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

Of course it's quite possible Moffat is intentionally dropping these clues so we'll be surprised to learn it's someone else than the obvious suspect. But I have a hard time coming up with any other likely candidate?

(xmessage)

I haven't seen any of the pre-reboot episodes, was there a sentient piano among the Doctor's enemies there?

the tardis was a pipe organ once

Maybe in that Eastenders crossover.

they showed both Michelle Gomez (MIssy) and Simms as the Master in the trailers for the season so I don't even think it's mean to be a mystery? The only mystery is how she/they got there and what happened before this season started.

switches from "Für Elise" to a happy melody

pop goes the weasel #classicallytrained

Whatever it ends up being on the actual show it will, in my mind, now be a sentient piano.

Maybe it's the sentient cabbage Tom Baker wanted as a companion

Knock Knock was a snoozefest. Everything had been done before, none of the characters were interesting, mystery solution made no sense. In the bottom 10 for nu who episodes.

i agree, it's monster-of-the-week with a truckload of clearly disposable chums. the ending was fine and the premise was nice. not terrible, not bad, just eh.

Seems like this season they've decided to go down the well-trodden path, at least so far. If we look at what's happened in the individual episodes so far:

Episode 1: Introduces the new companion, who gets mixed up in some mystery in the present day. Solving it requires the Doctor's help, and the companion learns who the Doctor really is. This same formula has been used for the introductory episode of every companion in nu-Who, though I guess it's kinda hard to come up with other ways of doing it? Also, the villain is not evil per se, but simply following a preset code of behaviour, a theme Moffat clearly like, since he's used it many times ("The Doctor Dances", "The Girl in the Fireplace", "The Eleventh Hour", etc)

Episode 2 & 3: With every new companion so far, their second and third episode also follow a specific formula. One of them takes place in Europe's past, where a specific historical event or phenomenon is explained to have involved aliens. The other takes place in far future, where something bad or weird has happened to humanity. Again, they follow the same formula this season. The future episode also involves nanobot antagonists, which has also been done in the series a few times ("The Doctor Dances", "Asylum of the Daleks", maybe some other episodes too, IIRC?). While the past episode has a alien monster that's not really a monster, it's the human(s) who are using it who're the villains, which again has been done several times ("The Beast Below", "Planet of the Ood", etc). Though at least time they did put some effort into addressing the sort of blatant racism a black time traveller might face in past, unlike in "The Shakespeare Code".

Episode 4: Something from European mythology is revealed to really be aliens! Also done quite a few times, most recently in "In the Forest of the Night", which also involved tree spirits. Also, this one has the same "humans are the real monsters" moral as the previous episode, where the monster just wants to eat, and the real villain is the human who keeps feeding it.

So yeah, I guess it's refreshing that they seem to have cut down the continuity references and the intricate season-wide plotting in favour of stand-alone episodes, but it'd be nice if the individual plots were also a bit less formulaic.

So, in short, all the plots and all the monsters of the week have been repeats of things they've done before. I understand that it's hard not to repeat yourself when a series has gone on for so long, but at least Moffat's seasonal arcs in previous seasons provided us with some more unique and innovative scenarios. So I'm hoping something like that is still coming up with this season too.

Oh yeah, and of course the "villain is not evil but following a preset code of behaviour" theme is also repeated in the second episode.

That's hardly a theme, though, is it? You think every week the villain should be acting because 'welp, turns out this alien race is also pure evil because they are because they are evil evil aliens'?

I think it is possible that an alternative to "this thing happens a few times" is not necessarily "this other thing happens all the time".

That's hardly a theme, though, is it? You think every week the villain should be acting because 'welp, turns out this alien race is also pure evil because they are because they are evil evil aliens'?

Okay, maybe I worded this a bit vaguely, but what I meant is that the villains have a specific coded behaviour that's meant to be benign (or at least harmless), but through some malfunction or misinterpretation becomes dangerous. The nanobots in "The Doctor Dances" are meant to repair physical damage, but they don't know what a baseline human is like, so they repair it wrong. The automatons in "The Girl in the Fireplace" are meant to fix the spaceship, but they start using human body parts to do that. The sentient spaceship goo in "Pilot" is meant to follow orders on where it should go, and it misinterprets Bill telling Heather she shouldn't leave her as such an order. This is specifict theme that's been used a lot in Dr. Who, so when it happened again in the very next episode, combined with dangerous nanobots, which has also been a recurring theme, it just felt like they're covering too much familiar ground.

The show has always been unsure about whether evil things are evil or not, whether evil is real or not

Daleks are pure evil. But then there's lip-service to the idea that there's a suffering creature trapped inside them. Sometimes this matters, sometimes it's minimised away into nothing. Vast numbers of Daleks get blown up on the reg for laughs but simultaneously Dr Tom can't destroy them all when given the chance because that would be genocide. Which makes sense if talking about reformable human beings, but then there's no reason given anywhere in the series to think that Daleks are really reformable (maybe some gestures to this I seem to remember, but nothing that's going to change what Daleks are in the show).

