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Post by merrythemad on Jul 20, 2009 11:56:57 GMT
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Post by jjpor on Jul 20, 2009 14:34:06 GMT
It's a scoop!
*Nasty looking character; he needs a chapstick or something there, I think!
Gotta love the "cleverest and most strong-minded companion" bit - again. That's how you get ahead in journalism, folks; just cut-and-paste from the press release!*
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Post by merrythemad on Jul 20, 2009 15:18:59 GMT
tee hee oh joy oh wonderful bliss!!!!!!
** he DOES look scary doesn't he? I made my littles leave the room while I read the article. I am simply too excited for this next special, even as I dread it a bit**
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Post by clocketpatch on Oct 30, 2009 21:25:10 GMT
WE HAVE A DATE! WE HAVE A DATE! www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hyj99UdOI78(there are spoiler clips in there, but also an adorable interview, damn, it's hard not to like him when he's pleading with people to stop twittering, lol. And giving credit where credit is due to teachers everywhere. Good man) NOVEMBER 15th !!!!!!!!!! ;D ;D ;D
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Post by merrythemad on Nov 1, 2009 16:40:41 GMT
a date a date a date! I am half-tempted to wait until after Christmas to watch any of them so I don't have to wait with baited breath. . .
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Post by jjpor on Nov 1, 2009 21:33:52 GMT
That's... *counts on fingers* only fourteen sleeps away! Madre de Dios!
It'd better be good, after all this anticipation. In fact, it'd better include Unexpected Green Pincers...
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Post by clocketpatch on Nov 16, 2009 1:30:09 GMT
that was a hellva a lotta SCARY! And very well done I thought, though, I was kind of getting pissy at the long and angsty 'walk through the fire' bit (you know of what I speak). But I liked it overall. I liked it very much. And I even liked the ending (actually, I REALLY liked the ending), because he was getting very close to the edge there and he stepped back... but maybe not in time. Or at all, come to think of it.
I think of all the Doctors, none have played it so close to that particular brink as Ten (and man oh man, how I've hated him for that at times). This time he maybe stepped over that line. And how afraid he is of this. Heck, he thinks he's going to die from being evil... or from messing with the time lines? He's definitely done something bad.
But here goes:
Yay! Mars looks very Mars-like
International crew! When it's far future I just assume that the TARDIS is translating everything with a British accent, but when it's near future and there's no companion present, it's nice to see this.
"The Doctor, Doctor, Fun" LOL win
Gadget Gadget!
Weird web newspaper flashing things. It changes Mars to Earth at the end, and I like to think this is the Doctor seeing time. So time looks like the internet?
Mmm... carrots... or maybe not
Ice Warrior references FTW!
This is very creepy and well done base-under-seige
Did I mention this is very well done?
And creepy?
Yes, we get it Doctor. Please stop.
I like him banging his head against the wall while trying to talk himself out of things. He really REALLY needs a companion to stop him.
More Ice Warriors. The Classic fans are pleased.
lol, it's a Dalek. I should have known. They ALWAYS show up.
The Doctor is kind of a jerk
I really want to know what was going on between the second in command guy and the captain. Someone needs to write fic about this.
Doctor, please stop this angst walk, it's gone on Waaaayyyy too long.
Yeah! The Doctor's going to... oh crap. He's gone completely insane. Okay, maybe, keep walking? No. Going to be insane instead?
The Doctor has joined the dark side.
He mentioned Liverpool and I thought of JJ.
Yay Gadget!
the Doctor is... still crazy. I kind of like it. I'm a nerd for good characters gone bad.
Please slap him Adelaide. He really, really needs someone to slap him because...
poo poo, Doctor, go fetch Donna and make her better. You seriously need some Donna, or some... anyone... because you are out of control
(though, I do kind of want you to meet the Master in this state, that would be... interesting)
"In fighting monsters, we must be careful not to become them" right?
That was... dark. And very brave. I wonder what the younger demographics will think of this episode? I honestly thought Alelaide was going to shoot him in the back for a second there.
He knows.
WTF Ood???
TRAILER!!! So there's Wilf, in all his awesomeness, and there's Donna, and there's the Master, and... why is he glowing and robot-like? This is very strange. I honestly have no idea what's going to happen. Though, I wonder if it might have been brought on by the Doctor's sudden insanity. *
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Post by poetry on Nov 16, 2009 2:46:41 GMT
I agree with you thoroughly, Clocket.
