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

continual relentless pace + massive revelations of this series I'm finding a bit wearing.

I concur. There's just too much shouting all the time, the stakes are always too high, it's all too hysterical. I got bored about halfway through and wished the Doctor would die, just to shut everyone up for five seconds.

I really liked the antibodies, especially the jerky way their tentacles moved. There was something very old-school about it.

The meal being made out of it is that either: she ages normally for 5 years then spends 20 at the same age and then starts aging again; she ages really slowly for 25 years then starts aging normally, or she ages normally for 25 years then wipes 20 years off her age then ages normally agin.

Mels ages at the same age as Amelia/Amy from when they start school to the present day i.e. 15 years. She was a toddler over 20 years before Amelia. Something isn't right about that and it has nothing to do with Timelords not growing up.

think a bit of a meal is being made out of this - we know time lords grow up otherwise the entire programme wd be about a group of time travelling infants. that's unless you want to embrace the idea they're formed as adults in the first place, which they aren't iir some master/doctor childhood episode from a while back.

Exactly, and see also Susan, who was ageing into adulthood at a normalish human rate. Very deliberately excluded from this discussion is whatever nonsense the spin-off books probably had to say about Time Lords and their childhoods.

Also, it's always been fairly apparent that most Time Lords are able to finely adjust their looks, when regenerating at least, and possibly at other times--see the Master, Romana, etc--whereas the Doctor has always been a spectacularly bad regenerator, often being knocked out of action and being very confused for some time afterwards.

But they've fairly explicitly said she isn't a Time Lord she's a "child of the TARDIS", whatever that is, so comapring her to The Master or Romana doesn't work. All we know about Susan is for the few months she's at Coal Hill school she appears to age at the same rate of the other children there, which isn't very much. The only other reference we have is that she ages at the same rate as other Time Lords as seen in The Five Doctors.

Melody/River is spectacularly bad at whatever it is she does with TARDIS energy (not regenerating, it's more like what happened to Jenny in The Doctor's Daughter), turning into a toddler in a big city is shockingly inappropriate.

Mels ages at the same age as Amelia/Amy from when they start school to the present day i.e. 15 years. She was a toddler over 20 years before Amelia. Something isn't right about that and it has nothing to do with Timelords not growing up.

There's room to do plenty more with this if they really want, but Moffatt's covered it just as much as he needs to by having River note that she's able to control her appearance. I don't see a problem since he made a point of addressing it in the episode.

But she can only do that because she's still 'regenerating', also from the dialogue.

Re Melody/River's ageing: Apparently it's a TV show, and for dramatic purposes things that are unlikely to happen within any logical framework do, nevertheless, happen.

no, in the dialogue she says she's going to change her appearance every year just to freak people out

Oh OK, didn't catch that bit.

River says "I might take the age down a little, just gradually. To freak people out."

So did the Doctor showing up in a tux indicate he had gone off to do some timey wimey business before he came back to River?

I don't know about this episode....there were some elements I really liked and I thought Smith and Kingston were excellent, but some things bothered me. For example, the Poochie-ness of Mels.

All I could think about was The Numskulls. I wonder if Moff was a Beano reader as a kid.

or was it the Beezer?

Wikipedia says it was in the Beezer in my day (and Moffat's)

Oh yeah, one thing I totally shook my head at: when River saves the Doctor, they say "you used up all your regenerations at once" - thus implying that the Doctor now has all her extra regenerations and can get around the 'only x number' problem, right?

I actually think they resolved that issue on an episode of Sarah Jane Adventures. That's what someone told me. I've never seen it.

"I might take the age down a little, just gradually. To freak people out."

so clearly River has control over her ageing, whether being able to keep pace with Amy and Rory, or possibly remaining a toddler for a while.

The doctor might not have that control over his appearance but it wouldn't necessarily be a time lord vs child-of-tardis thing - you could see her whole "shh, i'm concentrating on a dress size" thing as she regenerates as being similar to Romana trying on different appearances before she settled on the Lalla Ward look.

Yep, in dramatic terms, the impression I got was River Song, 'I've got this great new power but no responsibility, that I'm just going to play around with because it's fun' v the Doctor's 'I've got this power, which a) I take seriously, but b) I also don't really know how to use and can be a bit clumsy with. (In his character the two feed into each other obv). See also their respective attitudes to navigating/using the Tardis.

"I might take the age down a little, just gradually. To freak people out."

Hm. Joke about Alex Kingston being younger when she first started playing the character, but later in the character's timeline? Problem is these throwaway jokes then end up having repercussions in the series world.

Just saw this.... loved it. Not sure about the objections. Also like the idea of Hitler still in the cupboard at the end of the episode.

I noticed

1) Rose, Martha, and Donna were all translucent holograms
2) Little Amelia wasn't. Did Doctor (or plasticy other Doctor that we're all assuming is running around the universe) go back in time, get fish-fingers and custard Amelia Pond and bring her into the TARDIS to help currently-dying Real Doctor?
3) Still assuming the season 5 ep. 1. TARDIS sound indicates that Amelia Pond received a second Doctor visit, and that this is tied into timey-wimeyness, possibly w/ some memory modification or the Silence monsters removing all traces of memory.
4) Next week's episode looks properly scary.

