Doctor Who 2008: Sontarans cometh, RTD Ood 'ave 'im etc.

I actually thought this episode was terrific, best Xmas special ever, up until Cyber-Kirwan at which point it jumped the shark very quickly. Main reasons:

1. Female mind too powerful for the Cybermen to conquer is starting to get tired as a plot device.

2. Giant Cyberman smashing up a city is BRILLIANT but why do it in the middle of the industrial revolution? That idea needed a proper season finale with guns and spaceships and things.

3. Nobody said "nobody steps on a church in my town".

I enjoyed it. Was this the first time since the show restarted that they've actually shown video or even images of the old series?

Also, I heard there was going to be some Adric ref in this. Was it cut, or did I miss it?

The children bit was enh; yes I know you needed something to push the guy over the edge and you wanted to really drive home the "THIS IS DICKENSIAN LONDON" part, but come on...

They're never going to have the original cyberman back, are they? No more Mondas/Telos ones?

I am so drunk I forgot this was on today. Will bittorrent now. Thank you all.

Well...twas better than the ridiculous Spaceship Titanic + Kylie we got last year. And steampunk is always fun. That said, Cybermen feel a bit tired at this point, and the initial idea was interesting and different enough that the episode deserved a better conclusion. Still, better than pretty much all but the first of Davies' Christmas Specials.

Ripping to shreds of Donna in that Christmas Special was great.

This one was alright, just felt weirdly superfluous. Still, amusing enough, and not terrible, so pretty much a win.

Ripping to shreds of Donna in that Christmas Special was great.

Agreed! Horrible and great.

yeah i liked this right up to when not-actual-Doc started getting his memories back and then it just got silly.

so uh now that cybermen have escaped from the void, i'm guessing this opens the possibility for the return of more freakin' daleks too (not the ones who were with davros but the ones who were sucked into the void at canary wharf).

I think it's sort of sweet that people imagine there's any kind of continuity across episodes beyond what's expedient.

Ahh aldo, I missed you so.

Nice episode. Head + shoulders above the horrible Kylie one. Cyber-Kirwan was a bit much but there were some really touching ideas throughout.

Very very obvious that Davies has run out of plots, though.

Oh and nice to see ALL the Doctors in correct order for probably the first time since the new series began. It's as though the new production finally feels comfortable acknowledging the old one.

I have a couple of other questions - those "info stamps" were like little Flash memory fobs right? How was it they were also used as weapons? And how did they end up among the faux Doctor's luggage in the first place?

They backfire and explode Cybermen or something. Spacey-wacey timey-wimey.

This Confidential is 3x as long as it needs to be.

To answer your second question, they ended up amongst his luggage because oh I don't know.

Why did the cybermen's giant engine require children? Turning wheels and ropes? Anyone?

dr said it was an 'engine' but he meant power plant turbine thingy. no energy grid in victorian london, and building a giant steampunk robot takes a lot of energy. and cybermen are above that kind of cheap physical labour.

Wouldn't a hole big enough for that thing to have come out of have drained the Thames?

No, stop it. I'll be here all day.

WIBBLY-WOBBLY TIMEY-WIMEY

the info stamps seemed less flash memory fob and more, uh, self-illuminating portable microfiche? it seemed like the faux-doctor turned up in london, discovered the cybermen (in the cellar of his new house where they had the void whatsit set up?), grabbed around for something to defend himself/family with and found a cache of infostamps, somehow picked up a damaged one about the doctor and aimed it at a cyberman in panic, pushed back the cyberman and convinced himself from the images that he was the man the infostamp was about, and took the rolls of infostamps with him as he left. Making infostamps into weapons was never explained beyond a reversing-the-polarity timeywimey handwave.

faux-doctor's little child was so artfully made up and wooden I assumed he was some kind of evil child doll who would secretly relay their plans to Ms Red Dress and got really confused when both faux-doctor and doctor took him on absolute trust. && i too sat there going 'you have an army of strong robots and you are using children to do manual labour? srsly ffs why not use them at least for something robots are bad at doing like distinguishing objects, darning, writing novels, etc'. plus 'woah this time the baddie is 1) clever and disaffected 2) a man-hater 3) a bad mother (mother, workhouse owner, what diff)' it's like the perfect RTD trifecta.

on the other hand, GIANT ROBOT STAMPING ON LONDON YESSSSSSS

haha timeywimey xposts.

ah, sorry, workhouse matron, not owner. whooo, even more bad-mother-tastic.

