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

i'm confused

How so?

So so so so so so so so good. Also so so so so so close to being totally unbelievable and shithouse, but didn't cross that line.

can they just get the saved people (song and pals) out again like with the 4000 (rapture) ppl? if not, why not? (write on only one side of the paper at a time)

They were saved when they were data ghosts rather than whilst in the proces of teleportation, and thus are not 'whole' (that's my guess, anyway).

I hope Donna meets up with her fella again.

Saved after you've been killed = you still dead

There were quite a few references to other Moffat episodes in this, "Everybody Lives!", "I'm always alright", and people disappearing because Donna blinked.

Can't believe all these muppets didn't realise she was Mrs Who after the first part. "River Song" = Anna Livia Plurabelle in Finnegans Wake which was a clue too I think.

the strength of denial is surprising haha

i warmed to her, fine

really liked this ep. seemed to pull off the matrix-y stuff by appealing to sentiment but whatever!
glad the shadow monsters go their world back

At what point was it revealed that River was his future wife? I thought it was - quite deliberately - never said.

There were quite a few references to other Moffat episodes in this, "Everybody Lives!", "I'm always alright", and people disappearing because Donna blinked.

It also had a couple of mini scares that Moffat likes to build in: the Miss Evangelista reveal was one, and the "there are only 5 of us - how come there's 6 people in here" harked back to Empty Child/Doctor Dances "then who's typing?" type shocks.
Though my favourite was the first brief glimpse of Miss Evangelista's Victorian gothic dress just moving out of frame. Strange, unexpected and slightly unsettling at the same time. I love this kind of stuff, it reminds me of the unnerving moments that would regularly crop up in '70s children programmes like The Enchanted Castle, Moondial and Children of the Stones.
Seems like it's been a long time since there's been anything to weird the kids out like that.

"We're not real, are we mummy?" = way to give kids existential nightmares. would've totally boggled 9-year-old me.

loved all the time-loopy stuff that Moffat does so well too.... the doctor wouldn't have known he was going to meet her later if he hadn't met her first, and he wouldn't have met her first if he hadn't met her later. it's basically the same narrative trick used in Bad Wolf, but executed far better.

At what point was it revealed that River was his future wife? I thought it was - quite deliberately - never said.

yeah - she winds up being "saved" (grand pun there) and in the matrixy heaven-world, and there's THREE kids in beds, but there's no matrix doctor for her - i don't understand the talk about her being the doctor's wife, in short (other than speculation)

i'm also still sort of confused about her sonic screwdriver - was it never the doctor's, it was always hers? and he gives it to her because of the bit that happened at the end and he basically just needs to return it to her? implying that at some point she manages to escape from the matrix?

Having not seen it yet I'll take a punt at...past wife? Also have just driven self crazy rearranging 'riversong' to get Rose something. Must dash.

It's the Doctor's screwdriver - he's worked out a way to modify it in the intervening years to enable it to save her essence or whatever as she dies. He gives it to her at their last meeting because he knows she's about to go to the Library to die.

They were careful to not say out loud "OMG I am Mrs Who how d'ya like them apples???" but there were so many joking references - "You're fighting like an old married couple", "so I'm not allowed to have a career?" and the Doctor's assertion that there is only one circumstance in which he would tell somebody his name, that it seems hugely churlish to pretend that River Song - like I said, that's the archetypal everywife of Finnegans Wake, right? - can be anybody else.

Three kids, I think, was the reiteration of Donna's two children plus CAL herself, who I think is who River was tucking in at the end there.

Also it's stated that the Doctor comes to visit her in Cyber-Heaven, and since he's not dead there's no permanent digitized version of him.

*pushes glasses back up bridge of nose*

xposts It doesn't matter who the sonic screwdriver belongs to. it's a loop.

let's say he's aged 900 now and she's 40. and let's say when he's 906, travelling through time, he happens to meet her when she's 20 years old. they have 20 years of fun together, he gives her the screwdriver... and then when she's 40, she calls him to the library using the psychic paper. BUT she gets 900-year-old Doctor instead of 906-year-old.

future doctor passes screwdriver to river song ---> river song passes it to current doctor ---> current doctor saves dead river song in data bank and keeps the screwdriver, so that in his future he can pass it back to river song.

she's his future wife/companion/something, he is her past husband/companion/something. the hint that she's his future wife = wot noodle vague said.

Wow, I really liked this one, too.

argh yes - his future being her past is what's making my head spin i think

Screwdriver got all bollocksed in the zappo machine thingy, didn't it?

Don't normally like watching them explicate everything in Confidential but saw a bit last night where the writers were pointing out that the screwdriver, like the psychic paper, is really just a mcguffin that doesn't bare thinking about too hard.

Yeah, I figured the screwdriver gets fried-out in the exchanger. My question on the resolution was what actually happened to the microbes?

Also, I did like how this ep had both the scary aspects for the younger kids and the romantic bits for the, well, older kids. The face reveal and getting chased by two skeletonized astronauts would have done me in at age 7, especially since I had just decided that I wanted to be an astronaut when I grew up*.

*heh, my astronaut ambitions were, of course, far before I knew what Houston was actually like.

xp

doctor made a deal: they buggered off for one day, so that the humans can evacuate the planet.

i wanted donna to meet her stutterer again.

WE ALL DID.

Just another THING that went on in this episode. So many THINGS.

