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

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

ah, not salad, it's a sushi platter

. 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".

The Carpenter Thing was 1982. Here are some Doctor Who stories made and aired before 1982:

The Tenth Planet
Power Of The Daleks
The Underwater Menace
The Moonbase
The Macra Terror
The Tomb Of The Cybermen
The Abominable Snowmen
The Ice Warriors
The Web Of Fear
Fury From The Deep
The Wheel In Space
The Seeds Of Death
Inferno
Colony In Space
The Ark In Space
The Seeds Of Doom
The Robots Of Death
Horror Of Fang Rock
The Invasion of Time
Earthshock

Alien (1979) is basically a straight-out remake of The Ark In Space (1974)

Well, the Hawks Thing is 1951, and the John Campbell short story it's based on is 1938; the scenario in both cases is essentially the same as in the Carpenter version. And Alien is basically a straight-out remake of It The Terror From Beyond Space (1958).

Actually pretty mind-blowing that Ark in Space came out 5 years before Alien

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 (...) 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.

See for me I was glad to see this sort of thing coming back. I much prefer the type of thing that kills the crew and turns them into villains to the type of thing that looks evil at first as it devours people through plot holes, but then it's that she's in terrible pain, and then she gets released through a plot hole.

Two crackers in a row.

And the music! Some actual nasty orchestral stabs and pulses.

It may be heresy, but Murray Gold is actually fairly good at scoring scary/dramatic stuff. Just don't let him near any weepy bits or, god fucking forbid, comedy.

As an aside, I spent a day last week at the location at which portions of Smile were shot, the City of Arts and Sciences in Valenicia. It definitely feels like being on another planet. Here is a photo I took:

http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f223/joegood/IMG_6264_zps7s250l6l.jpg

So these super advanced aliens never thought of multithreading?

lol

So I'm guessing Moffat's familiar with the Eliezer Yudkowsky cult. Or maybe he just reads the same pop science books. AI basilisk scenarios work better in fiction than as philosophy.

nitpick corner
Why did they get to kill the AI doctor so many times? He figured out the solution here without knowing about that. wouldn't he have figured it out the first time too? heaven sent avoided this problem.

The simulation was supposed to be of the entire history of Earth but no one noticed the numbers bit until now? the writers should have just had the sim be to the portal locations around the time of the invasion.

The solution is to send an email out to the real world. Yeah, that wouldn't work.

I'm okay with the simulation having a backdoor in the Veritas book. It's a metaphor for knowledge.

My guess is that these bad guys might turn out to be the THANKS FOR THE SPOILER EVERYWHERE BBC finale bad guys.

Why did they get to kill the AI doctor so many times? He figured out the solution here without knowing about that. wouldn't he have figured it out the first time too? heaven sent avoided this problem.

I don't get this question? As far as I could tell, the simulation had run only once, not a billion times like in Heaven Sent? It wasn't implied the Simulation Doctor had lived through more than one iteration of these events. Unless you're suggesting the prologue and epilogue were just another layer of the simulation, not reality/

I thought this was the first really good episode of this season. Obviously the main concept isn't particularly new in sci-fi, but it was executed in an imaginative way with cool story elements, like the Vatican's forbidden library or the whole "book that can kill you" mystery. IMO the mystery worked really well, I didn't even suspect an Invisibles/Matrix solution until they started reciting those random numbers in unison. Which I thought was really neat scene, much better than if they'd had the Doctor figure out the thing through some expository monologue.

tuomas: there's a line from the corpse-alien to the doctor: "we have killed you many times." shouldn't have been stuck in there imo.

The solution is to send an email out to the real world. Yeah, that wouldn't work.

You can send an email from a virtual machine and it would reach someone beyond the confines of that VM.

Another good one. Reminded me of Listen - slightly fumbled ending but for the most part genuinely creepy and unpredictable - and also "Big Bang" for its (deliberate?) Grant Morrison vibe.

Also - I note Bill'a "died" twice now. I hope they're not Rorying her.

asBill'a

so this ruled

Best of the season so far, and super creepy

So creepy. And weird. Also was that guy on the execution planet tallying up the Doctor's body count? Yeesh

I love the awkwardness of the verb "Rorying" btw

was that guy on the execution planet tallying up the Doctor's body count?

they seem to be playing this up more than usual this season, i wonder if it'll tie into capaldi's regeneration somehow

when Nardole accidentally deleted himself, I was like "omg"

Yeah, very effective moment. And who would've thought that any reaction to Nardole deleting himself would be anything but unambiguous joy?

Ha, yeah, they did exactly enough character work with him through the first two thirds of the episode. It's like they actually thought about the fact that his character has been a somewhat annoying cipher this whole time and then took a little time to beef him up ("are you a secret badass?" etc) so that when he gets de-rezzed it actually matters, and not just because of what it implies for Bill. And the Doctor, but it took a long time to come to grips with the Doctor being Grand Theft Aught-Who.

