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

The White Guardiman

The old episodes total about …7,000 minutes of viewing? A 7-year-old sitting down to watch an episode of a TV show with their dad should not be expected to do SEVEN THOUSAND MINUTES of homework beforehand, just because you’ve been watching since the 1980s.

i mean you even quoted the bit where i said "catch-up videos/webpages are everywhere". also i seriously doubt anyone's going to sit through all 24 minutes of the hand of fear pt 3 hoping to learn how old the doctor is in 2017 (he said it twice in this episode iirc).

that said, i do see the logic behind your overall point but i still wish they'd stop doing it.

my vague 7,000 minutes estimate was only for the new series btw! (bcz you said reboot/12 yrs) and catch-up webpages are even more like homework. send them to the library to read Jean-Marc L'Officier and Peter Haining, why don't you.

that said, i do see the logic behind your overall point but i still wish they'd stop doing it.

if you'd rather swap the delightful extended "Bill figures out the TARDIS" riff for idk, whatever Nyssa said on her first trip or s/t, just hold tight for the glorious Chibnall era of brute functionality I guess

7,000 minutes sounds like so many minutes

I think Nyssa said "where's my father?"

Hand of Fear is a pleasure to watch because it features the pinnacle of Sarah Jane Smith wardrobe choices, the triple star overalls.

It's a strange place to do an intro for new viewers. Same doctor, same showrunner. I suppose they just took a year off, but still.

This episode felt aimed at younger children than usual, which wasn't a bad thing. Straightforward, fast paced plot, very likable lead performances (Capaldi looking very alien these days), a fun pantomime baddie in Nathan Barley. The kids were annoying though.

It's a strange place to do an intro for new viewers. Same doctor, same showrunner. I suppose they just took a year off, but still.

Sic's very reasonable point was that every year will bring a cohort of kids just old enough to take an interest in it, more so after a year off!

I sort of agree that this was aimed at younger children aside from the whole "child murdered in front of the Doctor as he leaps to save his sonic screwdriver" scene

very likable lead performances (Capaldi looking very alien these days)

his very first shot (in reaction to the elephant) was the best part of the whole episode

Sic's very reasonable point was that every year will bring a cohort of kids just old enough to take an interest in it

Yep, my eight-year-old niece started watching it this season, as did my sister, who hasn't seen it since Peter Davison era. They both liked Smile - don't think they'd have enjoyed "The Magician's Apprentice" very much. (I didn't either, speaking as someone who knows what a Lungbarrow is.)

I'd personally much rather the show prioritised pleasing pre-teens over adult whovians.

first one i've really enjoyed for a while. excellent and weird from beginning to end.

Also just read this - Doctor Who in Binaural Sound.

Just had a quick listen on headphones, and i didn't think it was really noticeable, but then it's hard to tell without the ability to compare what it sounds like without it. Obviously seemed most effective with noises off. It did highlight again how good this episode is - the part sound plays reminded me slightly of The Stone Tape, or Peter Strickland's experiments in film sound as a space. The binaural aspect (even as a notion) works with the idea of the fabric of the house itself being malevolent, and surrounding and sealing you in. So ok, it doesn't really push any boundaries there, but I think the idea is present anyway.

xxp- maybe it needs splitting in to two shows, one for kids, one for the real heads, with constant callbacks to Sea Devils, Bessie, Meddling Monk etc

really, really enjoyed this one. david suchet's performance was fantastic

Yeah, I thought the whole ensemble worked really well. It was a really well-paced/structured episode.

starting to wish capaldi had been paired with bill right from the start - they are so good together

My only real complaint is the initial plot Maguffin. They actively make a set of six looking to rent together ("Bill, meet your new housemates") then complain it's impossible to find somewhere decent for six to rent together.

But this is the best TARDIS crew since the reboot, no question. The episodes haven't been perfect, but have been very entertaining.

Once again this felt rushed and badly executed, and it didn't make much sense. The interplay between the Doctor and Bill is what's keeping this series fresh.

it felt neither of those things. what an odd reaction!

That was good - unheimlich. Wood people. Old Hammer Horror landlord (in the right makeup and acting style to 'invoke' it spookily).

Attempts to depict 'students' on TV are always bullshit so I ignored that bit of it.

Might have preferred it if they'd gone straight for the 'Dryads' theme (this would have fit in better with Hammer Horror landlord man via The Great God Pan etc) rather than weird woodlice but you know what, I'm glad they didn't have to explain where the lice came from or what they were, name them, etc.

Another 'swarm' monster like the nanobots ... is this a theme?

Ah it was David Suchet! Of course it was.

My 'that was good' includes DavidM's 'rushed and badly executed' response, I should say. Like always the story moves too quickly with no build-up or savouring, none of the 'students' were real characters and all were too squeaky clean. The creaks and noises in the walls were a bit too obviously malevolent and hammy. Etc, etc. Thing is though they are in this series mostly resolving stories within one episode and that just seems to be the format, which is why it moves too quickly

Great atmospherics, but I agree the plot felt rushed and didn't make much sense. Like, if the magic lice could eat anyone at any time, why did the evil landlord always provide them with exactly 6 students and exactly 20 years apart? Wouldn't six students gone missing at the same time have caused a massive investigation, and wouldn't most of them given their parents etc. their new address, so the cops would quickly come knocking on the house door? Why didn't the landlord just kidnap some random people every now and then and bring them for the lice to eat, thus drawing much less suspicion on house?