Two words: EVIL. DOCTOR.
The best part is that it's so believable. He's been on the verge of insanity for a good long while now, and now that he's alone and friendless, he's finally snapped. The whole interaction between him and Captain Brooke at the end is killer. I love the expression on her face as she realizes the full extent of what he's done.
Also, I'd never thought of the Time War that way before. The Time Lords were a check on his power, but now he can do anything.
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Post by IMForeman on Nov 16, 2009 3:06:28 GMT
*Whoa. That was intense. But I really enjoyed it. Well, until he became power-mad, which was pretty disturbing...but was also brilliant? I think? *scratches head* I knew this episode was supposed to be creepy, but I did not expect the Doctor to be the creepiest part. But see, that was good. Ten's hubris has mostly stopped me from liking him too much, but having him go totally OTT (and when I say, OTT, I really mean it...there was much shouting and crazy expression making there) was interesting.
I've been reading other reaction posts and a lot of people are opposed to the Doctor being such an anti-hero, and I understand that because I have the same reservations, but the thing is, the Doctor was saving people. He had been placed in an incredibly horrific situation, powerless to rescue people, which is what the Doctor does best, and basically he lost it and went way too far.
One thing that bothers me about the angst is that people dying = all about the Doctor's pain. Of course it's been done before by this show, and Torchwood and others, but it's still obnoxious and him walking through the fire while making sad eyes was a prime example of it. So what else? I really liked Adelaide, which wasn't surprising, since she was a competent older woman who questioned the Doctor's morality. Yeah, I'm easy to please that way. Also Lindsay Duncan was quite good. Not sure how I feel about her suicide at the end. I had a feeling that might happen, but I wasn't entirely sure they were really going to do it, because, um, family show? Although this whole episode was incredibly dark. I'm certainly no Mary Whitehouse, but the idea of young kids watching this makes me a little uncomfortable.
I was puzzled by the websites. Thought it looked like the BBC News page, actually. I just assumed that sometime in the future the Doctor goes online and reads about the disaster or something...? I get what they were trying to do there, but it just seemed odd.
And there was trailer! Extremely epic insane bizarre trailer! Eep. For some reason John Simm's hair was the most confusing part of that for me. *
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Post by merrythemad on Nov 16, 2009 13:59:26 GMT
Alright I am going to watch it again but I have to say
The Doctor started worrying me when he started torturing the kid running Gadget, I'm sure there was a less painful method of escape, why did he pick that particular one, it worried me and then at the end, I saw why, MY GOD! I HATE HATE HATE he won't die happy and laughing but I absolutely LOVE him going mad, as Clocket said ten really has walked that line and it's horrifying but good to see him cross it.
I don't know just what else to say yet, as I mentioned I have to rewatch it, but for now wow.
TIMELOOP EDIT
well I have rewatched it and I just don't know, I really think it would be awesome if the MAster had to act as goodguy to stop the Doctor destroying time, that would kinda rock as horrifying as it would be. Both times I watched it I wanted him to go back as soon as he opened the doors (At the veyr beginning sticking his head out of the TARDIS), I like the TARDIS making paradox machine noises at the end, is the MAster summoning him somehow? Both times I watched I also REALLY Adelaide to shoot him, it felt like a horrible betrayal but I did, wonder where he goes next? Is he flying the ship at the end or trying to to stop her flying? I just don't know I have so many thoughts they are all vying for dominance, in spite of their contradictory nature. I agree the time changing thing was done a bit lamely, they could have done it better than internet articles, I'm sure, I'm just not sure how, perhaps another infostamp?
Preview Donna hand pressed against her head crying, is she crying over Wilf's body or is she remembering? Really I think that was all that tiny worthless little preview did, must be most of the clips give too much away, with only two episodes and so many questions every next 120 minutes must be jampacked aside from what we've seen on the previews
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Post by Abbyromana on Nov 16, 2009 16:59:39 GMT
Wow! I just got finished watching WoM, and it was powerful. My brain is still trying to take it all in. Definitely scary, definitely shocking, and I think, definitely following the classic feel of DW. I'll to have to come back for a more depth analysis after rewatching it with my Dad. Still, first run through had my heart pumping and eyes glued to the screen.
