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Post by jjpor on Sept 1, 2012 18:19:15 GMT
Your thread for discussing the newest episode of new Who. Please be courteous (I know you will be) and either white spoilers out or use the spiffy new spoiler tag IMF explains about on the other thread.
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Post by johne on Sept 1, 2012 20:11:15 GMT
I clicked on the new 'spoiler' icon... and my browser crashed (Chrome 22.0.1229.26). How odd Special Weapons Dalek. Much moar. The one we got looked to me as if it was already dead; it didn't so much as move, much less fire.
I indulged in a little quiet grinning at the names of the various planets the Intensive Care Daleks had been on. Though, continuity-obsessed nerd that I am, I should point out that (a) in at least one of those encounters, there weren't any Dalek survivors, and (b) none of them had any Time War-style Daleks present. So... during the Time War, did the Daleks and the Doctor return to those battles to try and change the outcome?
I think that the Amy and Rory bits... well, it's not exactly helping to convince me you can travel with the Doctor and not have your life screwed riiiiiiight up. I shall watch their future progress with considerable interest.
Then I have to touch on Dalek Oswin. Once you know, it's quite enlightening to go back over the episode and look at all the little visual cues that her quarters are actually the inside of a Dalek's head. I'm still wondering about her backstory; it feels as if there should be more to it than 'I'm a bored genius who got a job on a spaceship'. (Of course, being me, I have to note that my favourite companion was a bored genius {of similar height and hair colour, even} on a space station, and judging by threads on Gallifrey Base I'm not the only one who thinks there's a resemblance).
And as for Moffat... oh boy, does he lie. Standalone episodes, forsooth.
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Post by jjpor on Sept 2, 2012 11:53:34 GMT
No ingratitude intended to IMF, but I think I'm just going to keep whiting mine out for now, old set-in-my-ways curmudgeon that I am: ;D * Yes, needed more SPECIAL WEAPONS DALEK! Although I was grateful just for the sight of the old blighter, personally I would have wanted s/he/it to be the main guest character of the episode and to actually be the Doctor's next companion, ideally. ;D Or to just have had the chance to cut loose - just once - with that mighty cannon. Would that have been too much to ask for??
And we didn't really see any of the other oldschool Daleks. I identified a couple at various points, but it was mostly the gold/bronze Time War era models (interesting how the iDaleks seem to have been consigned to the dustbin of history, with them presumably only still using the props because they've paid for them now).
That said, as a fanboy I was more than happy with some of the other references we got here. Yes, the mentions of Exxilon, Spiridon etc didn't really make sense continuity-wise, but they were nice little nods I thought. Mainly, though, I was pleased with the amount of Dalek lore that was quietly slipped in, here - the burned Skaro (Seven done that!), duplicates a la Resurrection (or were they really Robo-men after the manner of Dalek Invasion of Earth?), the human-Dalek conversion process bearing a more than passing resemblance to the spectacularly horrible "glass Dalek" scene in Revelation. And the fact that the Daleks themselves were used well, instead of just being slotted into a "shooty robot"-shaped hole in an otherwise generic script (something that happened quite a bit in the old series, never mind the new one). The story concentrated on the things that the Daleks are all about; hatred, madness, fear. I liked the idea of them needing to preserve the Doctor as he is the focus of their fear and hatred, the thing that gives them strength. And now they've been robbed of that.
Hmm, the Daleks have a parliament and a Prime Minister. Who'd have thought it? I'm trying to picture Dalek party political broadcasts now: "VOTE FOR THE EX-TER-MIN-A-TION PART-Y OR YOU WILL BE EX-TER-MIN-AT-ED! OB-EY! OB-EY! OB-EY!"
The bit with them forgetting the Doctor was interesting in another way - another bit of Moffat quietly resetting the continuity to its original state while everybody's distracted by the shiny?
And there was quite a bit of shiny here - it didn't look like they'd stinted on the budget for this one, considering the stories we've heard about cuts at the Beeb. I guess that BBC America co-funding comes in handy at times like this.
