[QuickTidal]

Watch to the very end, and see

Spoiler

Twelve begin to regenerate...

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 03 April 2017 - 01:53 PM

[QuickTidal]

Oh man, spectacular news today!

John Simm is returning to Doctor Who this season to play The Master again! I think alongside Missy...so two Masters?
Anyways, great news. I love his incarnation!

[Traveller]

QuickTidal, on 01 February 2017 - 12:14 AM, said:

amphibian, on 31 January 2017 - 11:21 PM, said:

Hayley Atwell would be a superb Dr Who.

No, she'd be awful. I don't get why people like her.

Two reasons.

I just can't get into Capaldi as the Dr. And I thought Simm just way overreacted the Master; it was a shame they couldn't have kept Derek Jacobi in the role, he's actually pretty good at being bad. In a creepy way.

The most Dr-whoish thing I've seen recently was Fantastic Beasts. Eddie Redmayne was a great Dr.. I mean magic guy. With his suitcase/tardis. And his wand/screwdriver.

This post has been edited by Traveller: 06 April 2017 - 08:10 PM

[QuickTidal]

Traveller, on 06 April 2017 - 04:35 PM, said:

QuickTidal, on 01 February 2017 - 12:14 AM, said:

amphibian, on 31 January 2017 - 11:21 PM, said:

Hayley Atwell would be a superb Dr Who.

No, she'd be awful. I don't get why people like her.

The most Dr-whoish thing I've seen recently was Fantastic Creatures. Eddie Redmayne was a great Dr.. I mean magic guy. With his suitcase/tardis. And his wand/screwdriver.

Which is funny, as I recall one of the front runners to play Scamander before they cast Redmayne was Matt Smith. So I feel they purposely set out to cast someone with a Doctor-like personality.

[QuickTidal]

Briar King, on 06 April 2017 - 05:41 PM, said:

QuickTidal, on 01 February 2017 - 12:14 AM, said:

amphibian, on 31 January 2017 - 11:21 PM, said:

Hayley Atwell would be a superb Dr Who.

No, she'd be awful. I don't get why people like her.

Whhhaaaa? Did you have a fever this day?

Nope. I can't stand her. She's the epitome of "beige" to me as an actor.

[Malankazooie]

Uh, guys? Are you aware this returns tomorrow?

[QuickTidal]

Of course we are....but there is nothing to talk about till after that...soooooo yeah.

[Malankazooie]

I dunno, there may be stuff to talk about. Maybe conjectures about the new companion and the potential for severe annoyance at her. Or whether Capaldi will mail in his performances this last go around as the Doctor.

You go now.

[QuickTidal]

Malankazooie, on 14 April 2017 - 09:49 PM, said:

I dunno, there may be stuff to talk about. Maybe conjectures about the new companion and the potential for severe annoyance at her. Or whether Capaldi will mail in his performances this last go around as the Doctor.

You go now.

Severe annoyance pretty much encompasses my feelings about Bill from the trailers...but it sounds like she's only on this season...and rumour has it she was fired during shooting.

I feel Capaldi will give it his all, he always does.

The question will be how John Simm's Master fits in with Missy....and what sounds like a weird regeneration.

[QuickTidal]

H'okay...

I don't care much for Bill. The trailers seemed to give me an inkling that I would not like her....and the episode did nothing to assuage that. I find her annoying at best.

It was a well crafted episode overall...aside from a VERY jittery and odd beginning (like what was up with showing Bill's day to day life in weird snippety cuts, repeated?)...the "monster" was interesting.

I'm not sure what to think of the whole "vault" thing that the Doctor and Nardole are investigating/trying to get into...or how that has equated to the Doctor settling down as a professor for a number of years.

I think the nicest part was when Bill asked to not have her memory wiped and that triggered Clara's music, and the Doctor to pause....so while he doesn't remember Clara...there is obviously some part of him that tweaks to the idea of what happened to her.

Nardole is...fine I guess. Moffat said he wanted the Doctor to have a butler/valet type character....and here I am thinking, well you've got a perfect one that ISN'T Nardole...in Strax. Strax is the ultimate Doctor's Valet. I'm not sure why Nardole has become a staying character when he's not really all that great or interesting. I think he had one line that gave me a chuckle, and that's it.

The glances at the next chunk of episodes was cool....including a lot at John Simm's Master returning...and this time with a very Master-y goatee!