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Post by clocketpatch on Nov 16, 2009 19:57:03 GMT
The Doctor started worrying me when he started torturing the kid running Gadget, I'm sure there was a less painful method of escape, why did he pick that particular one THIS. Though, I did wonder if he even knew what he was doing completely. Even by that point he was a bit... a few straws short? Or few straws too close to the breaking point? Or something. And then he kind of zapped himself when going for the TARDIS.
Still, very OOC. But then, that was kind of the point of the episode. well I have rewatched it and I just don't know, I really think it would be awesome if the MAster had to act as goodguy to stop the Doctor destroying time, that would kinda rock as horrifying as it would be.
I want this so much.
Though, there are other things I want. All of the lead-up - to me at least - seems to be pointing to a return of the Time Lords, and I'm really wondering if they'll be the ones to put the Doctor to regeneration for all of his crimes.
Or if he'll be fighting them, because really, Gallifrey was not a very nice place. And the Doctor is not a very nice person when he channels his roots.
All said and done though, I think my favourite part of this episode has been watching fandom explode in their various reactions to it and realize that Ten is kind of a jerk... something I've been waiting for the show to acknowledge for a very long time.*
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Post by Abbyromana on Nov 16, 2009 21:03:57 GMT
All said and done though, I think my favourite part of this episode has been watching fandom explode in their various reactions to it and realize that Ten is kind of a jerk... something I've been waiting for the show to acknowledge for a very long time.* I seriously disagree with you on that, CP. Ten is no more a jerk than any of the other Doctors. Thus, if you're calling him a jerk, you have to admit ever Doctor in his own way is a certified jerk.
Ten had done everything according to how the universe has dealt him his hand, as people around him allow him, and as experience has taught him, and for that, people call him a jerk... not living up to his previous lives (following the rules, choosing when to act and not to act, caring for people, knowing when to give up or step aside), but the second, he changes.... people still call him a jerk. What is up with that? Seriously!!!?
Following that line of thought, I suppose you could actually say that about every living person, depending on your POV. We've all done things others would probably give us the title of 'jerk' for, whether we want to admit it or not. It might have been for the greater good or personal good, but we did it and judged quite harassly despite the reason.
The more time passes since watching WoM, the more depressed I get about Ten and the death of Captain Brooks. Damn you, RTD!
*huggles Ten... and runs off to write happier stories*
On another note, I curious to ask this question of you all. Do you think if events hadn't gone they way they did in WoM that the Doctor would have still regenerated in the next few adventures? I don't mean in terms of the fact that DT is leaving the show (that is RL), but in the DW unvierse. Do you think it is possible, if the Doctor had left when he initially planned, he might have continued life as himself for some time to come? Perhaps this adventure was his tipping point between continuing on as he is or changing, but I'm curious to know what you think.
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Post by clocketpatch on Nov 16, 2009 21:19:29 GMT
I don't mean that Ten is always a jerk AR, or that jerkiness is his defining characteristic, it's just that quite often he tends to get away with things that just aren't Kosher by my standards (see the end of Family of Blood for a prime example)... and no one seems to notice or acknowledge these things.
Well, Martha does, eventually.
His self-righteous streak really bothers me for some reason, and I'm not sure why. I mean, Seven pulls this stuff all the time and it never annoys me so much. I think it's because I come from a very fundamentalist background and RTD keeps insisting on pouring the Jesus imagery all over Ten, and it hits a very deep and buried nerve that I just can't ignore.
So yeah, this episode, turning all that on its head, and saying that maybe the Doctor isn't the good guy, maybe he isn't beyond reproach, and maybe, even if he can do everything, he really shouldn't... nor does he have as much wisdom as he sometimes thinks he does.
It makes me happy inside.
Also, I really, really like it when the good guys go bad. Except in Spiderman 3. Because that was just sad. And kind of funny.
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Post by jjpor on Nov 16, 2009 21:47:25 GMT
*To answer Abby's question, I think that if he had just walked away, he would have had another thing to beat himself up over and angst over, and, well, he's been doing that for a long time now. It was about time that his character arc reached some kind of climax. And it did, here. And not the one I expected.
To be honest, I was taken aback by this last night, and couldn't decide whether I liked it or not. Having slept on it, I think that I did like it, with reservations (fence-sitter? me?).
Let me play devil's advocate for a moment, at the risk of sounding like some sort of fascistic blind Seven-apologist, but would it really be so wrong for the Doctor to ditch his debilitating self-pity and sense of guilt for his past actions and just, well, do things? Without fear or favour or apology? He is, as he says so very often, the Last of the Time Lords, and that power is his. The power to do good.