Actually, I have one objection to the episode. Only one: the line "Mel – she's our best friend" could have been handled a little better. If instead, Amy had said something like "Mels, she's a girl that we've known forever" or just omitted the line entirely.

I didn't rate this weeks episode. I found it watchable but a bit annoying, it just feels like a soap opera. I guess I like Who when it is about aliens or something being broken, killed, saved e.t.c. When it is all about the characters, I get a bit bored? They are the vehicles to shit that happens, I hate all the lovey dovey stuff.

3) Still assuming the season 5 ep. 1. TARDIS sound indicates that Amelia Pond received a second Doctor visit, and that this is tied into timey-wimeyness, possibly w/ some memory modification or the Silence monsters removing all traces of memory.

she did, in season 5 ep. 13

Oh! Duh. I forgot that :/

AHOY GERMAN SPEAKERS

can anyone make out what the soldiers are yelling at River as she walks towards them after jumping out the window?

IMPORTANT W0RK-RELAT3D Q

"my dog's got no nose"

"Wenn ist das Nunstück git und Slotermeyer? Ja! Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!"

btw everyone worrying about lack of self-contained eps
6 ǝposıdǝ ʎq pǝʌɹǝs-ʃʃǝʍ ʎɹǝʌ ʎʃıddɐɥ ǝq ʃʃıʍ

poo8

5318008

poo 34+

4) Next week's episode looks properly scary

Hell yeah.

Aren't we jumping the gun a bit about Mel's ageing? We don't actually know if she's the same regeneration as the 1969 NYC girl. After all, we didn't actually see who the girl regenerated into.
One of Moffat's trademarks has been the deliberate use of apparent continuity errors, so he's always a step or two ahead of the moaners.

Sorry, that probably sounded a bit antagonistic. No malice intended. Just think it's a TV show, let's not get too worked up about minor quibbles and enjoy the ride.

We do know. She said "The last time this happened I became a toddler in New York in 1969."

What's the odds of episode 13 having the Doctor pick her up straight after the regeneration and transport her as a toddler to 90's Leadworth? Kind of thing Moffat would do, really.

Except she says at one point that it took her ages to track Rory & Amy down.

that was so so so so so much better than any episode titled "Let's Kill Hitler" has any right to be

^^^^

see River on a rampage was so much FUN

also seeing them address the whole back-to-front River/Doctor existence thing we were talking about upthread was great

Fair enough Aldo, I missed that. Still the Doctor transporting young Mel to 90s Leadworth idea did cross my mind.

Well that sucked. (mostly)

I was thinking it was probably Gatiss' best episode to date. Felt like Sapphire & Steel to me rather than Doctor Who though.

Really, really good one. I was also feeling The Avengers. Spot on. Well done, that man etc.

A chunk of why I didn't like it was to do with how glaring the 'homagey' bits were

Thought that was very good, I thought. The quieter start did wonders for the atmosphere, also allows this Doctor to play to his strengths. More watchful, seeing the boy's face from the curtains. The bedroom/wardrobe stuff was unnerving. And I liked the juxtaposition between Georgian mansion and tower block. Felt a bit hoary, with the dolls (is it Chucky I was reminded of?). Plus the 'just needed to be cared for' resolution feels like it's a once-or-twice a series thing now in the Doctor Who episodes. This was reasonably touching though - perhaps because human parents taking care of alien was a decent version of it. Slightly reminded me in tone of that Sherlock Holmes story where some play is made about a mixed-race child iirc, playing straight into Victorian neuroses, but having a conclusion born of a compassion. (only mention that because it was written by Gatiss).

Two cupboards in the first two episodes.

I thought it was a bit hugging and learning, but I suppose the more you hammer home the message that giving birth to children isn't the be-all and end-all when it comes to loving them, the better things are, really.

PS I am a bit drunk.

Thought that was very good, I thought.

must be right because i thought so much about it.

wish I was a bit drunk.

matt was great and the dad was good; the kid was weak and the end was rushed: it was a "fear her" do-over, really

was there any set-up clue that they were in a doll's house? was the doll's house in the cupboard because george was scared of it (why?) or just anyway? it handwaved at details like that quite a lot: like the lights going on five times stuff -- connections sort of half-made without quite popping home -- and i think this was partly because it was muddling itself doing homage-y stuff at the same time: i missed sapphire and steel bcz s&s sucked but yes, avengers, poltergeist with the robots working themselves (which he wasn't scared of interestingly)*, paperhouse maybe (also the source of "fear me" of course)...

why did he want amy and rory to become dollies though? what WERE the dollies? manifestations of his will to control his life, or his uncontrollable will to fear?

i was a bit cross the old lady was left to clamber out of the bin bags without getting at least a cup of tea -- that would have been INCREDIBLY traumatic for an OAP! "was that my meds?" yikes...

*in fact all the silhouettes of monsters thrown by his torch were a red herring, i suppose -- hence his not being frightened of the little robots coming alive