-----------

Lastly, when bookies were taking bets on who would play the Twelfth Doctor, the hints that it would indeed be Peter Capaldi were so strong and came from such reputable sources that the bookies stopped taking bets because they were stretching into the 5-digits. The same thing has now occurred...with the strongest indicators showing that Kris Marshall is in the top bet spot (LOVE ACTUALLY, MY FAMILY, DEATH IN PARADISE)...He would be a strong choice. I've been watching him since his MY FAMILY days and think he'd make an excellent Doctor. We will see if this rumour pans out...but yeah, the bookies stopping taking bets is a fair indicator.

[polishgenius]

I'm not fond of the idea of Kris Marshall as the Doctor at all. He might surprise me, I don't hate it, but I've never found him interesting on-screen. Then again, I love Peter Capaldi and although he's had his moments he hasn't popped (not served by the writing mind), so you never know.



Anyway, I thought that was a decent start. I like Bill fine, the plot served well as the companion intro (although it was a bit weird how they casually introduced perhaps the most powerful entity we've ever seen on the show, a ship so powerful that its engine oil can match the TARDIS). And the long-term hints are interesting, and more restrained than often for Moffatt- I do have a little hope after this and the Christmas special that someone's got a hand on Moffat's reigns and he's going to have a little more discipline for his final season. Please, please.

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I'm not sure why Nardole has become a staying character when he's not really all that great or interesting.

This probably has more to do with Matt Lucas, quite a well-known figure in the UK who I assume requested or was open to a return and they decided to work him in, rather than Nardole himself. That said, I don't mind. I'm not a fan of Lucas at all usually and Nardole's first appearance wasn't good, but in the two since he's been okay- actually gone the opposite way to Strax, seeming to have gotten significantly smarter.
That's the main reason I'm quite glad it's not Strax actually- the later, stupid version would get boring and grating quickly I feel in an extended role. Plus I reckon Moffatt didn't want to split up the Vastra gang.

[QuickTidal]

Rurg...THIN ICE was okay. It was SCADS better than last weeks Emoji-bot fiasco. But it flies for me solely on Capaldi continuing to nail his Doctor even more than he did last season, and on the excellently done historical sets and whatnot.

Though he does lose his sonic like 3 times in this ep and against odds miraculously gets it back all three times...and then LEAVES it once where under normal circumstances it would be LONG gone. It felt like far too much to me...but then I'm not overly fond of Sarah Dollard's Doctor Who writing...so I'm not surprised. She wrote S9’s FACE THE RAVEN…which I think was my LEAST favourite ep of that season which succeeds ONLY because Rigsy was so great in it. I feel like THIN ICE is a bit better overall. Some lines were GREAT “I’m here, having tea, in my tea drinking outfit”, and some were abysmal.

It went awry for me in a few ways.

1. Bill. Oh man, do my wife and I HATE Bill. Apparently everyone else sees something in her we don’t…because we cannot stand her and this weeks episode did nothing to dissuade that conclusion. Her attitude in this episode and her anger at the Doctor was stupid, misguided, and irritating. You’re travelling time and space with a guy who you’ve SEEN save the day more than once. But you try to take him to task for the people who could not save, and the people who end up dead despite his best efforts to save them? Are you EFFING joking me? Ugh, that scene read to me like the most petulant armchair warrior who doesn’t understand the world, complaining about the world. I’m glad the Doctor took her to task for it right away….but I REALLY feel he let her get off easy after how she snapped off at him. To me that’s all on Sarah Dollard’s idea of a scene…but in one fell swoop she made Bill even more unlikable. She should challenge the Doctor…but the arrogance and assumptions need to GO.

2. Moffat and the BBC made a big deal about the fact that they were taking a POC to Regency London and they were going to have Doctor Who deal with the entrenched racism inherent in the era. They spoke about it like they were going to be handling this for the first time….meanwhile RTD dealt with it with Martha in S2…and in a MUCH more impressive way (but then Moffat’s new thing is saying he’s doing something “first”… that his predecessor did nearly a decade ago). Here we have Sarah Dollard ignoring the racism of the Empire in Regency London for 3/4 of the episode…and then hitting it with the Sutcliffe nobility character in a brutal, in your face, loud accusation/attack. There was no subtlety, and it didn’t pervade the episode like I thought it might when they were talking about this. It acts like only Sutcliffe (a noble, and a villain) would have behaved in a racist way…and everyone else would not have. It felt like Dollard was hitting us over the head with it in one big, brash moment, as opposed to pushing it through all the facets of the episode. And that felt like it did a complete disservice to the point of showing the Imperial racism of Britain at the time.

