upthread: having recently seen the new Thor movie, and now "The Day of the Doctor", it'd certainly have been much nicer to see Eccleston in this one. Talk about wasting a good actor! Though I guess he got more money from Thor than he ever would've from Who...

(xxx-post)