I'm really glad it's having a 'break' because I'm starting to get really bored with it.

Decent enough, but they solved the David-Morissey-Doctor mystery way too early -- the story sort of lost all its tension after that and became something of a rote "get the baddies" episode.

Still, having said that, it was relatively free of embarrassing RTD-isms, and Tennant was as good as ever. Could've done with a bit more of him, actually.

They're never going to have the original cyberman back, are they? No more Mondas/Telos ones?

This is a good thing. New Cybermen >>>>>> Original 'here have some gold aaah you're dead now' Cybermen.

The most chilling incarnation I've seen is in Tomb of the Cybermen, though. That's a creepy fucking story.

But 70s and 80s Cybermen tended towards the crap side, yes.

Oh it's just a matter of time before the gold comes back in. Maybe Moffat will restore the Ice Warriors first.

. whooo, even more bad-mother-tastic.

Yeah, that's what I noticed. Either we have the one mom who's dead or the other who's the shrill evil destroyer of everything.

everything is better than the 1st xma special which was the wort dr who episode ever.

It's almost as if you were all watching this sober.

Yeah, Steampunk hi-jinks involving a Gundam-style giant Cyberman piloted by a raging dominatrix? Plot holes just don't come big enough to spoil that for me, hard as they tried.

everything is better than the 1st xma special which was the wort dr who episode ever.

Aw, man. That's totally my favourite. The ridiculous words/blood thing. The first real taste of Tennant. "Doesn't she look tired?" It was ridiculous in all of the right ways. And yeah, I wasn't sober, but definitely wasn't drunk enough when I sat down to see this.

It was horrid!!! It put me off tennant til girl in the fireplace. Not that he was even in that xmas special much.

Actually liked this one...a) it had an actually story, b) it didn't start with a retarded car-chase or over the top hijinks of the hilarious kind, c) no trombone playing bloody santa robots...and wasn't complete and total ASS like the past, what, 3 Christmas Specials at least? The last one I liked was Doctor In A Coma. Oh, and the end of the Scorpion Queen one where he gets all mean and kills everyone and gives the kiddies nightmares.

Favorite thing about this one: When Dr Who says of the balloon/tardis, "It's a b'loon!"

first Christmas ep easily the best of the 4 so far

New Doctor Who to be announced on Saturday

I quite enjoyed this Xmas Dr Who. I was glad that David Morrissey was a false doctor and not the real one.

I'm really hoping it is Chiwetel Ejiofor, I am going to be disappointed if it isn't now.

If they hire fugster Nesbitt I don't know what I will do.

I liked David Morrissey and thought he was excellent as the false dr, but yeah, let's have something a bit different.

Please let it not be Nesbitt as he is Mr Spacecadet's least favourite person ever and I will never be allowed to watch it again and every mention of it will provoke many hours of bitter ranting

(I may have said this already)

Mr. Spacecadet sounds like a very reasonable man and a sound judge of character.

Chiwetel Ejiofor doesn't seem cocky enough.

His replacement - the eleventh Doctor of the TV series - will be revealed in a Doctor Who Confidential programme on BBC One at 1735 on 3 January.

haha, have your standard twitter/facebook groups been set up for this yet?

Who is Matt Smith?

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1741002/

Looks more like the singer in a crap indie band called Doctor Who and the Jing Jang Ting Tings.

Yep. Bookies must know something, eh?

http://www.betfair.com/Index.do?mi=21313290&ex=1&rfr=3013

He's like Anne from Arrested Development -- Him?

Moffat said youngest yet plus something about them knowing who they wanted partly because of his hair...so Matt Smith then

Ew, worse than Sylvester McCoy. He'll probably start off playing the spoons.

I just don't get why they'd want some young no account.

he's been marked as 'one to watch' for a while plus can see why they wouldn't want to pick someone older than Tennant. i don't think he's a bad choice at all, seems like one of the best suggestions (at least look-wise).