I'll admit that at the time that Ten was going off his head with the robot and the TARDIS and all of that business back at the base, this was what I was thinking, and I was kind of going "go, Ten! Enough angst, time for some action!"
And then that ending, and I realised how off the mark I probably was.
Well, it's one point of view, but one I think that RTD rejects with good reason. I think what this story was saying is that that power is no good when all you have is your own possibly unreliable moral compass to decide your actions. And moreover, when Ten was triumphantly celebrating his "win" at the end, that was what he was seeing it as. A personal victory. Not the right thing to do, or the good thing to do, but his own victory. Because he was awesome, because he was powerful. And isn't it wonderful to be powerful?
So, it's the old chestnut about gazing not into the abyss lest...well, you know the rest. And that abyss was examining old Ten good and hard, wasn't it?
So yes, the Doctor is powerful and the Doctor is awesome, but without someone to give him a sense of perspective, a limiting factor, as it were; someone, as Donna had it, to stop him, well, he's a step up from becoming another Master, isn't he? Worse than the Master, maybe, because in his hearts of hearts the Master knows he isn't doing it for any other reason than his own twisted gratification.
So, Four possibly came close to this brink when he held the Key to Time (assuming he wasn't just faking it totally for comedy purposes - good old Four!), but he had Romana to hold him back. Seven had Ace, the only person whose opinion of him actually mattered to him, one feels (although arguably she didn't do that good a job of holding him back some of the time), and in the NA novels, Benny to fulfil the same function. And, to go right back to the beginning, One had Ian and Barbara, particularly Barbara, to make him the man he is today...
And of course here Adelaide stopped Ten good and hard, even if her method was a little drastic...
So that's what I learned from Waters of Mars - don't leave the Doctor to his own devices for too long!
Although it was a pretty formidable moral quandary he found himself in. The "correct" thing to do, according to his own code, was to walk away and leave those people to die. Which was why I kind of appreciated the long walk away from the base, even if it was presented with the usual hard-to-watch NuWho angstiness. It was hard to watch, and hard to listen to, and it was meant to convey just how hard that decision was for Ten. And of course, he changed his mind. A coward like me would have just turned off the radio and told themselves it was the right thing to do a few million times, and maybe ended up believing it.
Which brings us back to the question of is this laws of time thing really all it's cracked up to be? Maybe Ten was right when he said history would sort itself out? Maybe Adelaide was just being a blind adherent of the "rules" when she did what she did...
This ambiguity, though, is one of the strong things about this story. The facet that 24+ hours later I'm still thinking about this stuff and trying to pin down my own opinions on it and decide what it meant shows that RTD and Phil Ford were doing something right. To try and sum up, although I'll no doubt change my mind about this some time later, it's the difference between respecting the rule of law and taking the law into your own hands. The latter path has a superficial appeal, a sly seductive sense of "getting something done" without those whinging liberals holding you back. Except, surely a body of laws is better than the whim of one individual, even one like the Doctor? Surely it can all only end in dictatorship, arbitrary lynchmob justice and ultimately either anarchy or totalitarian control?
Er...anyway...
To get back to the story itself... Lindsay Duncan was fantastic as Adelaide, all of her scenes, especially her last one, were just riveting. Tennant's performance was great too, except possibly for the OTT "Doctor to the rescue" scene, but maybe that was intentional. We were watching the Doctor experience the psychological break he has been headed for since possibly Doomsday, weren't we? The multinational crew of cosmonauts were far better realised and more likeable than the usual bunch of NuWho supporting-characters-in-uniforms (how did I know before he even said it that the guy Yuri was talking to onscreen was either going to be his boyfriend/husband or have a boyfriend/husband? Don't ever go changing, Rusty! Seriously, I love NuWho's optimism on these matters, even if some people accuse them of tokenism/agendas). I mean, when they met their fates, it hurt to watch, even though they'd only been onscreen for less than an hour.
"I don't like funny robots." Apart from dog robots! Excellent, as was the "Doctor, Doctor, Fun," bit.
Ice Warriors referenced - I squeed like a helpless Pavlovian dog as I always do when NuWho throws in the w*nk.
