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

Yeah I felt they probably had to cobble an ending together quickly, and tried to press a few different moral 'keys' but just made a noise, sort of thing

The irritating thing is that they could have gone with the solution they used but shifted the reactions to it and the story would have been stronger for it; The Doctor muted and regretful about wiping the Vardi's memory, Bill asking the Doctor if erasing memories is his solution to everything, more focus on the colonists' attempts to reconcile the danger they placed themselves in with the second chance to have better communication lines to avoid its repeat, etc. It wasn't a happy ending and seemed like the writing was really forcing it to be; they should have leaned a little more into the ambiguous melancholy and let the adults spin some more, which also would have helped make the kid's reconciliation with the robots sound a much more forceful hopeful note than the random aside it actually got.

someone remind me; did the doctor's memory of clara get wiped?

Yes. It's something else they should have woven into the resolution of this, given that they just made reference to it in the previous episode.

Is that related to the oath he swore? Who did he swear it to, River?

AFAIK we don't know anything about the oath yet.

yeah there seems to have been some time passed between the Xmas specials and now. we don't know what's down there (although I gather it's related to the OG Cybermen who are coming back) or what the hell is going on.

He did say he was 2000+ years old now, so we've obviously got a big gap (even though that ignores the billion years he lived through in "Heaven Sent").

He said he was over 2000 in Capaldi's first episode

(and the second and third Doctors were both thousands of years old)

(Moffatt has always said offscreen that the Doctor has no idea how old he is)

Doctor regularly wiped everybody's memories in the human/zygon struggles, not sure he has that big a problem with it

"Smile" began well, but thinking about it after a few days, that mad jumble of an ending is its most memorable part.

Lol @ trying to reconcile every last ad hoc flimsy plot device various hack writers have tossed off for a kids TV show over course of 50 years tbh

Doctor regularly wiped everybody's memories in the human/zygon struggles, not sure he has that big a problem with it

This was before he got his own mind wiped and got super emo about it, as shown in the end of Hell Bent and in the interaction with Bill at the end of The Pilot.

so he's a billion years old but doesn't know it?

Not exactly--that billion years was experienced by billions of different bodies, and his current self only experienced the very last (what was it--an hour?) cycle of Heaven Sent.

ah okay

each "cycle" of Heaven Sent takes a couple of days or so for the participants, depending on how long each new Doctor takes to figure things out (and even if they were rigid, the later ones obv each take a few seconds longer than their predecessors, as he makes it further through the bird speech)

this whole year feels so dated

also i wish they'd stop explaining the basics to us, like the reboot isn't already 12 years old

That was comfortably the best of the three so far. Simple but effective.

Missy being in the vault already seems too obvious though.

Bit bored of big monsters really being something nice that needs saving, didn't they do this with a tyrannosaurus rex at one point?

Liked the ice fair setting, urchins, cruel industrialist, thought all that was really good but honestly would have preferred a straight-forward historical. Might have been a better context to deal with the race issue rather than as a side to a big monster that took three minutes to design and still not quite sure what the little angler fish had to do with it.

Like how do you mess up the concept of a nasty underwater creature with a big mouth that lurks under the ice and swallows people? Why the need to bring in these extra fish that we're told 'aren't carnivores' and then, what, they melt the ice? They carry the victim off to be eaten by the big thing? Eh?

Another good one. Basically it was Kill The Moon without the annoying stuff. I'd always rather watch a lightweight but enjoyable episode of nu-Who than an ambitious but annoying one (e.g. most of last season). Capaldi is now so smooth it's easy to miss what a great job he's doing - I like that he seems to have split the difference between first-season-misanthrope and second-season disco dad.

also i wish they'd stop explaining the basics to us, like the reboot isn't already 12 years old

This is a show for children. The viewers they're explaining the basics to are watching it for the first time, and weren't alive 12 years ago.

immediately reminded of Louis CK's bit: "black people can't fuck with time machines!"

Liked it despite it being a plotwise retread of 'The Beast Below' and that Torchwood episode about 'The Meat'. But Bill is great and Capaldi very much hitting his prime, and the vibe between them is lovely to watch.

I accidentally didn't cancel my Amz Prime trial, so I'm now catching up on Capaldi-Who. Not bad at all.

I'm going to put my guess in the hat that Chiwetel Ejiofor is still the best man for the job of the 13th Dr. (he was offered the 11th). I'd still prefer Swinton, who could pull off the requisite asexual yet charming aloofness.

That late-ish 11th Doctor getting everyone to forget he existed subplot never really went anywhere, did it?

...yes?

I'd be pretty stoked with Swinton, but isn't she kinda of a big movie star? I don't think the actors who've played The Doctor before have ever been as internationally famous as her.