So clearly whoever is in the vault is bad, since that was Nardole’s reaction to the knocks. The vault is obviously Gallifreyan as the symbols on the metal are very much of that type (or they seem it). I’m not sure how the Doctor’s “oath” fits into this.

I’m also wondering if Moffat is attempting to pull the old switcheroo on us again…and The Doctor is in the vault…and whomever we are watching, is bad.

[Blend]

My guess for who is in the vault is Master or Missy (like, john Simms or Michelle Gomez).

Re: the racism thing, yeah, I didn't even know about their talking about how they would touch on that, but I thought it was kind of a cop out to have Bill comment on how it might be a problem right at the beginning of the episode, then nothing until we meet the bad guy whose racism was so crazed that it was almost comical. There was no punch to it, there was no real dealing with it at all, it was basically completely ignored all episode until they had a real villain around to say mean things. Definitely fell flat.

[Blend]

Just thought of something else - my guess is still The Master, but given how much importance they put on the Hybrid at the end of the last season, perhaps that's what's in the Vault?

[polishgenius]

QuickTidal, on 01 May 2017 - 01:17 PM, said:

1. Bill. Oh man, do my wife and I HATE Bill. Apparently everyone else sees something in her we don’t…because we cannot stand her and this weeks episode did nothing to dissuade that conclusion. Her attitude in this episode and her anger at the Doctor was stupid, misguided, and irritating. You’re travelling time and space with a guy who you’ve SEEN save the day more than once. But you try to take him to task for the people who could not save, and the people who end up dead despite his best efforts to save them? Are you EFFING joking me? Ugh, that scene read to me like the most petulant armchair warrior who doesn’t understand the world, complaining about the world. I’m glad the Doctor took her to task for it right away….but I REALLY feel he let her get off easy after how she snapped off at him. To me that’s all on Sarah Dollard’s idea of a scene…but in one fell swoop she made Bill even more unlikable. She should challenge the Doctor…but the arrogance and assumptions need to GO.

To be fair, in this instance she flipped out because she saw the Doctor seem more concerned over the sonic screwdriver than the kid. But that made it worse coz the Doctor would never be that callous.


But yeah, it was a bad episode. Some people seem to disagree, but I didn't like it at all (I think I liked it even less than last week's, which I thought was effective if shallow until the dreadful, ill-thought-out ending).



As for the vault: it's almost certainly John Simms.

We already know what the Hybrid was, and holy shit that answer was stupid.

[QuickTidal]

polishgenius, on 01 May 2017 - 09:30 PM, said:

QuickTidal, on 01 May 2017 - 01:17 PM, said:

1. Bill. Oh man, do my wife and I HATE Bill. Apparently everyone else sees something in her we don’t…because we cannot stand her and this weeks episode did nothing to dissuade that conclusion. Her attitude in this episode and her anger at the Doctor was stupid, misguided, and irritating. You’re travelling time and space with a guy who you’ve SEEN save the day more than once. But you try to take him to task for the people who could not save, and the people who end up dead despite his best efforts to save them? Are you EFFING joking me? Ugh, that scene read to me like the most petulant armchair warrior who doesn’t understand the world, complaining about the world. I’m glad the Doctor took her to task for it right away….but I REALLY feel he let her get off easy after how she snapped off at him. To me that’s all on Sarah Dollard’s idea of a scene…but in one fell swoop she made Bill even more unlikable. She should challenge the Doctor…but the arrogance and assumptions need to GO.

To be fair, in this instance she flipped out because she saw the Doctor seem more concerned over the sonic screwdriver than the kid. But that made it worse coz the Doctor would never be that callous.


But yeah, it was a bad episode. Some people seem to disagree, but I didn't like it at all (I think I liked it even less than last week's, which I thought was effective if shallow until the dreadful, ill-thought-out ending).



As for the vault: it's almost certainly John Simms.

We already know what the Hybrid was, and holy shit that answer was stupid.

Agreed on all counts!

[polishgenius]

I really really hate the knack that both Russell T Davies and Moffatt have shown of setting up strong, emotionally resonant ways for companions to leave the show and then pulling the rug and replacing it with really really stupid, or at best hideously contrived, ways to do it instead.


Like, the Donna one wouldn't even have been bad if they hadn't spent the whole season going 'oh she's going to die, fo' sho. If they had just done what they did without feeling the need to go 'yeah, but the real Donna is dead.


And similar was true with the Hybrid thing. Set up both (1) a genuinely emotional response to her death, even if the actual death was a bit clumsily set up, and (2) a workable (though badly executed) explanation for the hybrid, then go NOOOOPE and replace it with... well, that bollocks.


