Doctor Who — Page 24

The Journey To The Centre Of The Tardis had some nice moments but no story.

When they tried this sort of thing in Tom Bakers era it was less visually lush but at least it came at the end of a story with twists and turns and interesting characters.

It was highly derivative of Sunshine too.

It's a shame because at times it looked like it was actually going somewhere interesting with certain things returning.

It was also a pity they didn't throw in some bits of architecture from past iterations of the interior (the 'boot cupboard' would have been nice).

Basically this weeks was a Victorian styled remake of Invasion Of The Dinosaurs or the film Moonraker played at triple speed and staring the sub-cast of A Good Man Goes To War/The Snowman.

Like Cold War it really needed to be a two parter and less goofy.

The Talons Of Weng Chiang it was not, it wasn't even The Unquiet Dead.

It was more on par with Gatiss' The Idiot's Lantern.

The Red Batter scenes reminded me of:

Starting with a brief of ,"Make the Cybermen scary again" how the hell did undoubtedly talented Neil Gaiman get to the truly awful Nightmare In Silver?

His previous effort The Doctor's Wife, though highly derivative of the Seventh Doctor comic story Nineveh, was none the less a good watch and one of the best episodes of nuWho.

This week everything fell flat.

The new Cybermen have all the flaws of the Cybusmen but now have Flash like superspeed and walk in bullet-time (yawn).

Their new voices are just as dull as their previous voices.

The occasional quirky character is interesting but why did every character have to be so?

It debases the currency of quirkiness and defuses any possible tension when you have a small army of oddballs facing 6 Million Cybermen doing impersonations of the Raston warrior robot. Even the Cybermen themselves seemed to be quirky in their running through the greatest moments of Cyberhistory.

The disassembled parts doing their own thing was much more menacing in The Pandorica Opens, the rows of three marching towards the screen was more more impactful in Earthshock (even though the false perspective effect was screwed up). Even the elements new to the television show were done better in other media like the Big Finish audios The Silver Turk or The Blue Tooth.

The child actors were awful as were their surplus to requirements characters.

Once again the brevity of these stories and the weird pacing is an issue. If this was a two parter maybe there would have been more breathing room between the scenes and it would at least be on the same level as the equally quirky but better written and sometimes disturbing Revelation Of The Daleks.

I think it's time that Moffat went back into the background and the series went back to telling proper stories instead of billing each episode as a event that is bound to disappoint. I loved most of series five and six but there have only been a few watchable stories since Asylum Of The Daleks and the this year they really should have made more of an effort.

TheBoost said:

I just can't take Colin Baker, with his white man fro, fat face, and clown costume seriously. 

Don't look at this (seriously).

Indeed.

Lots of that sort of thing this week, only one shameful omission and he so deserved to be the main focus of the piece.

More hitting the fast forward button to cover the lack of plot, more teasing of pricks like myself who still pine for the good days of the Doctor when he had exciting adventures in time and space instead of motor mouthing through the building blocks of a pre-season trailer.

The imagery so evocative only served to remind this viewer how insubstantial the show has become recently and how exciting it was only a few years back.

I was walking home the other day and I noticed that being 2013 we were only three years from Paul McGann's one and only onscreen story being ten years old.

Then my face went pale as I realised I was ten years out.

In 2016 it would be twenty years since the TVM, the same amount of time between An Unearthly Child and The Five Doctors and we have had five new doctors since then.

Instead of filling in the big hole in the story left by Michael Grade and Co they keep covering the donut with more sugar.

RTD was at times easy to pastiche but this year has seemed like a spoof of Moffat's earlier success rather than him actually co-ordinating the show.

This series (perhaps Hide aside) has been such a let down and of all the years to do it in, lord there could not have been a worst time.

Wow, didn't realize the final had aired already.

The fact that I, someone who doesn't even really care about Doctor Who, found myself counting down the days between episodes last season, and now have a stack of episodes consisting of half this season that I can't find myself anywhere near bored enough to care to watch anytime in the predictable future, says something. How do you drop that far in the course of a year?

If I were you I would sit on them until late October/Early November and watch the whole series 7 from beginning to end and follow it up with the special.

You might get more out of it without having to see each episode as a chunk of a week.

They do seem to be writing with box sets in mind.

I know it's fashionable right now to deride Moffat and co, but I have greatly enjoyed this half-season and was bowled over by the sheer audacity and ambition of the finale....new idea and a great hook for the anniversary

And, really people, if you think the modern show is "food with sugar", really, take off your nostalgia blinders and realize the old show really wasnt any different. It's always been fun and utterly naff tv, I say that as a lifelong fan. It's not going to change. Ever.

Yes the show has always had it's ups and downs but A) I loved Moffat's first two series B) the series format is so open and so little is made through the year there is no excuse for doing it badly anymore C) as someone who cringed through much of the JNT era I don't appreciate being accused of nostalgia blinkered viewing.

Saying the show was sometimes a bit silly and naff in the past is not an invitation or get out clause for it being naff or silly now.

ZariusTwo said:

I know it's fashionable right now to deride Moffat and co, but I have greatly enjoyed this half-season and was bowled over by the sheer audacity and ambition of the finale....new idea and a great hook for the anniversary

Fashionable? I couldn't care much less about what is fashionable, but I do care when I find something enjoyable and entertaining or not. These new episodes have all felt dull and flat to me, not just in comparison to the last couple of seasons, but in comparison to all the new Who since 2005 (which is all I've seen). Sure, it is all "utterly naff", I realized that after watching my very first episode, but I found it enjoyable to watch, which is far more than I can say about the second half of this latest season.