I remember with the 11th doctor, something happened so that he undid the memory wipe from the Dalek hive mind... I don't remember how/why everyone else began to remember him though.

the big name rumours seem to exist purely to generate click revenue for shitty new sites tbh. capaldi was known but he wasn't exactly hollywood-famous.

This is a show for children. The viewers they're explaining the basics to are watching it for the first time, and weren't alive 12 years ago.

― (±\ PLO;;;;;;; Style (sic), Monday, 1 May 2017 10:34 (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

but the old episodes are available, and catch-up videos/webpages are everywhere, and kids talk about stuff. it's not like they have to wait for repeats like we did.

immediately reminded of Louis CK's bit: "black people can't fuck with time machines!"

Is this the first time that a mainstream sci-fi thing has acknowledged this? Not that I want to hand Moffat any trophies for this, it's been a cliché in online discourse/stand-up for years.

Moffat didn't write this - Sarah Dollard did.

And tbf a very difficult thing to do in a kid's TV show, despite my grumblings upthread about making it a side-line to the monster. I don't actually know how you'd handle early 19th century British attitudes to black people in a kid's TV show.

but the old episodes are available, and catch-up videos/webpages are everywhere, and kids talk about stuff. it's not like they have to wait for repeats like we did.

The old episodes total about …7,000 minutes of viewing? A 7-year-old sitting down to watch an episode of a TV show with their dad should not be expected to do SEVEN THOUSAND MINUTES of homework beforehand, just because you’ve been watching since the 1980s.

The joke of the first episode’s title this year is carried out in the intent. Any new viewer SHOULD be able to sit down this year and start watching, and pick up what’s going on. Any lapsed viewer or casual viewer also generally should – this is specifically a broad-audience family programme, of which every single scrap of research shows that the majority of viewers do not catch every episode during a season.

These three episodes are not telling stories about our old pal Theta Sigma, agent for the CIA and bearer of the Cloak of Rassilon and angry god of the Sevateem and Ambassador to Peladon and Valeyard-to-be and Scientific Advisor to the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce and former Merlin and recalcitrant child of the House Of Lungbarrow having adventures in the manner that we recognise. They’re telling the story of Bill Potts getting to know her mysterious uni tutor and patron’s secrets, going on adventures with him, and solving problems herself.

If brown-skinned English kids who haven’t watched endless hours of The Adventures Of Whiteman, a show that started years before they were born, but see Pearl Mackie in a trailer and want to watch her show, that’s a positive. Them being able to actually follow the show they’re watching is a concomitant positive.

With The Eleventh Hour, Moffatt wrote at least the third-best NEW DOCTOR, START HERE episode in the series’ history. As of this week, he’s also followed more than a year off the air (more or less), and the longest-running companion in 52 years, with three weeks of a soft reboot built on the RTD model of meeting ep/far future ep/Earth past ep, specifically to be accessible to new viewers or those who’d gone rambly during the last few years. BRING ON THE KIDS AND GRANS imo.

Is it bad that I got to "Sevateem" in sic's post and stopped reading so I could do a happy dance?

yeah but you are a Tesh

I can't even get mad about that, I'm 100% Tesh

If Missy is in the vault this might be typical Moffat 'Wishmastery' - giving me what I wanted (Missy in every episode) but in the complete opposite way of how I wanted it.

endless hours of The Adventures Of Whiteman

thx

The White Guardiman

The old episodes total about …7,000 minutes of viewing? A 7-year-old sitting down to watch an episode of a TV show with their dad should not be expected to do SEVEN THOUSAND MINUTES of homework beforehand, just because you’ve been watching since the 1980s.

i mean you even quoted the bit where i said "catch-up videos/webpages are everywhere". also i seriously doubt anyone's going to sit through all 24 minutes of the hand of fear pt 3 hoping to learn how old the doctor is in 2017 (he said it twice in this episode iirc).

that said, i do see the logic behind your overall point but i still wish they'd stop doing it.

my vague 7,000 minutes estimate was only for the new series btw! (bcz you said reboot/12 yrs) and catch-up webpages are even more like homework. send them to the library to read Jean-Marc L'Officier and Peter Haining, why don't you.

that said, i do see the logic behind your overall point but i still wish they'd stop doing it.

if you'd rather swap the delightful extended "Bill figures out the TARDIS" riff for idk, whatever Nyssa said on her first trip or s/t, just hold tight for the glorious Chibnall era of brute functionality I guess

7,000 minutes sounds like so many minutes

I think Nyssa said "where's my father?"

Hand of Fear is a pleasure to watch because it features the pinnacle of Sarah Jane Smith wardrobe choices, the triple star overalls.

It's a strange place to do an intro for new viewers. Same doctor, same showrunner. I suppose they just took a year off, but still.

This episode felt aimed at younger children than usual, which wasn't a bad thing. Straightforward, fast paced plot, very likable lead performances (Capaldi looking very alien these days), a fun pantomime baddie in Nathan Barley. The kids were annoying though.