I can't help wondering how kids dealt with the plot in this story. 'Er indoors got lost and she's not thick, so most kids would've just ignored it outright, probably.

i got lost but i am pretty thick re: tv show plots

last week's felt so wide-open, and deliberate, and slow, and this one was crammed very very full - no time to even catch one's breath or process what has just happened

Donna and the stuttering guy was almost wickedly cruel at the end, especially if Ms Noble is not expecting to live out the series.

xposts hehehe it doesn't matter really for us or for the kids. moffat makes it look so easy, just taking the concept and making it seem like a standard who plot - doctor and donna go somewhere, meet some people, some scary THINGS happen, doctor saves the day.

"Blink" had multiple, interlocking time-loops and is prob more mind-boggling if you thought about it too hard... this episode only had one loop. it's just that in this ep, the Doctor's in the position of Sally Sparrow and we're just freaked out cause we're not used to the Doctor not knowing shit.

at one point she says "so you KNEW i'd die this way all along!" and that threw me completely - made me think that somehow the doctor had lived through this all before or something

haha..."so you will have knew I'm going to have died this way when you meet me for the second first time"

What did Douglas Adams invent to describe events that were about to have happened in the future?

if the shadow people originated in the books/library/forest on this planet, why did they suddenly appear at that point causing the library to save everyone?

they said they'd "hatched" so maybe they'd just been like.. gestating until then?

Their breeding cycle meant the spores in the books all hatched at the same time.

i was talking to a who fan with kids (yes kids) and he says they didn't find this any more or less scary than other stories. if anything less so because the doctor always seemed safe and in control.

for sci fi types there were no surprises in the resolution of this story, but it was a well executed telly example of everything it keyed off.

there were a few moments when the doctor talked way too fast at the exact moment that he was explaining something crucial - i know that's his schtick but still

I'll be contrarian, as usual, and say it was OK, but not great, certainly the lesser episode of the two.

I watched it in the same room as a four year old who was by turn confused ("why is he doing that") and bored ("that happened last week", "I knew that already") but not scared in the slightest.

Yet again, the Doctor completely sidelined in his own show. What did he actually do apart from put the dead astronauts in the computer at the end?

I guess I'm just not cut out for modern television.

what was the ultra-emo line? something about "you've got the two necessary ingredients for genius: you're brilliant.... and unloved"

Did get a kick out of a television show known for scaring children on/behind sofas showing a terrified child on a sofa watching the doctor on television.

Also, I was randomly thinking earlier about how the show can wander thru genre, and how horror can permeate into both science fiction and fantasy, even as opposed as SF & fantasy are. I was trying to come up with the dividing line, a threshold of when your standard Who episode crosses the line from having your standard plot-required threatening monster/alien/situation.

e.g. why/how Blink was horror and Girl in the Fireplace wasn't.

haha, I said at the time that RTD would have written it so that she would have jumped behind the sofa, and was pleased that Moffatt hadn't been that obvious.

My six year old super-fan nephew was suitably unnerved by elements in last week's ep; particularly the concept of being dead but still conscious. I'm pretty sure he'd have found more to make his head spin in this week's.

Next week's episode sounds pretty damn good as well.

The screwdriver's not in a loop...
1. Future Doctor, with knowledge of River Song's death, makes screwdriver and gives it to her.
2. She carries it around until she dies.
3. Present Doctor uses it to save her to VR heaven. It gets fried in process.
4. The end.

My missus absolutely convinces River Song was the Doctor's missus. Also her little whisper suggests the Doc's name not as long and complicated as Romana's full Time Lady name.

Yeah the loops in this episode weren't actually that complex, compared to Blink at least, and the screwdriver isn't in any loop. Kudos to Moffatt for not putting any kind of date on when this was all happening, leaves a lot of scope for fleshing out around this story in the future. This was kind of his manifesto for getting the lead writer gig, maybe.

What did he actually do apart from put the dead astronauts in the computer at the end?

Struck a deal with the maneating shadow microbe dudes to let everyone in the computer leave the planet. Nothing could have happened without him being there, as opposed to the Ood one where he didn't actually need to be there at all.

Having to write River Song in at some point in the future is potentially awkward though, unless they've already signed the actress up for the 2010 series. I almost wanted this to be conveniently wrapped up in one episode.

The Donna in the computer stuff really could have had a whole series devoted to it, slow exposition and all that. People whinge about the slow pace of the answers arriving in Lost but this episode kind of showed what happens when you squeeze some brilliant ideas into not quite enough time. This is a minor quibble though and I can't wait to see what will happen when Moffatt gets the chance to work an over-arching plot over the course of a season or so.

Kudos to Moffatt for not putting any kind of date on when this was all happening

Think the Doctor might've said it was the 51st Century somewhere near the beginning of the first part.

Yeah, Wikipedia confirms that. Gosh I'm good at this geek thing.

Hang on how come there's no series next year??? ;_;

i am enjoying your being good at teh geek thing! :D
xpost
:(

No series because Tennant has other commitments and Rusty wants to do his Big Last Important Thing, so it's just four one-off specials (don't know if that includes Christmas, proper geeks to thread). Then it's back to normal the year after with Moffat at the helm.

Having to write River Song in at some point in the future is potentially awkward though, unless they've already signed the actress up for the 2010 series. I almost wanted this to be conveniently wrapped up in one episode.

I got the feeling it was wrapped up, and we don't have to meet her again - I got enough from what we saw there to get a sense of his future/her past together without them actually having to ever get round to explicitly showing any of it.