I don't know about the whole Amy/Rory marriage-issues thing. A bit soapy, and I can't help instinctively mistrusting Moffat whenever issues of gender politics or relationships come up, given some of his rl pontificating. So, I dunno about all that, really. But it was very well acted. All of our three regular cast members performing as well as we've come to expect over the past couple of seasons. And I for one find myself paying special attention now to every line Karen Gillan or Arthur Darvill get, because I'm going to miss those two when they're gone.
Speaking of companions and actors... Jenna-Louise Coleman. I think I like her. Agreed re the sketchy backstory, but she's looking like a welcome addition to the programme, I think. I hope they don't tone the characterisation down to make her more "normal" or whatever when she comes back full time.
That's assuming the companion is even the same character as Oswin - it's a bit hard to see on the face of it how she can be. There's quite a lot of fan speculation that it's going to be a River type deal and the Doctor is going to meet her at some earlier point in her life and she's going to have this terrible destiny hanging over the whole while. I sort of hope not, really. I was thinking it might be a Gwen from Torchwood, suspiciously-similar-relative sort of thing, but on reflection, and on reading lost_spook's not-a-reaction-post over on LJ, I'm thinking that there's going to be more to it than that. "Remember me", she said to the Doctor. I think it's going to be something related to the Dalek nano-machines the Doctor was presumably well infected with and the telepathic net Oswin hacked and..."remember me" is all a bit S5, isn't it? She's got a plan to resurrect herself, methinks.
Yes, "no story arcs this season!" For shame, Mr Moffat - for shame... *
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Post by johne on Sept 2, 2012 15:12:05 GMT
* And we didn't really see any of the other oldschool Daleks. I identified a couple at various points, but it was mostly the gold/bronze Time War era models (interesting how the iDaleks seem to have been consigned to the dustbin of history, with them presumably only still using the props because they've paid for them now).* ] Maybe we didn't see the oldschool Daleks or the SWD doing anything because the props were either too fragile to be operated, or belonged to third parties, or both?[
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Post by jjpor on Sept 2, 2012 16:13:05 GMT
I think that's very probably the case. *And I guess making CG versions as they have with the gold ones would be a lot of effort and expense for something that's only going to be of use for one episode. In fact, the prevalence of the gold TW Daleks in the Parliament scenes may be because they don't have CGI models of the newer multicoloured versions and no incentive to make any seeing as pretty much everybody thought they looked rubbish. Still, nice to see some of the old series models, even if only for a second or two on screen.*
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Post by clocketpatch on Sept 3, 2012 0:49:29 GMT
This is a super nifty thing. Kudos and karma to IMF for inventing it. I was a bit apathetic to this episode. I think I'm losing my squee But on the upside BBC America has finally got rid of that annoying pre-credits sequence (probably realizing that it wouldn't make any sense what with Amy leaving as a companion) and then the vortex sequence was subtly different. I think that something might have been loped off the beginning of the episode because it started very abruptly on Skaro in the middle of a monologue and I really wasn't sure what was going on. So that threw me out right at the beginning. And then Amy's photoshoot threw me out again - Brilliant portrayal of a photoshoot mind, but maybe a bit too brilliant because I thought it had cut to a commercial. then I got back into it and enjoyed the rest of the romp. Not to sure at all about Amy and Rory's marriage. I kept having the feeling throughout all of that that "this fic here needs to be beta-read before being released for public consumption" Enjoyed the Dalek duplicates making a reappearance, but wasn't so sure about Oswin's "conversion" - it just seemed a bit Cyberman to me. Did enjoy the Dalek concept of beauty and their observation that the Doctor works best with companions. Oswin... I spent the entire episode convinced that she was either a Dalek or River or Romana. So I got one right. I'm interested to see what happens to her later on. I'm interested to see if the Doctor has any long-term effects from his Dalek nanonite exposure. I liked him being erased from Dalek memory at the end, but he needed to stop prancing around screaming Doctor Who! Doctor Who! That's taking the joke too far... unless the end reveal is that he's forgotten it was originally a pseudonym. Favourite part was the random name dropping of Dalek battles in the middle and the souffles. And Rory and the eggs. That was just gold.
