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

A lot of the stories in Season 4 are just a bit meh (Partners in Crime, Planet of the Ood, The Doctor's Daughter, The Unicorn and the Wasp)

I think two of those are good! But would agree on the other two.

The first half of S4 ranges from meh to complete shit (the Doctor's Daughter) but it turns a corner after that one and the second half is very strong.

The first half of S4 ranges from meh to complete shit (the Doctor's Daughter) but it turns a corner after that one

You could say it turns left.

JUst seeing headlines on Facebook about Capaldi definitely staying beyond season 10 which, is nice.

These are presumably responses to Moffat merely saying, in April this year, that Capaldi hadn't given notice that he would need to be written out in the 2017 Christmas special; he's on one-year contracts, and they haven't started filming S10 yet, let alone Moffat having to think about writing the episode which will shoot next year.

Possibly this information appeared behind the headlines; I don't know how Facebook works.

no comments on the christmas special? I thought it was great, though not as good as last year's. curious to reuse the same baddies as well; will they be coming back in the next season? because they aren't that compelling. Trailer for series 10 all looks good.

lol didn't realize there was an Xmas special!

The baddies were new, werent they? I enjoyed it a lot

I also thought they were new. I liked the breeziness and silliness of the plot, also happy that Nardole wasn't annoying.

it was pretty good! where do i know the superhero actor from?

i am warming to nardole, new companion looks p cool from the preview too

selected notes i made while watching it

- dr. sim set up as sniffler but this is dropped after he turns out to be an alien. was he sniffling because he needed a new body? NO
- why did the number of brains increase if they are just exchanging headspaces?
- so the aliens look like brains, but they can also split their hosts' brain areas apart? whut
- why did he open his face, again? update: they open the heads because they have guns in there. duuuuummmmb
- what's the deal with all this regressive male nanny talk. oh right women are the ones who make babies and that is their defining characteristic per moffat.
- was there a point where the doctor went back to repair matt lucas and decided the guy who lost his body early on while also talking like a retard would make a great companion?
- ok arousal/levitation callback altho the setup scene didn't make sense
- matt lucas replaced as companion with squeak toy
- why was the kid not supposed to use his superpowers again?

James, they were the baddies in the last Christmas special, the other one Matt Lucas was in. They had USB sticks in their heads in that one.

Hmm. I should rewatch that. Surprised how likeable i found nardole, given how much i loathe Little Britain.

This felt much more Chibnally than Moffaty imo. Rewatched the Scrooge In Space one from a few years back and it just seemed so much more sophisticated (perhaps to a fault) in comparison.

Carrie Fisher. :-((((

I'm genuinely curious as to what people saw in that, I thought it was fucking terrible. Why is it always superheroes that causes people not as clever as they think to decide that they have an angle that clearly no-one's thought of before?

Shoal of the Winter Harvest => Harvest Shoal is something I didn't spot, which is a little odd since I actually liked the previous episode.

"The Doctor is lonely" is the exact opposite of a Christmas Miracle.

- plodding from start to finish, packed with talking-head scenes that had no spark whatsoever
- abanana otm re the strange male-nanny focus
- either moffat can't write for americans, the american cast went to the tommy wiseau school of acting, or both
- nardole (?) is not very interesting

after 2015's incredible heights this was a mystifying disappointment. even capaldi was dull.

I agree it was plodding. I watched the NINE MINUTE pre-credits stretch twice because I thought I must have missed something. later on there was a 5 minute period where i zoned out (something about a bomb?)

not sure where the bomb came in, i had zoned out almost completely by the halfway mark.

honestly this reminded me of the phantom menace, in that 90% of the scenes were people in tiny spaces yapping.

nu companions ranked, not counting ones who were only in a single episode (Kylie, etc):

Donna
Rose
River Song
Clara Oswald
Mickey
Wilf
Jack Harkness
Martha Jones
James Corden
Adam
Amy Pond and her amazing plot device vagina
Rory
Britain

amy far far too far down the list

first-year amy belongs down there imo, but later-years amy was top five

Donna
River Song
Rose
Amy Pond (year 2+)
Jack Harkness
Clara Oswald
Rory
Wilf
Mickey
James Corden
Amy Pond (year 1)
Martha Jones
Adam
Britain

that's more like it. is 'britain' nardol? seems unfair to rank him at this point

who the fuck was adam?

adam was the guy who got a hole in his forehead in the first season. and yes britain is nardole.

the american cast went to the tommy wiseau school of acting

all one of them

adam was completely a device to show that the doctor has standards and won't just take anyone. difficult to rank him as a companion given his single purpose.

i agree re waiting to see how britain turns out, but current indications are not good.

terrified of the idea of Matt Lucas as a regular, but Nardole was used well in this ep imo

xxp

all one of them

― sad, hombres (sic), Wednesday, 28 December 2016 12:48 (twenty-six seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

maybe that explains it too then

I mean, whatsername off The Catherine Tate Show turned out alright

RIP Perkins tho

moffat can't write for americans

can't believe nobody pointed out that Americans pretty much never say "glazier"

Harmony Shoal is a multinational firm though

nu-who spends an inordinate amount of time in america. i understand the commercial reasons, but as a viewer who's not in america it's increasingly jarring.

