Doctor Who

[NecroMorrius]

The first episode was great. I've always been a fan of the more chatter less clatter approach. This was funny, touching, creepy, understated, well written and well paced. Good stuff!

[NecroMorrius]

Episode two has some actual music from mass effect in it, for reals. Might be placeholder on the work print, but it's pretty funny considering the last theme ripped off mass effect and garrus is in the trailer.

[Bluejam]

Something for Christmas?

http://blogtorwho.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/doctor-who-ornaments-sale.html?m=1

[JPickford]

I wish all episodes were longer like the first one. Considering most episodes feel rushed I doubt it would actually cost much more to make a longer episode with more quiet time. Not that I know anything about costs. It just seems more of an editing thing.

[zxcvbnm]

I watched the first and second episodes now, and he makes a great doctor, fantastic first episode, but unsure about the second one.

[Hexx]

Second episode watched. It's going to be decisive certainly. People will either think it's Good (but not necessarily great) or terrible.

I'm of the former - but the there are some great moments in between. Capaldi's 12 is good. The 2nd half of the 1st episode is more representative. Much like 11 I'm finding even in terrible scenes I enjoy watching him.

Pleasantly optimistic!

[HarMGM]

Second episode watched as well and honestly, it's one I didn't just enjoy but properly loved. Pretty dark episode and the first one to get a particular monster right in years. Not surprising considering Phil Ford, who co-wrote the Waters of Mars with Davies, wrote the episode.

[zxcvbnm]

Capaldi is amazing in the second episode, and yes - it got the monster right - and the pay off at the end is superb, but maybe it was the other actors, but something about it stopped it being great. As good as Ecclestone's? Not sure.

[El Pibe]

What is the quality like on these?

[Hexx]

Both are B&W with massive watermarks.

The first one has obviously nearly done unfinished CGI work

The second has HORRIFIC CGI work (we're talking PS1 style computer graphics) and some dialogue missing/undubbed and just subtitles "X says Y here"

[Meh]

Is the music in place? Is it as utterly fucking terrible as Murray Gold's other overly-loud bullshit (when he's not ripping off movie soundtracks)?

[HarMGM]

Capaldi is amazing in the second episode, and yes - it got the monster right - and the pay off at the end is superb, but maybe it was the other actors, but something about it stopped it being great. As good as Ecclestone's? Not sure.

Hmm, to say something more proper would be to go into spoilers so just in case.

I would never say 'Into the Dalek' rivals Dalek but I'd put it miles ahead of Tennant's and Smith's Dalek episodes. The first Dalek story in quite a while to have great bits in it to say the least. The only other dalek stories in New Who have been 'Dalek', 'Parting of the Ways' and 'Journey's End'. The latter because they finally roll out Davros.

The thing that's stopping it from greatness is to my mind the unfinished state of the production which renders certain performances a bit flat and robbs a few moments of impact. To be honest, I had the same reaction with the first half of 'Deep Breath'.

And yes, the ending is superb.

[whizzo]

Er. Is there a reason you guys arent spoilering this?

[NEG]

EXAM-IN-ATE

[zxcvbnm]

Oh yes, as well as unfinished CGI, music and dubbing in the second episode, the temporary Dalek voices are hilarious. I think we're in for a real treat with Capaldi, the piece at the end when the dalek has seen inside him was perfect

[NecroMorrius]

Is the music in place? Is it as utterly fucking terrible as Murray Gold's other overly-loud bullshit (when he's not ripping off movie soundtracks)?

It's all placeholder I think. Mass effect music pops up at one point, and the title screen still bills matt Smith as the lead.

[zxcvbnm]

Of all the changes Moffat should have made, the music is one that I wish he had. As everyone and their dog points out, it's too over the top, and always far too high in the mix. And go back to the original theme tune, nothing else has topped it.

[HarMGM]

Oh yes, as well as unfinished CGI, music and dubbing in the second episode, the temporary Dalek voices are hilarious. I think we're in for a real treat with Capaldi, the piece at the end when the dalek has seen inside him was perfect

I. SEE. HATRED!!! Brilliant

[Ivanho]

[Hexx]

New Doctor Who title sequence inspired by viral fan creation

It is perhaps the ultimate validation of Doctor Who fandom: inspiring its showrunner Steven Moffat with an idea which then ends up in the show itself.

That’s exactly what’s happened to Billy Hanshaw, a motion graphics specialist from Leeds. He created his own title sequence for the new series of Doctor Who, complete with Peter Capaldi, a spinning Tardis, intergalactic vistas, and an eye-catching swoop through the gears of a clock. It became a viral hit on YouTube, notching over 700,000 views.

Now Moffat has acknowledged it as inspiring the actual opening credits sequence in the finished series. “Hanshaw created this title sequence, put it up on YouTube. I happened to cross it, and it was the only new title idea I’d seen since 1963,” he told a New York fan event. “We got in touch with him, and said, OK, we’re going to do that one.”

Elsewhere on the US promotional tour, Peter Capaldi said that his admiration of the show stems from very early in his life. “I’ve been watching the show since I was five years old,” he said. “Actors who played Doctor Who – Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker – those were the people I was watching. More than Laurence Olivier.”

Doctor Who returns on 23 August with series opener Deep Breath.

That's pretty cool. Hope the official version is as good

[Mogster]

Yup. A bit of polish with the effects at the end and that's pretty much there already. I'd expect a bit more of a departure for the theme itself though.

