The Rings Of Akhaten

[jjpor]

Well, here is your thread for discussing the latest episode of the latest series of New Who. Please keep all discussion here and not in the cbox. Please also make sure that any spoilers you may post about are obscured via whichever means you prefer.

I know I don't really have to tell you this.

[johne]

I think I'm going to read far more into ]that mention of Susan[ than was intended.

Bit puzzled by the resolution: ]The Doctor hasn't lost all his memories, because he still knows who Clara is, what the TARDIS is and so forth. So did he only sacrifice some of his memory, or was it a nondestructive copy and he's still got everything?[

[jjpor]

*Yeah, that was what I was thinking - surely in that case it wasn't actually a sacrifice? Or did Clara's intervention/the parasite-god's death save him somehow from whatever terrible fate befell the god's victims?

I think that was the thing with this story - it was the obligatory "Doctor takes companion to their first alien planet" story that NuWho does with every new companion, and like most of them a bit disappointing. It reminded me a lot of The Beast Below in S5, to be honest - some good ideas but not really much story to hang them on, and more than a little incoherent in its telling of what little story it did have. And with monsters that give the impression of mainly being there to look cool in promo pictures and trailers, but who don't actually do a lot onscreen.

Having said that, I didn't think it was bad - it passed forty-five minutes agreeably enough and it did have some nice elements. I like the idea of sentimental value, memories, stories and so on having inherent value and power. I thought the revelation of the leaf's meaning was very well done and very nice - after last week's story I was kind of wondering if I was a bit slow on the uptake and it was some "clue" of Moffat's we were meant to pick up on. But no, as it turned out.

Susan reference made me smile. Also thought I detected a couple of (possibly accidental?) Blade Runner references in the Doctor's dialogue at a couple of points, for some reason.

One thing I really liked was Clara's little telling-off of the Doctor over the idea of her being a substitute for some other companion ("herself", had she but known it!), and Eleven's reaction. It was a fairly strong meta statement at some of the Ten era's wrongheadedness with regard to Doctor-companion relationships, especially Martha, or so I interpreted it anyway.

And the TARDIS doesn't like Clara (although it could just be she didn't have a key)? Could that be because she is an anomaly in time and space or something of the kind?

And being a fanw*nker, I'm putting forward the proposition that the thing in the planet, the Old God, was absolutely one of the Great/Giant Vampires from State of Decay? Or maybe not. ;D*

[kirkg]

Wait. Is this the next episode after The Bells of St. John??

[jjpor]

It was indeed - and next week's is entitled Cold War and appears to feature *Liam Cunningham, out of all sorts of things, Tobias Menzies out of Rome, a 1980s-era Soviet nuclear submarine "stuffed full of nuclear missiles" and AN ICE WARRIOR...!

Seriously, Gatiss - that is a massive open goal, there. Surely even the author of The Idiot's Lantern couldn't miss that one? *