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

But why didn't Wilf change to the Master?

He was sealed in the ultra-secure glass room when the template thing went off so it didn't affect him. I think they made a handwavey remark to this effect in Part One.

Considering how bad the first part was, it was better than I thought it was going to be.

I thought that too but otoh they would have had to worked HARD to make it WORSE than the first one.

First one wasn't actively bad, just incredibly lazy w/o any storytelling. Portions of the second part are actively bad, e.g. the climax where the Doctor HAD TO CHOOSE, BETWEEN the Master and the Pres., AND HE CHOSE... to shoot a machine, oops.

I hope that 'Geronimo!!!' isn't going to be new Doctor's 'thing'. I've only heard it twice and I'm tired of it.

Loved the ender...though I'm not a huge fan of RTD's endings. Its like Return of the King all over again: aaaaand END (cry!)...but then we'll go here and do some endy stuff that'll make you sniffle...aaaand then we'll go here and do some endy stuff...and look, it's all our friends we're seeing all our friends again...by which time you've run out of juice and the ending doesn't quite stick as well as it would've had we not gone through FIVE endings. minor quibble. Lovely to see Rose again and not in Paralleluniverseville.

Part two was about a zillion times better than part one. I liked the long, drawn-out regeneration stuff at the end.

I liked it, cringy moments and all, or maybe I was just glad there was no more mention of Barack Obammer. but bloody hell, that was some Bollywood death sequence.

Doctor: yes I'm going to die in the next ten minutes. But wait, i gotta do this one thing first. Okay i'm still dying, just one more thing. No wait...
Me: "BRING ON THE CHILD DOCTOR ALREADY!!!!"

also lol'd @ human-timelord metacrisis = instant Master-protection.

so when does the new series start?

btw i expected the new doctor to make a joke about not being able to find eyebrows.

i've had a good feeling about him since i found out about his casting, hope next season lives up to it.

he looks like fun yeah. Like the goofy ties.

Just watched both parts. I enjoyed it, but am torn with the "wow that was epic" sense with the "really? the only way you can write world-altering stories of momentous import is to literally have the entire fucking planet about to blow up/change/etc again?"

Uncollected thoughts:

I liked the contrast of arrogant, vacationing Doctor getting reprimanded by the Ood for fucking around too long. I kinda wish they had kept up the too-hubristically-cocky aspect for the entire story.

I'll agree with what was said above: RTD can do some great character bits and has some great ideas but does have a habit of fucking them all up in the execution.

Bernard Cribbins was excellent. I'm glad that they gave him a full adventure as a proper companion.

Haha: "American" newsreader can't pronounce "Barack."

Dalton was great was the imperious Time Lord with robes and power staff. i liked the exterior shot of the burning house of timelord parliament with all the crashed & smoldering Dalek saucers.

Assembled timelords looking like the Old Republic senate didn't bother me. You have a shitload of members of an interstellar race who have a history of tending to have their heads up their asses. of course their meeting hall is going to look big and pompous.

Didn't expect Jessica Hynes, but that was a cute call-back, as was the "weeping angels."

Super-leapy-lookie-i'm-a-sith Master was enh. If you need a proper Moriarty as a foil, you don't need a superpowered Moriarty. WRITE BETTER, dammit.

Kinda wished Wiggy Mcgann would have put in an appearance.

Nice Davison ref wth the Doctor dying from over-exposure to radiation.

At least Donna got a happy ending.

Superpower Master was there as a big fat clue to the kiddies that SHIT IS FUCKED UP; the only reason he was able to do pyrotechnics was because he was dying. As they mentioned every ten minutes or so, just in case people were not paying attention.

Assembled timelords looking like the Old Republic senate didn't bother me. You have a shitload of members of an interstellar race who have a history of tending to have their heads up their asses. of course their meeting hall is going to look big and pompous.