[SeanR]

Has Jenna quit already?

[Hexx]

Sunday Mirror or some other rag is reporting this morning she'll leave at Christmas.

[strider]

Our local cinema is charging a bargainous £15 an adult and £9 a child to see the first episode on the big screen. Normally tickets are £8 and £6.

What a fucking rip off.

[whizzo]

Its ok m8 its on bbc for free

[Dr Derek Doctors]

I'm seeing it at the local Cineworld, and even with my Unlimited Card it's a fiver, the cheeky sods.

[Nick R]

From here:

[Hexx]

To, I'm sure, no one's surprise - Episode 3 workprint is now out there

Edit - Best of the 3 workprints in terms of quality. Storywise it's filler nonsense, but entertainingly so. It's not going to go down as a classic and I doubt it's one people will love or rewatch, but it's an enjoyable 45min. Think kids will really like it. Capaldi's Doctor continues to be very very enjoyable and easily watchable even in somewhat duff scenes.

[Sprite Machine]

The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang

(Blog has pictures)

Epic finales have capped the past four and a bit seasons, so it was no surprise that season 5 went all out. In a scene reminiscent of what Russell T Davies probably intended in 'The Stolen Earth', every single available alien, robot and creature from the past five years gathers together at Stonehenge 102 AD (including, bizarrely, the Silurians, who shouldn't even be awake at this point) to trap the Doctor in a giant box, thus stopping him from destroying the Universe when his Tardis explodes in the future.

[Picture: The Universe's largest recorded INTERVENTION meeting.]

It's a good twist, because you spend most of the first episode thinking there's a monster inside the Pandorica, but in fact the monster is the Doctor and all the bad guys are there to save the Universe for a change. It must have taken an incredible amount of planning on their part, though. They had to read a psychic imprint of Amy's mind to create the trap, ensure the coordinates were written on a painting that would get passed down to River Song, who would find a way to escape prison and bring the Doctor to the right place. Convoluted isn't the word! You also have to wonder, if keeping the Doctor sealed away for eternity is so important, why make the Pandorica so easy to open again from the outside?

[Picture: Auton-duplicate Roman Rory, now with sonic screwdriver action.]

[Picture: The Doctor tells the alien spaceships over Stonehenge to bugger off for a while.]

Okay kid, this is where it gets complicated. With the first episode ending on the most extreme of cliffhangers, the Tardis exploding, the Doctor trapped forever, and the lights in the Universe blinking out of existence, it takes a hell of a job to undo it, but this is one of those occasions where it mostly works satisfyingly, thanks to Steven Moffat's knack for planning out long-winded and complex plots and believing in the audience enough to keep up with it. Through a series of time jumps, the Doctor sets into motion an elaborate plan to rescue himself and works out how to undo the erasure of the Universe. These sequences are both amusing and clever, not to mention logically consistent (a rarity in a show that supposedly deals with time travel), so it's a shame that a large part of the climax revolves around, basically, magic.

[Picture: I wear a fez now. Fezzes are cool.]

This annoys me, because the story could rely on its use of hard temporal mechanics to sort itself out, but instead descends into wishy-washy metaphor. Erased from existence, the Doctor is brought back into the Universe by the power of memories or love or some such nonsense. How does that make any sense? The mind is not some magical thing that can overcome the laws of physics - either somebody exists in spacetime or they don't. So now we have a situation where the Tardis was actually blown up, but now it wasn't because it was undone, except that it still did happen because they remember it and still need to work out who was responsible for it, even though it quite obviously didn't happen because the Tardis still exists. The Doctor was at the heart of the Big Bang version 2, except he clearly wasn't because he still exists, and he only exists because Amy and Rory remember him... and so on, and so forth.

[Picture: It's not quite as bad as "the whole world prays for the Doctor" but it's the same sort of thing.]

Well, whatever issues there are with the plot, I can't deny that it's bloody ambitious. I also love how the previous episodes from the season are incorporated into it, with Vincent's painting passed down through history, and then later with the Doctor revisiting Amy in their previous adventures and finally explaining that weird scene from 'Flesh and Stone'. Amy's story arc also reaches a conclusion, with the mystery of her vanishing parents solved, the crack in her room being sealed, and Rory coming back into existence in time for their wedding day.

[Picture: It's hard not to feel a twinge of emotion as the Tardis materialises during the reception, to the words "something old, something new, something borrowed... something blue". Yes, very clever, Steven. How long had you been waiting to write that?]

I suppose what I liked most about this finale is that all the overblown threat is contained with a minimum of bluster within part 1. After the big incident, the second part is relatively low-key. There's this wonderful mix of the utterly bleak (all the stars have gone out, the Tardis is burning in the sky for two millennia, and the Earth will soon disappear), the heartwarmingly lovely (Auton-duplicate Rory standing guard over Amy for 2000 years) and the bloody funny (the stuff with the mop and the fez). There was never any doubt that everything would turn out fine in the end, but getting there is a fascinating journey. For that reason, it's the best season finale of the new series, despite the problems I had with it.

[Picture: The exploding Tardis painting makes for a lovely piece of wall art.]

I was hoping to have revisited Matt Smith's entire run before season 8 begins, but as I type this, Peter Capaldi's debut is just days away, so I'm going to take this opportunity to take a 'deep breath', enjoy the new series and come back to this in a little while.

[Zio]

I really need to rewatch that finale. I remembered enjoying it at the time and thinking it was the best finale I'd seen for the new series by a country mile.