Nice to see semi-realistic portrayal of a real planet and realish spaceflight tech too - Who doesn't do it anywhere near often enough and I'm a sucker for that sort of thing. Can you actually have a fire in an atmosphere like Mars's, though? Maybe the oxygen leaking from the wrecked base would burn? I don't know...
The only thing I didn't really like was the very ending. It was like RTD was shying away and stepping back from the monstrous!Ten he had just set up in complete contradiction to what I was expecting of him (I was expecting a handwavy, magicky "get out of jail" type patented RTD ending with token angst to try and stop us from noticing it was a copout - not that!). You know, Ten falling to his knees in the snow with all this "what have I done??!!" stuff, seemed a bit of a step back at the very end. I would rather have had him going into the finale still full of hubris, with nemesis quick approaching in the form of a bottle-blond John Simm...
I just hope this won't lead us back to more standard-issue Ten!angst in the next part. Rusty's done something here I never saw him doing going into it, and I just hope he builds on it rather than taking a step back, which is what the ending made me worry would happen. I hope not.
And neon skeleton hologram Master??? What the...??*
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Post by johne on Nov 16, 2009 23:21:25 GMT
* So yes, the Doctor is powerful and the Doctor is awesome, but without someone to give him a sense of perspective, a limiting factor, as it were; someone, as Donna had it, to stop him, well, he's a step up from becoming another Master, isn't he? Worse than the Master, maybe, because in his hearts of hearts the Master knows he isn't doing it for any other reason than his own twisted gratification.] Depends which version of the Master you mean. In one conception, didn't he lose it trying to break the rules to save his companion's life?
It also reminds me a little of the Minister of Chance's overacting breakdown in Death Comes To Time, where he breaks the rules to get revenge on the people who killed his companion. And the person who stops him there... is the Doctor.[ ] Yes; I don't know if it was intended as an overblown parody of those The-Doctor-Saves-The-Day scenes in things like The Fires of Pompeii, but that's how it came across to me. Perhaps because I found the original scenes grating.[ Well, you know what I think of that already. ;D ;D
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Post by Abbyromana on Nov 16, 2009 23:24:42 GMT
* To answer Abby's question, I think that if he had just walked away, he would have had another thing to beat himself up over and angst over, and, well, he's been doing that for a long time now. It was about time that his character arc reached some kind of climax. And it did, here. And not the one I expected.
To be honest, I was taken aback by this last night, and couldn't decide whether I liked it or not. Having slept on it, I think that I did like it, with reservations (fence-sitter? me?).
Let me play devil's advocate for a moment, at the risk of sounding like some sort of fascistic blind Seven-apologist, but would it really be so wrong for the Doctor to ditch his debilitating self-pity and sense of guilt for his past actions and just, well, do things? Without fear or favour or apology? He is, as he says so very often, the Last of the Time Lords, and that power is his. The power to do good.
I'll admit that at the time that Ten was going off his head with the robot and the TARDIS and all of that business back at the base, this was what I was thinking, and I was kind of going "go, Ten! Enough angst, time for some action!"
And then that ending, and I realised how off the mark I probably was.
Well, it's one point of view, but one I think that RTD rejects with good reason. I think what this story was saying is that that power is no good when all you have is your own possibly unreliable moral compass to decide your actions. And moreover, when Ten was triumphantly celebrating his "win" at the end, that was what he was seeing it as. A personal victory. Not the right thing to do, or the good thing to do, but his own victory. Because he was awesome, because he was powerful. And isn't it wonderful to be powerful?
So, it's the old chestnut about gazing not into the abyss lest...well, you know the rest. And that abyss was examining old Ten good and hard, wasn't it?
So yes, the Doctor is powerful and the Doctor is awesome, but without someone to give him a sense of perspective, a limiting factor, as it were; someone, as Donna had it, to stop him, well, he's a step up from becoming another Master, isn't he? Worse than the Master, maybe, because in his hearts of hearts the Master knows he isn't doing it for any other reason than his own twisted gratification.
So, Four possibly came close to this brink when he held the Key to Time (assuming he wasn't just faking it totally for comedy purposes - good old Four!), but he had Romana to hold him back. Seven had Ace, the only person whose opinion of him actually mattered to him, one feels (although arguably she didn't do that good a job of holding him back some of the time), and in the NA novels, Benny to fulfil the same function. And, to go right back to the beginning, One had Ian and Barbara, particularly Barbara, to make him the man he is today...
And of course here Adelaide stopped Ten good and hard, even if her method was a little drastic...