If you're going to split up Amy across seasons, you should split up Rose as well, since S1 she was great and slowly became unbearable and awful over the course of S2 (not entirely on her own, Tennant also became unbearable until he was cut loose from that stupid unresolved love story and put into an unrequited live story where at the end he was told to go stuff it)

can i admit that I got completely confused by the whole 'river song is pond's daughter' storyline

like i get it but it was so weird & kinda creepy, like he was sort of half in love with pond & then her daughter turns out to be the love of ages & i loved river song to that point but i went lukewarm on their whole thing after that

you should split up Rose as well, since S1 she was great and slowly became unbearable and awful over the course of S2

true, i was thinking more that the ever-pouting kissogram amy who moffat had instructed us to regard as sexy was so unique a level of terrible as to be practically a whole different character

can i admit that I got completely confused by the whole 'river song is pond's daughter' storyline

it threw me on the first go round (and i hated it) but on the second go round i completely got it (and loved it)

in face the whole smith era (except the series with the dinosaur thing and rory's dad), won me over completely on second viewing

so much timey wimeyness, it was v disorienting for my tiny brain

it… yeah, wibbly wobbly overdrive

like i get it but it was so weird & kinda creepy, like he was sort of half in love with pond & then her daughter turns out to be the love of ages

He was never even half in love with Amy! Amy had the hots for him for a while, but it was made clear he never reciprocated. That was one thing I liked about Season 6 & 7, that after all the soap opera of the previous seasons, Eleven was mostly aromantic/asexual (except with River), and the companion was allowed to have a regular human love interest with whom everything worked out in the end, no pointless drama.

Anyway, I watched the Christmas special, and a nitpicker as I am, the main question in my mind afterwards was: where the fuck was this Ghost guy during all the times in the previous seasons when Earth was in peril?! Dude has Superman level powers, but he didn't do anything when the Cybermen or the Daleks or the Sycorax tried to conquer Earth, or when spaceship Titanic was about to hit it, etc? You'd think several of the earlier plots had gone a bit differently if he'd interfered? You can't just retcon a character who's that powerful as having always been there without explaining why he didn't do anything! Or was Moffat really suggesting that the Ghost did nothing when, say, alien robots dragged Earth across the galaxy and launched a full-scale attack on it, just because the Doctor told him as a kid that he shouldn't use his powers?

Also, the alien part of the episode was pretty obviously recycled from "Aliens of London" / "World War Three" (with a dash of Watchmen): evil aliens fake a spaceship crash so that they get prominent politicians into a place where they can kill them and impersonate them by wearing their skin, thus becoming secret rulers of humankind.

I think, in fairness, that what Moffat was going for was that the Ghost looked after Earth during the 24 years that the Doctor and River Song spent together after the previous Christmas Special. I'm not saying that makes logistical sense, mind you (but I'm also not sure it's really supposed to).

Yeah, it's not meant to*. Also, 1) he's not meant to be Superman-level, 2) he can't address any threats more than a borough or so away, bcz bb, 3) if Superman was Superman-level powered then there would never be any threats to the DC universe, so that's not much of a logical thread to pull.

*also infuriating if you want to try and map time & sense: 24 years after 1987 would have this set in 2011, when Osgood is only a low-level functionary at the place her dad used to work, not a significant figure who gets reports on international incidents

but the 24 years is only meant to be a passing reference to the last time we saw the Doctor. (Apart from Class.) More years may have taken place for him since the end of that 24, too.

I thought this Christmas Special was bad. Probably as bad as the Titanic: The Space Ship, but even less enjoyable. Nardole was the least of my complaints. I did like the concept of the brain aliens though, so their return as a smarter, more dangerous foe would be welcome. The Xmas episodes, I have to remind myself, are generally written with the casual audience in mind. At least James Corden wasn't in this one!

he's not meant to be Superman-level

Dude is invulnerable, can lift a spaceship (which must weigh tens of tons) using only his bad hand, and can break a glass that would withstand a nuclear explosion with the snap of his fingers. So yeah, I would say he's Superman level. He could be even more powerful, since the Doctor explains the crystal he swallowed pretty much does anything he wishes.

he can't address any threats more than a borough or so away, bcz bb

Why can't he? What does "bb" mean?

if Superman was Superman-level powered then there would never be any threats to the DC universe, so that's not much of a logical thread to pull.

Superman has successfully thwarted several alien invasions and other threats to Earth. So it's certainly inexplicable why this guy has seemingly done nothing, even though he's explicitly described as a massive do-gooder who wants to save as many lives as possible.

bb means baby

(Assuming from context)