This - also reminded of the tribunal in A Matter Of Life and Death in some way but I'm sure the pomposity-in-great-hall thing has been alive and well in SF since maybe Metropolis. Not all SF roads lead to Star Wars so this is the part where I sigh and mumble something about Joseph Campbell hero quest 101. Now, was it just me or did they put a fake Princess Leia in the bar to piss off the Star Wars haters?

the 'weeping angels' thing made me sort of... angry? rtd's desperate need to EXPLAIN AWAY EVERYTHING is super-irritating to me, there's something territorial-pissing about it, I'm sure it used to feel like just playful nods to continuity and canon but by now it's like everything has to be tweaked to fit into the rtd-verse.

ok nitpick#1, why would the Doctor seemingly pick a random time to visit Rose (he had to ask her what year it was)?

― mdskltr (blueski), Friday, 1 January 2010 20:31 (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I thought this was obvious, 1st of the year she met ecclescake.

Pleased that the Master disappeared and want explained, I hope he is back although using John Simm might be hard. Also the timelords may find other ways back as well.

xpost to self:

and this obsessive need for there to be no gaps - that stupid queen elizabeth crack e.g. - is just so limiting, and so selfish: it's saying 'if he has an adventure i will be the one to tell you about it', you start to feel as though the doctor is not having adventures when the camera isn't rolling. I've always assumed that the show is supposed to have the feel of 'here are some adventures from the life of that marvellously odd figure the doctor', the way that sherlock holmes stories are only brief episodes from a life, give you the sense that he is problem-solving all the time and we've cherry-picked a few interesting standouts from his casebook. And there are moments in e.g. season three where idk the Doctor and Martha are inexplicably wearing leis at the beginning of the episode and it's barely talked about because their life is like this all the time. But somehow, and maybe it was just in the Donna season - maybe it was just because of things like how interesting Donna's development as a person was - it started to feel less vignette-y and more... biographical. Too totalising. Which is especially irritating because of the 'everything happens on Earth all the time' aspect - if it felt like Stories from the Casebook of the Doctor, you could feel subconsciously a sort of 'ah well, we get stories about Earth because as Earth people that's what we're going to care about', and it wouldn't be so annoying.

I dunno, I guess for me there is something anti-imagination in here, as with the overdetermined emotions of the soundtrack.

good point. but at least with the weeping angels thing it was just a hint to the next series i think - not essential but i liked it.

eyeroll at people acting like "Geronimo" is so much worse than "Fantastic" or "Allons-y"

you're right it's all shit

Bit of a retro 60s pop-art vibe to the new trailer. I approve.

I suppose it's up to Moffat how he develops this stuff, but I'd be surprised if he and RTD didn't consult each other over the changeover.

Yeah there were really obviously teasers for the Moffatt era in here, maybe things that he'd asked Rusty to include. Namely:

- The Weeping Angels as the descended prisons of the 'good' Timelords who didn't sign up to Dalton's plan, it's possibly a way of getting the Timelords back without the dead end RTD's written them into.

- Whoever that woman was, pretty sure we'll be seeing her again.

Also that trailer looks pretty great - think Matt Smith will be brilliant at doing the bewildered young fogeyish academic thing. And I like 'geronimo'.

the 'weeping angels' thing made me sort of... angry? rtd's desperate need to EXPLAIN AWAY EVERYTHING is super-irritating to me, there's something territorial-pissing about it, I'm sure it used to feel like just playful nods to continuity and canon but by now it's like everything has to be tweaked to fit into the rtd-verse.

Pretty sure this is a Moffatt idea rather than a Rusty one.

Also the space canteen section made me realise that in five years Rusty hasn't really created any memorable monsters of his own, and I won't be annoyed at never seeing any of those creatures ever again. Especially the Ood.

Ood as noble savage-esque simple wise folks of the galaxy or w/e is very, very annoying.

The dialogue in this was really terrible, plus they dragged it out something rotten. I didn't enjoy it at all.

Bernard Cribbins I think would have been v good as the doctor.

