I've been thinking about this episode again today, and I think I discovered a major reason why it just absolute didn't click with me AT ALL.

From the very outset of the episode the Doctor is saying that Robin Hood can't be real, isn't real, this is something he (The time travelling centuries old man we all know who's always 6 steps ahead of the game...mostly) KNOWS and defends to the hilt.

So enter Robin Hood, and blah blah blah banter banter Doctor is confused. Whatever. But the entire episode is so...fairy tale. Robin Hood is exactly the strapping perfectly clean hero of legend, the entire world looks like a movie, the castle is so perfectly castley, Robins outfit is so perfectly pressed and horridly gaudy, the merry men are so perfectly those exaggerated movie interpretations we've seen again and again (That Lute player still thinks he's in a Monty Python movie I think).

And the entire time the Doctor is saying this can't be real. And I have to agree with him, because the entire goddamn universe of this episode feels like a film set. Everything is just so...movieish, and it does it all completely without any sense of irony. And it hits that note over and over and over again, Robin splitting an arrow 16 times in a row, cutting the ropes to go flying up into the rafters,  the banter (ohmyfuckinggodsyouguysalrightwegetit the Doctor has a giant ego this season, only matched by Clara, can we stop hammering that fact every 30 seconds this season?), the TEAMWORK!YAH! bow shot at the end- I mean we were half a gag away from a rousing round of Men In Tights from the Merry Men and a circumcision joke.

But then the episode has the nerve to turn around in the last 30 seconds of the episode after all of this ridiculous cartoony, bantery, movie bullshit and go "Oh no guys, he's totally like a real human with emotions and stuff." But I can't even believe that this is actually EARTH we're on right now, let alone that this is actually some great human with human human-ness that actually lived in our history.

And then on top of that you layer the absolutely in-decipherable rules for the ship/motivation for the bad guys (They need to pour all this gold into a complex circuitry pattern to...seal? the reactor, but it's not enough gold and they need more in order to seal the reactor. So we'll just shoot a gold arrow at the hull and that'll be enough to keep the engines together long enough to get them into orbit...but then it's just gonna blow up anyways? Yah fuck you guys.) I'm used to being talked down to with technobabble, but holy shit you guys how dense do you think I am?

And sure taken one by one, they might not seem like much, but when the entire episode is just wave after wave of condescending, inane, insane bullshit, the entire thing just becomes a joke.

Heh, I wouldn't say I'm on a cliff, it's just sad to see the promise of a "new darker who" go down the drain so quickly. I can understand a transition period, but to so quickly completely abandon the idea of that and go full hog ridiculous, so quickly makes me wonder.

"The third was a leftover Smith script they threw in."

You should write for this show, since that's about the level of caring they seem to have these days.

"You found a script under the couch? Eh, fuck it, throw it in there, who the hell's gonna care."

As for the screwdriver, it's not so much the fact that's "new powers omgz", but the Doctor's whole thing is non-violence and using wit to outsmart his enemies, which is why he uses a bloody screwdriver and not an actual weapon. But eh, fuck it, it can make fireballs and explode shit now, that's cool right?

Also, me and Saniss were talking earlier, and he reminded me of the whole "LET'S GO FIND GALLIFREY" thing from the Christmas special that seemed so VITALLY important to everyone at the time... and so uh...has ANYONE heard even a passing mention to Gallifrey in the 3.5 episodes so far?

I have never been more in love with a fictional girl than I am with Emily Browning in that trailer. My gods.

I want to believe you but the fact we literally see

Well, it's really not my thing, but what I did listen to sounded well put together. And I mean damn dude, you made a thing, that alone is always fuckin awesome.

I think the Australian is getting impatient.

In case anyone else was curious.

In 4 months, this will pass the Roadtrip for longest time from first post to completion.

Personally that's how I saw it. Judging by this thread I may be among the few in that respect.

While I haven't sat down and watched through Chronicles, what I have seen, does really intrigue me on the same line of thinking that Guardians did.

So either way yeah, I'd say go see it.

It's interesting you say that Dave, since that's one of the exact reasons I loved it and other things like this (*cough* Farscape *cough*). The universe is just absolutely littered with interesting people and things and "HOLY SHIT THAT"S SO AWESOME" things, but we don't NEED to focus on them, they just become this really awesome tapestry of the universe. And we might fade in and out a little closer on some of them (Ie. The Collector), but it doesn't overtake the story, they are just these things that pop up along our heroes journey.

Weirdly, it reminds me a lot of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. We are just along this journey and we'll run into these really weird or interesting things that are part of the universe (Tim, the Rabbit of Caerbannog, The Black Knight), I don't need to know their back story, they are just there and server the story in their own ways and then we move the story along.

Well considering it hasn't even aired this side of planet yet, I'd say spoilers are a no go. So while I avoided most of it, there are still a few things I glanced in your post I wish I hadn't. So Spoiler Tags please.