Doctor Who is awesome, yeah? (Page 32 of 40)

I totally agree Tomahawk, that was my major issue with Clara. Instead they pretty much used her as a mouth piece for all the fans that were in it for Tennant and Smith only.

Why the hell did Moffat go so far out of his way to fix this minor continuity point from forty odd years ago only to set a new regeneration limit on the Doctor?

I really dislike Clara she is completely bland, like "Can we get Martha back?" bland.

I do wonder how long she will be the Doctor's companion, given her reaction to number 12.

Also, I kind of like the fact that they granted another cycle to the Doctor, even if it was in a circus performance kind of a way.

Stupid expiration dates

Others have mentioned that the Smith/Capaldi transition is very similar to the Davidson/Colin Baker one. In each case, you're seeing a change from childish to almost anti-hero. Baker was given his own companion to start things off with, though.

You would think, nowadays, that wouldn't be a problem. Unless they actually used a script written for a "generic" Doctor (as was done with the first McCoy episode), it should have been written to show off how his new personality was forming and tell us where the show was going. A good producer would also have filmed a couple other episodes first, letting the actor settle into his part before he has to deal with how he becomes the Doctor (this was done with Peter Davidson)

I agree with people's complaints about Deep Breath but I liked Clara in it. That scene with the lead robot dude was great for both actress and character. I wasn't a huge fan of Clara before but that scene gives me hope for her which will no doubt be dashed soon.

New episode on tonight with the return of the darleks! One thing that I will say about the previous episode is that I quite liked the cinematography. This new series already feels different in tone, it looks and feels moodier/darker with harsher lights (Like in the restaurant scene, it feels cold, clinical and tense even before we realize that something is up) which makes me wonder how 'dark' this series will get. I wonder if it'll be like the baker years with horror/gothic elements to it!

So I have a question guys, who would you say is your favorite doctor? For me, I go with Paul McGann. The TV movie is very cheesy but he has some great moments in it ("Stand aside or I'll shoot myself!") What makes him my favorite is that I found him to be really enjoyable and engaging in the Big Finish audio dramas! If you haven't listened to some, definitely check them out.

We had a separate thread for that queston (it's hard to find, 'cause its title is confusing).

So, episode 2.  A significant improvement from last week, as we go from 'bewilderingly awful' to 'not very good'.  If the present trend continues, who knows what heights we might scale?

Peter Capaldi is still very good to excellent, though perhaps slightly let down by the aspects of the script.  Sure, it's supposed to be new regeneration and blah blah blah, but I think it's in the Thor commentary where the guys talk about drafts that just have the first thing you thought of for a line or a joke or whatever, and you then come back later to fix those.  Except if feels in places like they just never did that. 

But the big problem though is still the story. 

In the writer's guide for the original Star Trek, one of the things that Gene Roddenberry is at pains to emphasize is that science fiction doesn't have its own dramatic rules.  In principle, any story for Star Trek should be 'translatable' into something that would work in a police procedural, a hospital show, a legal show, etc. and be dramatically satisfying.  And that just doesn't happen in this episode.  You can hang all the lanterns on it you want, which they do (and I think this episode must have needed a dedicated gaffer just for that), but that doesn't make it better.

And what's kind of frustrating is that, just last week's episode actually, it seems like there's the core of a good idea here:

And even at 40 minutes the episode feels padded, though it's not as bad as last week.

I see from Wikipedia that starting with episode 7 we're getting a run of episodes by people who seem never to have written for Doctor Who before.  I'm quietly hopeful that maybe, with a little luck, those might possibly be 'meh'.

Great comment about Sci-fi needing story. Every time I hear someone call 'super-hero' a genre I think the same. A story with super-heroes can also be a mystery just as a Sci-fi in space can also be horror. I think Sci-fi is more setting than genre.

Meanwhile, in the TARDIS: I think Doctor Who has been plagued by this problem since its inception. The original series had staff writers and budget problems, etc. Since 2005, we have Davies and Moffat running the show and that has come with both good and bad consequences.

I've been banging that drum for years.

Genre: Action/Adventure, Horror, Drama, Comedy, Mystery, etc...
Settings: Super-Hero, Sci-Fi, Western, Period, Noir, etc...

While it's true that the setting helps shape the plot and can give each genre it's own flair, fundamentally the storytelling genre stands separate.

As for the 2nd episode of the new Who...I thought it was ok, and definitely a step in the right direction.

The opening segment felt like a Eccelston/Tennant episode in all the right ways. It wasn't perfect, but it was enjoyable. The "smaller on the outside" gag literally made me laugh out loud...something I'm not sure I did once in the entire Smith run (I'm not counting Tennant's jokes in the special).

The rest of the episode was ok. Tone was good, Capaldi was good, resolution was a bit nonsensical but less so than most of the last few seasons.

The Doctor undid a bolt with the sonic screwdriver, which was a little annoying...but I guess that ship sailed long ago.

Clara was a bit better in spurts here, though the aforementioned "bang on things" solution was dumb and her little "what did we learn" lecture to the Doctor grated me to no end. I think they are actually headed to making her an actual person, which would be nice if it weren't for the fact that she's not been that for so long and leaving soon. I really think they should have just written her off somehow and started with a fresh companion. It's thinking way to low of the audience to believe that you need the companion there to bridge the gap and make them understand it's the same Doctor (which I don't think they've done especially well with anyways).

I'm starting to dig the "Missy" mystery, and I'm going to toss out the theory that it's future Clara who's turned evil and obsessed with the Doctor, attempting to work some plan where they (her and the Smith version) can end up together forever. That has the potential to be a lot of fun...though admittedly I don't actually think that's the answer.

I have more thoughts...but lunch is over and I have a meeting to get to.

Last edited by BBQ (2014-09-05 00:16:41)

Well that was... I can find no other word for it than...offensive.

On every aspect. The story was a trainwreck..literally, I think the script for this and a copy of a Robin Hood novel got in a trainwreck and the pages that didn't get burnt, shredded or lost were just thrown together in and called a script. It completely abandoned anything even resembling the (minimal) character work of the last two episodes. Completely abandoned any sense of reality or irony at what it was doing. And let's just not even talk about the Screwdrivers new ability to make a explode a pile of wood in a massive fireball can we?

All I want to do is sit Doctor WHo down and say "You see this? This right here? This is why I can't love you, and believe me I want to love you, with every fiber of my being I want to scream your glory to the wind.. but it's shit like this dude. I mean dammit man."

The really painful part, is that I enjoyed the first two episodes, I really really wanted to believe they were going somewhere with it all. That this really was a new season and a new Doctor.  And I saw the struggling character development, and the slightly half-assed story's, but there was at the very least a core to it that was interesting and hinted at something deeper. But this makes it really really hard to believe any of that anymore. This season is gonna have to do some major work to get back up there now.

And more than anything, it just makes me sad.