There's a Clara episode that should throw most of what we know about Daleks out on their ear, but it can't so it won't.

That's the one. And another in Ecclestone with a Dalek in prison somewhere?

xps cardamon That's my point, it seems weird that 'trying to understand reasons for 'evil behaviour'' is seen as merely a theme that appears in a few episodes.
But it looks like Tuomas was specifically talking about errors in programming (or perhaps the programmer was evil).

We've also seen Silurians, Sonatarans and Zygons rehabilitated to an extent

Although this rehab of old monsters is one of the weakest points of the new series I think. They've never really managed to rehabilitate a monster in all its monstrousness; what's actually happened is, somewhere off-stage between the old and new series, these monsters have become more funny than threatening; so that the real work of conflict resolution (ffs am I really typing this into a dr who thread lol) doesn't actually happen in any of the narrative that the viewer is privy to

If I was a parent I'd feel better placed to say how much of the intended message gets through to the kids watching it. Obviously the point of it all, the reason why the show tries to personise monsters every so often, is to encourage kids to be more understanding to other kids they don't like, right?

The Silurians were never pure unmitigated evil; this was the main conflict in their initial appearance. The antagonism they show humanity in their subsequent appearances is a direct consequence of that initial encounter.

The Sontarans are a warrior race that solves everything through violent conflict. Their primary conflict is with the Rutans and all of their encounters with humanity are incidental to that central conflict; they aren't fighting humanity because they hate us and are evil, they are fighting us because we are in the way and that's how they know how to interact with things. (Strax is an oddity; he was sentenced by his people to be a nurse as a punishment, was picked up by the Doctor and removed from the other Sontarans and evolved into a very different type of Sontaran from what we normally see, although he did revert back to form in "The Name of the Doctor" after Jenny was erased from continuity.)

The rehabilitation of the Zygons happened on-screen; we know they were defeated in the conflict from "The Day of the Doctor" and that they were hiding on Earth as part of the resultant peace treaty. We also know that some of the radicalized members of this group hated this and wanted to reclaim glory for their species, which was the entire plot driver for "The Zygon Invasion"/"The Zygon Inversion".

I have as question that I think I already know the question to: Has there ever been an episode of Doctor Who where they go to a world where things seem really weird and messed up on the surface but in reality there's nothing secret or evil going on? I realize that there wouldn't be much pay off to an episode like that but it seems like a clever idea to use once or twice.

There's a Russell T Davies sanctioned Torchwood audio drama series (with most of the original cast) to be released by Big Finish in February, 2018.

Torchwood - Series 5: Aliens Among Us
http://www.cultbox.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/torch1.jpg

Has there ever been an episode of Doctor Who where they go to a world where things seem really weird and messed up on the surface but in reality there's nothing secret or evil going on?

(not quite but) SPOILERS for a forty-five-year-old piece of TV that many people may not have seen: the Pertwee story Curse Of Peladon gets some great mileage out of a diplomatic intrigue story with Ice Warriors in it by having the audience and characters assume the Ice Warriors are baddies and not just one of the alien races in the story (a sequel tries to pull the exact same trick again, to let's say, diminishing returns).

this story also struck a very early blow in favour of representation in Who by having one alien character be a giant talking penis who is a lady

Oh yeah Torchwood

Best of the season so far, doesn't hurt that it's anti-capitalist.

I missed the bit about how Bill doesn't die when the space zombies get her, though?

admittedly i've just got up and haven't seen it, but is this yet another base-under-siege we're-all-wearing-the-same-uniform episode?

yes but it's a good one

bill survives because the suits were zapping the bodies. bill's suit didn't have enough power left to kill her. how she appears dead until the doc touches her is mystery. i don't blame anyone for missing this -- i think they even fuzzed up the doctor's dialog to make it harder to comprehend.

Mathieson and Dollard are both so great at Dr Who, cramming an adventure, some scares, a bunch of jokes and some actual ideas & themes into 45 minutes. Going to be a shame to presumably lose them instead of seeing them develop over the next decade

First thoughts w/out reading thread - loved that. Really back on form. Horrible hanging-head zombies. And the music! Some actual nasty orchestral stabs and pulses. Straight-up mention of capitalism. On point.

this is good on last week's ep:

http://www.andrewrilstone.com/2017/05/104-knock-knock.html

But not to distract from this one. I don't know if I've ever actually posted to ILX whilst happy before

There's a plot hole in this episode, which is: was the company trying to make money off oxygen, or conserve oxygen? Because they can't sell it if they just kill the breathers. And if they were conserving it, venting off the unauthorized air goes against that.

When the Doctor saves Bill at the end, was it supposed to look like a Vulcan neck pinch? It would be a nice bookend to the opening scene.

