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

I've missed most of this season, though I'm not sure that's much of a bad thing with the hit:miss ratio. That one, eh, I didn't *hate* it, but it was pretty boring. And despite liking Clara at first, she's not emerging as any strong character, and ugh, have they been doing the 'sexy doctor' schtick again? Even if it's more of a Donna-Doctor thing where they repeatedly went "oh no, we're not like that", why do they even have to mention it? FFS people, it is possible to have a friendship with a member of the opposite sex without having to CONSTANTLY reaffirm where your sexual relationship is at.

Yeah this was pretty lame tbh. Not as bad as some of the other episodes in the series (ugh, the one with the all the singing!) but nevertheless. This whole plan of running every episode as a stand-alone story has really bitten them in the arse, huh? They've basically engineered a situation (for no good or obvious reason) where they have to come up with twice as many ideas and then have half the time to tell the story.

Is it any wonder that there's no chemistry between Clara and the Doctor? They have 45 minutes to introduce a scenario, develop the plot a bit and then resolve everything ready for next week. And after that, if we're lucky, we get chucked 3 or 4 cryptic sentences as a means of developing the overall plot or 'arc' or whatever as a bonus. Do they really have so little faith in the kids of today to follow a story that runs for multiple weeks?

I've been a pretty big supporter of Nu-Who so far, but I'm coming round to the POV that says that it's time for a change, of showrunner if not of protagonist. I like Smith a lot, but this series has basically been dross and I don't think I'm going to remember a single episode of it in a year or two. The Journey to the Centre of the Tardis as a concept is such a massive missed opportunity for the show.

Bleh. I hope next week ends on a BIG cliffhanger to set up for the 50th Anniversary, which I'm still feeling ought to be something special.

yeah I agree with most of what you've said there Windsor, v otm.

the constant stream of stand-alone adventures is driving me UP THE WALL. and flirty/sexy clara and the doctor is annoying the shit out of me. tight skirts now? FUCK OFF. and..AND! idk how anyone else feels about the cybermen but I have in the past found them somewhat creepy but re-engineering the threat so that they're now basically just Borg was a really stupid idea. part of the scary thing about them was seeing the people in the cybermen factories getting tortured, and now you just have stupid metal sperm things and who cares about that seriously.

oh AND Matt Smith (who I still mostly like) was really kind of terrible at playing the two versions of himself. when he first started doing it I didn't even really get it. It was like watching a bad Jim Carrey impersonation.

he was all bumbling clown again rite

I think he showed the full range of his panto abilities!

Actually, right, I like the tone that he hit for the first half of the show, slightly overplayed but generally a distraction for serious focus - but then my favourite Doctor is McCoy.

idk how anyone else feels about the cybermen but I have in the past found them somewhat creepy but re-engineering the threat so that they're now basically just Borg was a really stupid idea.

this was by far the least shit the Cybermen have been since colour (not counting The Pandorica Opens)

I had high hopes for this since I loved The Doctor's Wife, but this was annoying as an Amanda Palmer TED talk.

The guy who's Ian Levine to Gaiman's Eric Saward has spilled the beans about all the parts that were deleted. Nothing revolutionary - scene setting for the kids in the main, which is why they were shoehorned into The Crimson Horror - but the big reveal is that they were only in it at all on Moffatt's insistence because his plan for the whole series (and why they're single stories) was wacky family hijinks starring Clara's Victorian family. Then he changed his mind once scripts were finished and turned in (this one at least) and had them use modern Clara instead and drop the kids. Presumably there was some undisclosed dick waving between SM and NG about backing down and NG won.

Presumably Gaiman's a professional writer doing a contract job.

Presumably his explicit denial during the week he's replacing Moffatt was just to stop internet rumours.

Presumably his explicit denial was because he'd said to a dude on an international phoner that he absolutely would never take over the job of showrunner, but specifically as long as Moffatt is running it, he'd write another episode if asked; that the journo in question had misunderstood Gaiman, and quoted him onstage at the first Splendid Chaps MICF show as "effectively saying 'oh hells yes!'" to the showrunner question; that after the combined podcast episode went up 16 days later (on the 23rd of April) people started tweeting him saying "I herd u said you wood take over Dr Who will u make the Dr a woman????!?!"; and having never said to anyone that he would take over as showrunner, he bemusedly, if explicitly, denied that he was replacing Moffatt as showrunner.

Exactly.

wacky family hijinks starring Clara's Victorian family

Much as I'm not a fan of this sort of stuff, at least it would be something coherent.

Anyway, the finale is out in the wild - BBC America fucked up with people who had pre-ordered the S7 Part 2 blu-ray and they got it yesterday so have seen The Name Of The Doctor.

In other words, any spoilers you read in the next 7 days are entirely probably right.

emil.y and veg otm re the stupid Doctor/Clara tight skirt boyfriend shit that is dominating every fracking moment of this show now and was bad enough even when it wasn't

I liked the slow start -- the first half of this felt like the best episode of the season by miles. But after Smith got Borg'd it turned into the usual over-paced cobblers. The coda with Willow was so under-written it felt actively odd.

I wanted more menacing kids tbh

Also it's weird to me how much the show is pushing the romance with the Doctor and Clara. It's been all tell and no show, as they haven't had that many scenes together and very little chemistry. Clara and Warwick Davis made more sense than Clara and the Doctor ffs.

Anyway, the finale is out in the wild

oh thank christ

Also it's weird to me how much the show is pushing the romance with the Doctor and Clara.

i've started to think it's just the showrunners thinking she is so pretty that it would be implausible for them not to be constantly referring to the fact that they could be in a relationship.