RTD's best monsters are the kind that likes to take over human bodies and don't really have a form of their own. xp

so why didn't the gallifreyans do this the last time the master took over the world

the master didn't have 6 billion masters trying to triangulate the signal before (man that sounds so lame when you're trying to explain it).

oh ok

Rusty monsters: I liked the Judoon, mostly for their speech. "Rol gol shol fol mol tol". Lol!

I don't mind the Ood, they look cool at least. They were best in The Impossible Planet. The water monsters in the Mars one were good.

figured it was time for new thread at last

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

At least Donna got a happy ending.

I know, finally!

Said it before upthread, but I'm bored with shape-shifting/possession monsters - done to death, and often seem like lazy writing.

At least Donna got a happy ending.

I was afraid she was going to get killed off, so yeah. But it does make me sad that there's no way she can ever remember her travels w/the doctor. RTD comes up ridiculous hand-wavey explanations to accomplish things, surely he could have found some way to restore her memories.

nice to keep a bit of tragedy - also, sod Donna and her lottery millions

i know i really shouldn't think too hard abt RTD plots but seriously lol @ timelords. of course their plan to escape the time lock would involve relying on the most unlikely and ridiculously specific chain of events ever.

Scuttlebutt is that the Old Woman is Susan, from her place in the heart of things to her reaction to Wilf asking her identity.

o ye forgot about the national lottery like this couldn't get any more shit may as well do this shit thing

I've only just watched it.

Jesus fucking Christ Davies you big fucking bell-end.

Assembled timelords looking like the Old Republic senate didn't bother me. You have a shitload of members of an interstellar race who have a history of tending to have their heads up their asses. of course their meeting hall is going to look big and pompous.

I don't know, I thought it just didn't fit. The Time Lords shouldn't be depicted they way they were in the finale for a couple of reasons. First, because the character of the Doctor is pretty much defined by the fact that's he's a renegade Time Lord. If they all start acting like him, traipsing around the universe en masse, it makes him less interesting.

Second, I always imagined them losing the Time War not because they didn't have the means to annihilate the Daleks, but because they couldn't be bothered to do anything about it until it was too late. Because they are isolationists in the extreme. Just making it a clash between two super-powerful alien races, both perfectly content to fight and take revenge, etc. is kind of boring, and is far outside the realm of Doctor Who. That's Babylon 5 shit.

The Time Lords are supposed to be a pompous but decrepit race, so insular they're a little nuts, like Grey Gardens, not pompous and bombastic. They wouldn't cheer some speechmaking president... they'd all want to make their own speeches before committing to any course of action, and it would be boring as hell and go on for years. That's why the Doctor stole a TARDIS and split!

Well, that was better than the first part. Just.

Yet again with Rusty, he forgets not only main Who continuity, BUT HIS FUCKING OWN. We all suspect that the Doctor might die from jumping out of a spaceship (without even considering that something that needs to survive in a vacuum - and presumably faster-than-light travel - has a hatch you can just lift with your hand, or that while travelling at 400mph minimum you can manage to hit a glass dome, never mind take out the angular effects so you fall vertically) because he dies from a fall in Logopolis and arguably Time and the Rani - but he doesn't. Though we don't need to worry about the radiation (despite the demise of Wurzel Doctor and the Wet Vet) because Rusty wrote in Smith And Jones that the Doctor can absorb enough radiation to kill the entire world and just do a funny dance and shake it out of his foot and be all right. Oh no, wait, we do, it kills him.

We invest over 10 minutes in a piece of melodrama between two characters (including "I'd be proud of you were my dad" OH JUST FUCK OFF AND DIE) in which the WHOLE POINT is that the Doctor realises killing the Master will free the Earth. This then gets entirely undone (in much the same way as the return of Rose ruined the ending of the first EmoDoc series, or that he fucks with the ending of the Catherine Tate series by "subtly" changing "if she remembers it will kill her" to "if she remembers it'll save her, then make her a bit tired") by having Rassilon deus ex machina that plot away as soon as he turns up.

Incidentally, how did Rassilon come back to life after the Five Doctors? And is this confirmation that the Doctor isn't The Other, as surely Rassilon would have called him that?