I watched The Name of the Doctor and didn't feel it was ambitious at all. Compare it to season finales like The Pandorica Opens and The Big Bang, which I thought was an exceptionally fun set of episodes, and it just didn't have much going on in it. It was more of a setup for the 50th anniversary episode than anything else.

I have never liked River Song that much, but found her appearance my absolutely favorite aspect of the episode, simply because her presence reminded me of when I did find the show enjoyable.

I haven't commented much in this thread during the season as I have in the past. That being said, in the interim, I've managed to collect most of my thoughts on this season. So, if you'll excuse the long post: some thoughts on Season 7.

It would appear that I have been looking at the immediately preceding Doctor Who seasons with Matt Smith and have found my memories of Season 5 tinted with nostalgia and Season 6 (which I for the most part detested) a much more satisfying experience in retrospect.

Throughout both, there were weak stories and strong stories, all anchored by the interesting characterization Matt Smith brought to the Doctor. However, Smith almost seems to be going on auto-pilot now. The Doctor's hysterics seem to be wearing thin. That I feel is the main problem with the Seventh  Season. Compare Matt's performances in Series 7 with one's from Series 6 and you may see what I mean. I may be completely off, but Smith doesn't seem to take the role seriously anymore.

The first half of the season was pretty boring. Asylum of the Daleks stands out as the best of a bad bunch even though it was contrived as hell (ie. the marital issues, the nano bot conversion of humanoids to Daleks, and, of course, the Doctor's unnecessary putting of Amy in harm's way by not giving her his wristband sooner.) I also disliked that their accomplishing of their main mission seemed to merely be a side effect of trying to escape. Dinosaurs on a Spaceship was just bad camp, with one of the most stereotypical villains I've seen in a long time, and A Town Called Mercy was boring (did not like his Amy was depicted pretty incompetent here— remember in A Good Man Goes To War when she wielded a gun/blaster reasonably well). The leads seem to have lost all inkling of who they are. The Power of Three was weird. I thought it was going to be a two-parter until they solved the plot in the last ten minutes. Angels Take Manhattan was a bit of a mess with its faux-noir atmosphere. The Liberty Angel seemed really arbitrary and a bit of playing with the fans to be honest.

Second half was much better. I genuinely liked both The Snowmen and The Bells of St. John. Snowmen had a slow start but it built up pretty quickly. Loved the return of the Great Intelligence. Good villain, not yet overused. The Bells was probably my favorite episode of the season, reminding me a lot of the wonderful The Invasion at moments. The next episode was rubbish though; I don't think anyone has any defense of that. Once the girl started singing to the mummy, I was out. Cold War was fun though; seeing the villain from Tron in there was awesome. I liked the whole lone warrior aspect of it. Hide was my second episode and its wonderful aspects have already been discussed in this thread. Great atmosphere. Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS was terrible except for the one good bit where the Doctor seemingly threatens the salvage crew with the self destruct. That was some of Matt Smith's best characterization in the season, reminded me of how ruthless Hartnell could be.

a Nightmare in Silver was very enjoyable, on the whole to me. I thought it was great frankly and loved how the Cybermen were handled. Rounder faces= more uncanny valley. The speed was good. I was tired of hearing them clunking about. Warwick  Hope the Cybus cybermen never return. Warwick Davis gives a standout performance, while Smith's is a bit odd at times (Cyber-Planner seems too much like the Doctor, not evil enough). Finally, The Name of the Doctor was a splendid end to the series. The Great Intelligence was very menacing in this episode. The Hurt ending was enticing, an incarnation of the Doctor we've never heard of, oh my! Nice finally seeing an origin of sorts to the Doctor (Hartnell stealing the TARDIS). Special effects could have been handled better though, Babelcolour does better work (see: The Ten Doctors).

That being said, even this is much stronger than the late RTD era in general. Love to hear those of you who disagree/agree with me.

Today at work I was in an unusually playful mood (this usually comes with sleep deprivation for me), at one point one of my students pointed to my pupil gauge and asked me what it was, I whipped it out of my pocket, pointed it at him, click it on and made a wuwuwuwuwuwuwu sound, click it off, replaced it in my pocket and said, "Oh, it's nothing". He grinned really big and said, "AH! Like Doctor...Uh...*snaps fingers* Erm... Doctor, um... Whatever his name is!"

Close enough, kid.

I hope your wife remembers to review the pilot version of the first episode which is quite different.

If anything the First Doctor is even more sinister.

Ooooo.....!

I watched the end of The Deadly Assassin and the whole of The Talons Of Wieng-Chiang last night.

The latter gets a lot of stick for the use of yellow face but I don't think there were enough actors from the orient in London back then for the BBC to use, they managed to get at least a dozen authentically ethnic artistes and Doctor Four shows his disgust at the Victorian attitudes to the Chinese.

The main villain is from Iceland.

Someone should release a special edition with an optional giant rat fix because as much as I keep telling myself it's a cultural artifact of it's time that bloke in an oversized faux-rodent suit really takes me out of the story (it did when I was six).

The Deadly Assassin is almost as good today as it was at the time of broadcast (it sags a bit in the Matrix scenes but not much).

Bring back the Time Lords like that again Moff.

My personal fav scenario is that after being thrown into the Time War the last time we saw him the Master becomes a previously absent element in it's last hours.

He subdues Rassilon makes a temporary alliance with the Daleks and ends the war.

The temporal tinnitus is removed The Master is no longer a maniac and by way of a thank-you he is made high president.

The Time Lords still pretend to be extinct and focus on tracking down the man that almost destroyed them so they can return the favour.

The Master as the Hero of Gallifrey and the Doctor as the bogeyman of the Time Lords.

I wish I'd come up with that before.