Also, I haven't tried the binaural thing, but I do have surround speakers, and it seems they put more effort into the surround mix of this episode than they normally do. In the scene where the knocks were heard all around the house, they were also coming from every corner of my living room. Quite creepy and effective!

Like, if the magic lice could eat anyone at any time, why did the evil landlord always provide them with exactly 6 students and exactly 20 years apart?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C_LN4V4XcAEPF1K.jpg

(from former DWM writer Clayton Hickman on twitter)

sidebar: anyone watching Class, Whovian high school spinoff airing after on BBC America ? Quite enjoying it so far, the kids are all great. Not Misfits level great but at least v watchable & fun (& gross)

Watched the first two eps (shown back-to-back originally), my watching pals didn't bother going further. I made it about ten minutes into the third before noping out.

But the third one was the best of the season so far!

Felt a bit off that the 1977 and 1957 students didn't get to come back to life at the end (and surely if they had, the doc could've just dropped them home at the times they disappeared, solving the "why wasn't this house in the news already?" question) but yeah this was great fun and I think just the right level of creepy for kid viewers (which is something this show has got wrong too often over the last couple of years).

Wishing I'd avoided trailers for this season though, I'd have preferred to have no clues regarding the vault contents.

Presumably it takes 20 years to work through whatever the students are converted to so their constituent parts are used up.

I haven't seen any trailers or read online speculation, but after the latest episode's stinger, it's not very hard to guess, is it? We know it's a humanoid (since it can play the piano), and apparently it finds the death of six students hilarious (since it switches from "Für Elise" to a happy melody after hearing about that). The Doctor is in friendly terms with it, yet the it needs to be kept locked in a vault. It has to be some previously established character, because otherwise its identity wouldn't need to be kept a mystery. And in an earlier episode it knocked four times. So yeah, there's pretty much just one character who fits the bill.

(xmessage)

Yup: Adam

(on a more serious note, I enjoyed this episode a lot, plot holes and all)

I actually thought of Adam when I was trying to come up with other candidates than the obvious one. But surely he's such a loser he wouldn't need to be kept in a massive Gallifreyan vault?

I hope it's a sentient piano.

Of course it's quite possible Moffat is intentionally dropping these clues so we'll be surprised to learn it's someone else than the obvious suspect. But I have a hard time coming up with any other likely candidate?

(xmessage)

I haven't seen any of the pre-reboot episodes, was there a sentient piano among the Doctor's enemies there?

the tardis was a pipe organ once

Maybe in that Eastenders crossover.

they showed both Michelle Gomez (MIssy) and Simms as the Master in the trailers for the season so I don't even think it's mean to be a mystery? The only mystery is how she/they got there and what happened before this season started.

switches from "Für Elise" to a happy melody

pop goes the weasel #classicallytrained

Whatever it ends up being on the actual show it will, in my mind, now be a sentient piano.

Maybe it's the sentient cabbage Tom Baker wanted as a companion

Knock Knock was a snoozefest. Everything had been done before, none of the characters were interesting, mystery solution made no sense. In the bottom 10 for nu who episodes.

i agree, it's monster-of-the-week with a truckload of clearly disposable chums. the ending was fine and the premise was nice. not terrible, not bad, just eh.

Seems like this season they've decided to go down the well-trodden path, at least so far. If we look at what's happened in the individual episodes so far:

Episode 1: Introduces the new companion, who gets mixed up in some mystery in the present day. Solving it requires the Doctor's help, and the companion learns who the Doctor really is. This same formula has been used for the introductory episode of every companion in nu-Who, though I guess it's kinda hard to come up with other ways of doing it? Also, the villain is not evil per se, but simply following a preset code of behaviour, a theme Moffat clearly like, since he's used it many times ("The Doctor Dances", "The Girl in the Fireplace", "The Eleventh Hour", etc)

Episode 2 & 3: With every new companion so far, their second and third episode also follow a specific formula. One of them takes place in Europe's past, where a specific historical event or phenomenon is explained to have involved aliens. The other takes place in far future, where something bad or weird has happened to humanity. Again, they follow the same formula this season. The future episode also involves nanobot antagonists, which has also been done in the series a few times ("The Doctor Dances", "Asylum of the Daleks", maybe some other episodes too, IIRC?). While the past episode has a alien monster that's not really a monster, it's the human(s) who are using it who're the villains, which again has been done several times ("The Beast Below", "Planet of the Ood", etc). Though at least time they did put some effort into addressing the sort of blatant racism a black time traveller might face in past, unlike in "The Shakespeare Code".

Episode 4: Something from European mythology is revealed to really be aliens! Also done quite a few times, most recently in "In the Forest of the Night", which also involved tree spirits. Also, this one has the same "humans are the real monsters" moral as the previous episode, where the monster just wants to eat, and the real villain is the human who keeps feeding it.

So yeah, I guess it's refreshing that they seem to have cut down the continuity references and the intricate season-wide plotting in favour of stand-alone episodes, but it'd be nice if the individual plots were also a bit less formulaic.

So, in short, all the plots and all the monsters of the week have been repeats of things they've done before. I understand that it's hard not to repeat yourself when a series has gone on for so long, but at least Moffat's seasonal arcs in previous seasons provided us with some more unique and innovative scenarios. So I'm hoping something like that is still coming up with this season too.

Oh yeah, and of course the "villain is not evil but following a preset code of behaviour" theme is also repeated in the second episode.