No outright classics so far this season, but that's five pretty good episodes in a row without a duffer. When's the last time that happened?

Also still thinking about how good David Suchet was last week.

I wonder if Moffat is rewriting this season's scripts to work in the "tools gone wrong" theme. It would explain the catastrophic infodumps at the end of Smile and Knock Knock. Thin Ice also had a talky explanation that didn't make much sense.

No outright classics so far this season, but that's five pretty good episodes in a row without a duffer. When's the last time that happened?

Girl Who Died through Husbands Of River Song is nine eps if you accept Sleep No More as a noble failure rather than a duffer

Time Of The Doctor through Flatline is 13 eps. If you enjoy Forest Of The Night as the fairy tale it was aimed to be, then up through Last Christmas is 17 in a row.

(basically I think the Capaldi seasons are the most consistent in the series' history outside of S26 or the 1974/75 production block)

I consider the run between (exclusively) "Victory of the Daleks" and "Night Terrors" to be the most consistent run of Who.

Here's my episode spreadsheet if anyone cares. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hYW5F7RabPGWT42AcFijJqk__B3YDXHN-F_0AluJ4_k/edit?usp=sharing

Other things I liked about this ep:

Doctor joining the stars together to make a skull.

The blue alien character with dreamy, quiet demanour, eyes and voice - sure there were some cheap jokes for mums and dads (some of my best friends are blueish hur hur) but I liked how he wasn't really explained, just allowed to be alien.

The dead man in the suit, the first one they find, just there in the middle of the scene.

Think I already mentioned the music but will mention it again, a distress call in the feint hope someone might read this who knows how to get rid of Murray Gold. No syrupy sweet soundtrack this time, just threatening stabs and pulses.

Capitalism is evil and will fuck you up, rip the air our of your lungs. No efforts made to jolly that up at all or humanise it in any way. Like if they'd had a comedy Alan Sugar space boss thundering around telling people to stop breathing (hur hur) which is the sort of thing the new series tends to do. I'll forgive Nardole's bit of bullshit about the space call-center etc.

Cold Blood is a huge dud

I'm sure I've said upthread or in one of Ned's side-threads that Lodger through Moon is the strongest run ever for mine

zomg at repping Akhaten but scratching Hide

I think this episode was okay, but again it seemed to be treading very familiar waters. Like, we have an isolated station, no way of getting out, and something starts killing the crew and turning them into villains, i.e. a riff on "The Thing" and "Alien". We've seen this kinda plot twice in the last season alone: "Sleep No More" and the double episode where everyone started turning into ghosts. And of course it's been done several times in previous seasons too: "Water of Mars", the one with Satan in space, etc.

I think the only time riffing on The Thing has produced a truly great and memorable episode was "42", because they found a unique way of conveying the horror. In here, as soon as they went to the space station and found the zombie in the space suit, I was like, "Oh no, it's this plot again!". Though I guess in this one the capitalism theme gave it a somewhat unique edge, and a few of the scenes were a bit more innovative then usually (especially the one where Bill was dying and lost here consciousness), but mostly it was in the same "decent, but nothing new" category as the previous two episodes.

There's a plot hole in this episode, which is: was the company trying to make money off oxygen, or conserve oxygen? Because they can't sell it if they just kill the breathers. And if they were conserving it, venting off the unauthorized air goes against that.

The whole air scheme is a bit ludicrous and doesn't seem like the most cost-efficient way to run the station, but this one isn't necessarily a plot hole... If the company is selling the air to the workers by pound, having an alternative & free source of air on the station would mean less business for them, so that's why they get rid of it.

has there been any daily mail shenanigans about the evil beeb shoving anti-capitalist propaganda down the throats of the innocent doctor who audience yet? as cardamon says, it was a pretty naked bit of polemic - not that i'm complaining, mind

xp. So they were guarding their own air supply but not necessarily selling it. Doesn't make all that much sense, but it doesn't bother me.

Robot workers killing humans is a good logical endpoint for capitalism I think.

sic: Akhaten is a crazy failure, a good-bad episode. Hide is just a bore. I don't remember much of Cold Blood today but I'll say that I watched it before I knew that the Silurians were from the old serials.

I'd agree that "Lodger" through "A Good Man..." is Moffat's best, super-confident, ideas-heavy stretch of episodes. Then Smith's run kind of collapses until the anniversary specials, unfortunately.

Girl Who Died through Husbands Of River Song is nine eps if you accept Sleep No More as a noble failure rather than a duffer

Kinda thought this season was insufferable apart from the last two and Husbands.

Other strong stretches: "42" through "Utopia" and most of the Ecclestone season if you forgive the farting aliens.

Season 2 and 7b remain the nadirs, I think.

finally watching the recent Christmas episode. it's pretty good! i LOL'd when that lady was eavesdropping and it panned over to reveal the Doctor chopping on a salad