So, the Doctor killed all the Time Lords and the Daleks in the Time War. WHY THE FUCK IS HE MOPEY ABOUT THEM FROM THE VERY START THEN? Back as far as The End of the World he's talking about how sad it was, despite it having pretty much just happened. In fact, doesn't he blame the Daleks for it in Dalek? And more to the point, as soon as the first dalek turns up doesn't he realise his super weapon failed and there are bound to be Time Lords about as well? The only conclusion that can be made for how it's all got "timelocked" is that the Doctor does it somehow (presumably using "the moment"? This really was a 'cram in as many cool names as I can think of! HOOT!' session), so once you realise your lock is easily picked...

When the plot got resolved (!) and there was still 25 minutes to go the first thing I thought of was Return of the King, and in a way this story was very much like that - you'd sat through enough shite before then that you were still vaguely interested and had to see it through, but you knew it was time utterly wasted that you would never get back and you felt kind of dirty and used afterwards.

Let's put it another way. The End Of Time was about the same length as an old 6 parter, in fact looking at the DVD cover I see it's 7 minutes shorter than Genesis of the Daleks which is probably nearly all consumed in the extra credits. So, let's try and rewrite Genesis so it follows the same structure as the End of Time:

Ep 1: Nyder magics Davros using The Secret Books of the Thals from some dust and a used tissue. Some daleks using their brand new extra fast flying power and the Doctor run about on the wastes of Skaro not really chasing each other shouting EXTERMINATE and JELLY BABIES at each other. Harry gets some other people from the Navy to help him find Sarah Jane, who he thinks might be in Orpington.

Ep 2: The Doctor and Mogran have a long chat about how Sarah Jane could get a man if she just wore better clothes and how the Doctor wishes she wasn't in Orpington and was on Skaro. They both cry a bit. We see Davros' laboratory, and Ravon is introduced as a comedy gay.

Ep 3: Davros works in his laboratory a lot, monologuing and overacting, until the Doctor and Mogran arrive. He announces he has perfected his dalek. SLOW PULL BACK TO LONG SHOT SHOWING GIGANTIC DALEK FACTORY. MILLIONS UPON MILLIONS OF THEM. HOOT!

Ep 4: Harry and Sarah Jane turn up, then Sarah passes out and Harry gets stuck in a giant clam. The Doctor has a long chat with Bettan about how he'd like her to adopt him. Bettan gives him the Time Ring.

Ep 5: It turns out that the Time Lords let Nyder resurrect Davros deliberately just so they could put The Doctor in the position of feeling a bit awkward. They let him wonder for a bit about whether he should kill him or not before magicking away all the daleks, turning Davros back into dust again, ending the war on Skaro, unmutating all the Kaleds and Thals, waking up Sarah, freeing Harry and activating the Time Ring to send them all home.

Ep 6: The Doctor takes Harry and Sarah, gets them on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and slips them the answers. He then goes to stand about and look at Jo Grant, Liz, Jamie, Zoe, The Brigadier, Victoria, Ben, Polly, Vicky, Dodo, Steven, Ian, Barbara, Susan and Sara Kingdom from a distance, twiddling the end of his scarf. A Wirrn appears and they both look a bit sad. Then something blows up, so the episode finsihes with a bang.

Hardly a classic, is it.

So, farewell Rusty. I suppose the best thing I can say about you is that you hung about for shorter than JNT.

DOUBLE DEAD LOCK THREAD.

damn dude

don't like that the master dresses down. hoody and jeans? shape up man.

whoas
xposts

tho also
lols
awesome

i don't know how i feel. sorta annoyed by 'plot'/'rationality' but also, shrug. i miss tennant's doctor already, sigh.

Thought the end of Genesis of the Daleks was pretty ropey in its own right TBH.

Hush you.

don't like that the master dresses down. hoody and jeans? shape up man.

As far as I can tell from Britishes new outlets a hoodie is the most SINISTER thing a person can wear in public.

So it works as a super-bad-guy top.

It doesn't really connote Machiavellian genius tho but.