I found myself in the weird position of wanting more of the jim carrey manic gurning from smith just because the ~inside the doctor's mind~ stuff was so embarrassing and cheap-looking -- especially as it was the kind of image that i could imagine working in a comic where it didn't have to be quite so photorealistic but could be blurry and weird.

I sadly found that to be a complete shambles, almost as bad as the final Tenant 2-parter, and can't believe it was the same writer as The Doctor's Wife (I'm no big Gaiman fan, at least of his work of the last ~15 yrs, but Wife was great I thought). And why does becoming Cyber Controller, ie the big chief enotionless leader (who even taunts the Dr about having emotions) make you into the Joker, obviously relishing your own evil, and full of emotional volatility.

This 50th year ought to have been really special, but instead we get a half-length, half-arsed series.

Did like the new Cybermen, their voices and their creepy shoulder movements. Pity they were mostly wasted in the story.

I didn't like Wife either. Mainly because I don't tend to think of the Tardis as some kind of Helena Bonham-Carter lite kook.

The graphics in that bit looked like a shoddy Dave McKean rip-off.

I think the Doctor's Manichean struggle with the cyber planner was a good idea - reminded me of the old school battles of the wits/wills between the Doctor and a baddie, and the chess game in particular was surely a ref to Curse of Fenrick - but it was so rushed and with all the other stuff going on around it that it just became incoherent.

Those kids were super annoying. I wonder if Gaiman was annoyed at having to include them so to spite Moffat he made the girl a mardy know-it-all and the boy generally useless. Total contrast to the likeable and well-written kids in Sarah Jane Adventures.

not a Fenric riff, but Gaiman was happy to hear of the connection

And why does becoming Cyber Controller, ie the big chief enotionless leader (who even taunts the Dr about having emotions) make you into the Joker

a) CyberPlanner is high on SmithDoctor's emotions and mentalness at this point, would presumably settle into more controlled cyberness once he took over properly

b) it has 100% been a feature of the Cybermen since the series went into colour that they are emotional bitches that just rant on about emotions, especially gloating about not having them

The chess game and the cyberman playing it is obviously the Turk.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turk

Which was previously used, played by a cyberman, in the Eighth Doctor audio The Silver Turk written by Marc Platt.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Silver_Turk

That Neil Gaiman, eh? Full of original ideas.

I thought the use of a midget controlling a bigger device might also have been a callback to he Peking Homunculus in Talons of Weng-Chiang.

Given this was episode 6 I didn't spot the Colin reference. Anybody else?

That Neil Gaiman, eh? Full of original ideas.

Gaiman and Manfred have both said that Gaiman has never listened to a Big Finish, and Manfred only learnt of that story two days before TX. It's a deliberate homage to the IRL Turk, though.

Given this was episode 6 I didn't spot the Colin reference. Anybody else?

Manfred also said that there was no instruction to include sequential Doctor references in the scripts.

If you want to fanwank one, you could either use "I'll explain later," or say it was to the hiatus year.

That's Steve Manfred, "Doctor Who mythology adviser to Neil Gaiman", for those playing along at home.

Heckofa coinky-dink. I don't know, humans always seeing patterns when there aren't any there.

Weird that every other writer this season managed to get a specific reference in, in order, without being told to. Just another amazing coincidence I suppose.

I've heard the "I'll explain later" theory, but I always associate that with Third and Jo. I suppose it could be that the Doctor finally gets to the Nightmare Fair on screen (although hat makes you think of the Celestial Toymaker, and the Doctor playing a game against himself to save he companions).

I don't think I've seen it on this thread - what were the references people were seeing?

for once i actually want to see a massive spoiler but for the life of me i cannot find one

First episode - talks about Susan and being a grandfather
Second episode - the HADS
Third episode - crystal from Metebelis Three
Fourth episode - State of Decay referred to, plus the swimming pool
Fifth episode - talks about dropping off Tegan

Fourth is a giant stretch (if meant to be significant), and there are shitloads of references to other doctors in every episode. Basically the "pattern" is people ignoring every other reference and only highlighting one per ep.

for once i actually want to see a massive spoiler but for the life of me i cannot find one

would have presumed the entire ep could be findable by now.

I don't know, I get that the Fourth ep connection isn't maybe as strong as the others but two of these are major plot points so I guess we're just back at our friend massive coincidence again.

The complete lack of leak information could well point to a faked leak for publicity. Or it could just be a coincidence.

Yeah faked leak sounds like a good call to me. No sign of a torrent anywhere yet, but perhaps more telling, no inflated pre-release copies on eBay that I can see.

Swimming pool is as much an Eleventh thing as anything else, by now.

Could be that BBCA wrote to everyone politely asking not to sell or torrent bcz oops, and everyone's not being cunts.

Which is out of character for everyone, but hey

well, there was this: https://twitter.com/DoctorWho_BBCA/status/333682645403828224

the promise of "a special video" seems like fuckall reward to me, but what do i know.

A special video that's presumably been made already, given Matt Smith now has a shaved head.

i'm sure he could be convinced to wig up for the cause

holy shit i just saw the BEST spoiler and will be watching this weekend (obv i will not say anything here)

bbc america released three spoiler screenshots. the first made me soil myself with glee. the second is obv supposed to indicate something spoilery but i can't work out what it is. the third is just annoying but probably to be expected.

now go wipe yourself off

might bask first

is this first one the one with someone standing out of focus behind someone else?

yes

oh shit i think i just joined some dots between that first screenshot and something said upthread

oh shit

creaming it atm