I didn't spend a lot of time coming up with that so please, rubbish at will

I've never hated Nardole, though I agree it's nice they decided to flesh him out more. When they announced Matt Lucas is gonna be in the show, I was prepared to hate him because how awful "Little Britain" was, but it turned out he's perfectly fine as a comic actor when he isn't writing his own material.

Let's not forget his first TV role was his finest.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-WEIVIbcQw

I thought this was great. Really well executed. A detail I liked: it leaves open that the Pope and friends have never actually been in the Tardis hilariously in real life, only in the simulation.

Enjoyed that, glad to see there are 12 episodes in this series.
Like the way they've interlinked all the episodes so far. It's almost a return to original era cliffhangerhood.
JUst wish we did have several more seasons of Capaldi. Liking him with Bill. Like him anyway but just wish there hadn't been seasons wasted with Clara.

Liked this one too. Something very 'classic series' about the world's armed forces being represented by a few people in costumes and a CGI plane and submarine.

I'm a few weeks behind but they really missed an opportunity for someone to go "it's bigger on the inside" during the house-hunting scene.

This was an enjoyable episode, but I don't understand why the Doctor hadn't told Bill about his regeneration ability, or why he didn't tell her about it during the countdown? That way Bill wouldn't have needed to consent to the Monks, since she would've known the Doctor can't really die.

Presumably if you get completely blown up, you can't regenerate, or something? Either way I'd file it under "stuff I'm happy to handwave".

Another good episode, although maybe the season's weakest so far? Was the first script by Harness I haven't found annoying, anyway.

Next week's looks good, but looking forward to getting back to more continuity-free Bill/Capaldi stories in eps 9-10, before the invetiable big-climax-two-parter.

I liked this episode. Didn't see much point in the military plot since the show gives away the real disaster-in-waiting right away. Working in a pyramid with mummies and the threads of life were nice touches.

nitpick corner: a) the lock dilemma could have been solved with some macguyvering. the doctor could have found a mirrored surface to let the scientist tell him what the lock says. b) lazy writer failsafe failures. automatic venting every 20 minutes, no braille on a lock in a place where people could easily become blinded. if you've seen one michael crichton movie.

she would've known the Doctor can't really die.

the Doctor can totally die

and the bbc can call the show "bill", it would be fine

the doctor could have found a mirrored surface to let the scientist tell him what the lock says

this is not a show that traditionally withstands a lot of "fridge logic" to borrow a term from the frequently wtf tvtropes

I liked this episode quite a bit, that's 2 for 2 with these monk mummies - monkies? no. mumkies. no. monksters. no. I give up.

YOU CONSENT OUT OF STRATEGY

b) lazy writer failsafe failures. automatic venting every 20 minutes, no braille on a lock in a place where people could easily become blinded. if you've seen one michael crichton movie.

And worst of all, an airlock system that allows both doors to be opened at the same time, which defeats the whole purpose for having an airlock! I think real life airlocks automatically keep the other door locked if the other one is open, exactly to avoid human error like the one seen in this episode?

The air venting system was really baffling... Why would a complex that deals with hazardous material and GM bacteria have a system that automatically vents its air into the atmosphere? You'd think that's exactly what they'd want to avoid in a breakout situation?

I think it was meant to be unusual (due to accident) that the product was that dangerous but yeah

Also, the whole "consent" thing was pretty nonsensical if you stop and think about it. It was established that consent needs to be given out of love and not fear, and clearly the implication is that humanity needs to love the Monks for them to gain power; they're like vampires, they need to be invited in. So after that's been established the viewer is like, how on earth are the Monks gonna make anyone love them? But then Bill gives her consent because she loves the Doctor and doesn't want him to die? So it's that easy for the Monks to rule over humanity? Then why didn't they use their fancy simulation machine to show the UN Secretary General images of his loved ones having died in the doomsday? Then he would've given his consent because of his love, just like Billy did. Also, consent given out of fear leads to disintegration, and Billy explicitly states he wants the Doctor to live because she's afraid of what would happen to Earth if the he wasn't around. But apparently that doesn't count as fear to the Monks?

The whole idea of "only love can give us power over you" is an interesting concept, but it feels like the writers had to resolve to semantic trickery to get the result they want, it didn't feel justified.

Doctor could've Periscoped his phone view to get the code too.

Just fear us, love us, do as we say and we will be your slaves

xp Yeah, the distinction between the consent given by military top brass and the consent given by Bill was sort of ... a workable distinction in outline, but maybe not in close up.

xp: pretty much all bioengineering facilities, especially those working with potential pathogens, are designed with negative pressure. Air flows in through entrances, etc, but is all sucked out through UV-illuminated HEPA filters in the lab hoods were all manipulation takes place.