So that's what I learned from Waters of Mars - don't leave the Doctor to his own devices for too long!
Although it was a pretty formidable moral quandary he found himself in. The "correct" thing to do, according to his own code, was to walk away and leave those people to die. Which was why I kind of appreciated the long walk away from the base, even if it was presented with the usual hard-to-watch NuWho angstiness. It was hard to watch, and hard to listen to, and it was meant to convey just how hard that decision was for Ten. And of course, he changed his mind. A coward like me would have just turned off the radio and told themselves it was the right thing to do a few million times, and maybe ended up believing it.
Which brings us back to the question of is this laws of time thing really all it's cracked up to be? Maybe Ten was right when he said history would sort itself out? Maybe Adelaide was just being a blind adherent of the "rules" when she did what she did...
This ambiguity, though, is one of the strong things about this story. The facet that 24+ hours later I'm still thinking about this stuff and trying to pin down my own opinions on it and decide what it meant shows that RTD and Phil Ford were doing something right. To try and sum up, although I'll no doubt change my mind about this some time later, it's the difference between respecting the rule of law and taking the law into your own hands. The latter path has a superficial appeal, a sly seductive sense of "getting something done" without those whinging liberals holding you back. Except, surely a body of laws is better than the whim of one individual, even one like the Doctor? Surely it can all only end in dictatorship, arbitrary lynchmob justice and ultimately either anarchy or totalitarian control?
Er...anyway...
To get back to the story itself... Lindsay Duncan was fantastic as Adelaide, all of her scenes, especially her last one, were just riveting. Tennant's performance was great too, except possibly for the OTT "Doctor to the rescue" scene, but maybe that was intentional. We were watching the Doctor experience the psychological break he has been headed for since possibly Doomsday, weren't we? The multinational crew of cosmonauts were far better realised and more likeable than the usual bunch of NuWho supporting-characters-in-uniforms (how did I know before he even said it that the guy Yuri was talking to onscreen was either going to be his boyfriend/husband or have a boyfriend/husband? Don't ever go changing, Rusty! Seriously, I love NuWho's optimism on these matters, even if some people accuse them of tokenism/agendas). I mean, when they met their fates, it hurt to watch, even though they'd only been onscreen for less than an hour.
"I don't like funny robots." Apart from dog robots! Excellent, as was the "Doctor, Doctor, Fun," bit.
Ice Warriors referenced - I squeed like a helpless Pavlovian dog as I always do when NuWho throws in the w*nk.
Nice to see semi-realistic portrayal of a real planet and realish spaceflight tech too - Who doesn't do it anywhere near often enough and I'm a sucker for that sort of thing. Can you actually have a fire in an atmosphere like Mars's, though? Maybe the oxygen leaking from the wrecked base would burn? I don't know...
The only thing I didn't really like was the very ending. It was like RTD was shying away and stepping back from the monstrous!Ten he had just set up in complete contradiction to what I was expecting of him (I was expecting a handwavy, magicky "get out of jail" type patented RTD ending with token angst to try and stop us from noticing it was a copout - not that!). You know, Ten falling to his knees in the snow with all this "what have I done??!!" stuff, seemed a bit of a step back at the very end. I would rather have had him going into the finale still full of hubris, with nemesis quick approaching in the form of a bottle-blond John Simm...
I just hope this won't lead us back to more standard-issue Ten!angst in the next part. Rusty's done something here I never saw him doing going into it, and I just hope he builds on it rather than taking a step back, which is what the ending made me worry would happen. I hope not.
And neon skeleton hologram Master??? What the...??* JJ, could you be my long lost twin? Seriously! You litterally stoled the words I couldn't get out of my head, and expressed perfectly after one viewing! I'm so going to be karmaing you!
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Post by johne on Nov 16, 2009 23:31:36 GMT
Oh, and another couple of thoughts:
]I didn't mind the foreshadowing of doom this time, because it wasn't some crowbarred-in prophecy with no connection to the story at hand. It was something that was a direct result of the Doctor's actual actions. He still takes prophecies far too seriously, though.
In the Confidential, someone says of the end sequence: "He turns round, and he hears the Ood singing". Maybe the Doctor did, but all I heard was the incidental music for the scene. If it was supposed to be diegetic, they didn't make that clear at all.