Amy and Rory was still the worst, though. They spent whole episodes setting up a great way for them to leave then switched it out for the plotholiest version ever!

This post has been edited by polishgenius: 01 May 2017 - 09:48 PM

[QuickTidal]

polishgenius, on 01 May 2017 - 09:47 PM, said:

I really really hate the knack that both Russell T Davies and Moffatt have shown of setting up strong, emotionally resonant ways for companions to leave the show and then pulling the rug and replacing it with really really stupid, or at best hideously contrived, ways to do it instead.


Like, the Donna one wouldn't even have been bad if they hadn't spent the whole season going 'oh she's going to die, fo' sho. If they had just done what they did without feeling the need to go 'yeah, but the real Donna is dead.

See, I think the screw up with RTD on his companions is more about the "just kidding, everything is fine" 2nd endings everyone got. Like Rose's ending would have been utter perfection if it had been left at Doomsday with her in the other reality never able to return. Now, I'm a BIG Rose fan so even though I disliked it as a narrative choice, I was amped to see her back in S4....but yeah, the whole "second day on the beach, with the OTHER Tenth Doctor who she got to keep" completely ruined any emotional resonance that Doomsday had.

The same is true of Donna's second ending. Donna's initial ending as this human who had done SO much good...but was unable to remember it and was back stuck in her life as a temp...was heartbreakingly perfect. It's later when Tennant was having his swan song and gives her the lottery ticket from her late dad that ruins her 1st ending.

RTD could not leave well enough alone, and all his companions had more than one ending and the second one was always trite.

polishgenius, on 01 May 2017 - 09:47 PM, said:

And similar was true with the Hybrid thing. Set up both (1) a genuinely emotional response to her death, even if the actual death was a bit clumsily set up, and (2) a workable (though badly executed) explanation for the hybrid, then go NOOOOPE and replace it with... well, that bollocks.

I Haaaaaaaaate the hybrid thing. Hate it with a fiery passion. Gah, that was awful.

polishgenius, on 01 May 2017 - 09:47 PM, said:

Amy and Rory was still the worst, though. They spent whole episodes setting up a great way for them to leave then switched it out for the plotholiest version ever!

I am willing to admit that even though ANGELS TAKE MANHATTAN was a terrible exit for the Ponds, and is (probably) THE most plot-hole riddled episode in Moffat's tenure (and that's saying a lot as he's a plot hole master)...Karen and Matt absolutely play their hearts out in that ending and it reduces me to a little puddle of mess on the ground every. single. time.

But yeah, after a bunch of really interesting and well thought out endings to the Ponds, that he chose that one was awful. Though I THINK part of that as on Karen as she specifically asked Moffat to make sure she could NEVER come back...as she didn't want to be tempted to reprise Amy in any significant way...so finding a way for her to die and never return in a season he'd already written might have been tough.

But yeah, I can mostly agree with all that.

[polishgenius]

You're definitely right on the second endings messing things up (Rose's in particular was awful), my problem with the initial ones for both wasn't the endings themselves but that in both cases they spent a whole season prophecying they'd die and then not doing it.

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so finding a way for her to die and never return in a season he'd already written might have been tough.

He failed. Oh, so, so badly. And yeah, the title should have been The Plotholes Take Manhattan.

The acting was great, Amy and Rory always delivered on that score, it was just the writing.


I hope he keeps writing one-offs after he leaves but Moffatt can't maintain an idea to save his life. Every single good one he's had he's ruined.

[QuickTidal]

polishgenius, on 02 May 2017 - 03:24 PM, said:

I hope he keeps writing one-offs after he leaves but Moffatt can't maintain an idea to save his life. Every single good one he's had he's ruined.

I doubt he'll do any one-offs for a while. I think show running has soured him a great deal.

But yeah, I agree. He ruins every single idea he's ever had.

I'll always say that his biggest problem was that he was bangarang at 1 and 2 episode story arcs (BLINK, THE LIBRARY) where he got to do his whole "rug out from under your" and "mystery box" schtick. nd since you only ever had to wait an hour or two at MOST for those things to resolve...they worked, and worked well....often putting to shame the episodes written by the show runner at the time (RTD)....but when he took over he tried to do those exact same types of stories...built around a mystery box and a twisty twist....in 13 episodes instead it came out horribly. He's TERRIBLE at season arcs, and micromanaging his own writers to shoe-horn in the bits of Arc he needed them to place...which often felt tacked on last minute (like the cracks being in every, single, episode of S5). He's a one-two hour story guy....not a 13hour story guy.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 02 May 2017 - 04:04 PM