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Post by aquabluejay on Sept 3, 2012 1:30:30 GMT
Yes! The awful Amy-centric monologue of awful is gone! I also noticed that the vortex colors were a bit different. The pond life ones were a bit darker, though this time they seemed more sort of blue green (although that may have been the projector screen I was watching it on.) I agree that something has probably been clipped off of the beginning, Clocket. Amy does just sort of seem to assume that the Doctor is immune... If he is as a Time Lord, surely the Daleks would have known that and not bothered to provide him with a bracelet? I wasn't really wowed by the Egg joke with Rory... I did love the Doctor's line about the triangle, it's so random! As far as Oswin, I kind of called her, the clues were there just from the holes in her story from the beginning. Also, since Miracle Day, everyone in red with slightly curly hair that smiles a brightly loos like Julie Kitsinger to me... Which becomes creepy on a number of levels, especially when some of them are real people... Also, interestingly, the spoilers heading shows up on the Topic Summary part of the page when you're typing a reply, and is expandable there as well.
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Post by IMForeman on Sept 3, 2012 1:53:44 GMT
Oh, I didn't invent the spoiler tag. Just found it while looking for hacks and I thought it'd be quite useful. I thought this was a non-extraordinary but pretty enjoyable episode for the most part. Were the vortex colors different? I noticed that the font definitely was at some parts. First off, I have no idea what's going on with Oswin. I'm guessing we're most likely getting an ancestor as a future companion, although I'm hoping that there's either a change in her timeline or she gets picked up earlier, because I loved her and I really want her to be the new companion. Genius hacker from the future! Who makes souffles against the Daleks! Occasionally her flippancy got annoying, but I figured it was a defense mechanism against the sheer despair and PTSD she wasn't allowing herself to succumb to. Although I do wish Moffat would stop writing practically all his women as being willing to flirt with anything that moves. For one moment, I thought we might be getting a Dalek for a companion, as Eleven took Oswin all around the galaxy to introduce her to lovely, friendly things (fun fairs! kittens! fezzes!) in an effort to remind her how to love. If anyone would like to write that fic, I'll be forever grateful. at Amy and Rory breaking up. And that was such a weak excuse, seriously. I know Amy has never been great at communication, but not telling him why she was leaving him? And then him seemingly not questioning her? It made me wonder if there was something else going on there, like Amy not wanting to have more children after what happened with Melody. (Also, her being rendered infertile by what happened at Demon's Run is fairly horrifying, no? As if it wasn't squicky enough...) Glad they seem to have worked out their problems, albeit rather quickly. I wonder if we'll get a follow up of that storyline later or not. And that "Doctor who?" ending. Really? Really? Not saying that I wasn't a bit amused, but I hope Moffat is suitably embarrassed by it.
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Post by aquabluejay on Sept 3, 2012 1:59:01 GMT
I clicked on the new 'spoiler' icon... and my browser crashed (Chrome 22.0.1229.26). How odd Johne, Chrome hates everything. I keep hearing about how different programs and sites we need to use for college classes don't work on it. I always use Firefox because it's epic, and I don't really have any problems! (That was my obligatory ff plug because I do love it. ) I found it very interesting how Eleven looses it there when Oswin isn't opening the door fast enough. Not in the normal way where he gets angry or violent, but curled in on himself terrified and begging. Those Daleks apparently went "out of control" after being defeated by him, so I think in a way they're his own past and failure coming back at him, which probably terrifies him more than anything.
Also, I notice they're calling him the Predator here rather than the Ka Fraq Gra-whatzit or the bringer of darkness/destroyer of worlds or whatever it was before in 9's day.
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