I'm wondering now if the Doctor's arrogance (that he must be the one to save the day) was in play back in Planet of the Dead, when he kept refusing to tell UNIT what was going on and ignored perfectly simple solutions (send an armoured car through the wormhole, &c.) just so he could swan about in a flying bus.[
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Post by librarylover on Nov 17, 2009 1:46:14 GMT
I thought it was quite good, and had several unexpected plot twists. This always makes me happy, because I often see things coming a mile away, and that only happened once in this. ** I was sure that Adelaide would commit suicide. That was mama bear protecting her cubs. Lindsey Duncan was awesome, as I expected her to be. Anyone who has seen Rome knows she can play a bad a## mama. To quote Marc Antony from the episode Death Mask, "Now that was an exit."
One other thought that has been rolling around in my head is, could this breakdown be related to the events in CoE? My personal theory of why the Doctor wasn't involved in fighting the 456 is that it was another fixed point, and he couldn't intervene. That led to great personal pain and sacrifice for his friends, as well as the near sacrifice of millions of children. Walking away from these people, who he clearly admired, was the final straw.
I also think that the notion of "he's it" is something that they have been building since the start of Nu Who. There have been a number of points where he has mentioned that things wouldn't have happened if his people were still there to prevent or repair it as they used to: the reapers in Father's Day are the first I can think of, then his realization that shutting down the news satellite left a vacuum which was filled by murderous reality shows, then later Ten accidently crossing into a parallel universe (which used to be easy to do because the Time Lords maintained gateways), ousting Harriet Jones which just opened the door for the Master to take over, etc. I think Nine was almost paralyzed by the fact that if he messed up there was no one to fix it, which is why he couldn't bring himself to pull the trigger on the delta wave (in addition to the angst of yet another genocide.) This led to Ten being more hardline, due to feeling increasing pressure to fulfil the traditional role of the TLs and eventually cracking under the strain.
Frankly this is why I like this show. I like that for all his amazing brain power and abilities, the Doctor is at heart a flawed being doing the best he can, with the best of intentions. **
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Post by jjpor on Nov 17, 2009 21:31:13 GMT
And you know what they say about good intentions, LL...
LOL - yes, Mark Antony! And strangely appropriate, in the circumstances here. Yet also wrong - very wrong... ;D
Unfortunately all of the really good lines from Rome are, well, unrepeatable on a family forum...
I think the parallels with Children of Earth are there, in which both showed that RTD (and co-writers - I have a tendency to give Rusty all of the credit/blame when I'm talking NuWho, and it's only partially accurate and not really fair) can do the impossible decisions/hard choices thing when he/they want to. So that's even less excuse for stuff like Journey's End or magic-Tinkerbell-Doctor in Last of the Time Lords, really... Except Jack didn't then hubristically make himself President of Earth or whatever...but then again, I think as a character Jack has a clearer, harder view of himself, his capabilities and limitations (he knows he's a ruthless b**stard under all the shiny-toothed heroic posturing, really), than Ten has. Or had, until Adelaide did what she did, maybe.
And yes, this idea of the all-powerful "lonely god" with no safety net is something that's been building in NuWho for a while now, and drawn a lot of criticism from people (myself included) who thought it makes the Doctor this wish-fulfilment can-do-no-wrong figure. And then they turned that on its head in WoM, which was very well done, I thought.
I just continue to worry about that very ending, if it does represent a step back and business-as-usual character-wise in the next special. I hope not - I hope they take more away from this story than angst.
Johne - don't get me started on the characterisation and motivations of the Master - lostspook and I have had more than one week-long comments-thread discussion on this on lj. I know the novel you're talking about. Personally, I don't know if I like the idea of an origin story about the Master "turning evil"; I like to think there was something deeply broken and wrong about him all along that the other Time Lords couldn't deal with. Except I want Delgado Master to win half the time, just because does it with such style... I'm torn, you see.
And as for the Doctor's arrogance, UNIT giving him _rounds of applause_ mid-crisis can't help matters, can it? Wouldn't have happened in the Brig's day...
Yeah, I didn't really think the Ood at the end (the end at the Ood??) was done particularly well. Bonus points for the cloister bell chiming, though. As for prophecies one bit that made me laugh was when the Doctor is saying he can't die yet, because of that knocking four times thing (which I'm still convinced is the Master drumming, "du-dum, du-dum")...and then the knocking started... ;D
And, well, Abby, as you said yourself, great minds do think alike. Or something. ;D
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