Doctor Who

[SeanR]

Wait, they rescued rory's dad, but what about the others on the ship...

[El Pibe]

I wish they would stop pissing around with Who. Just give us a proper run.

Feels like history repeating. How long until its on at the same time as Coronation Street?

[pulsemyne]

Woah at the beginning titles.

[Pete]

I'm enjoying this a lot

[Mentazm]

What was with the potter spex?

[Nicky]

[pranny]

that was pretty perfect and my face is all wet .

[lordcookie]

I found it a disappointing and emotion free send off. Whilst I think it was time for them to go (they've done nothing with them this season) both Amy and Rory have been the only companions I've found tolerable since Who's return and I was hoping their final episode would be stronger than that. Once again Moffat throws in lots of ideas and once again barely develops them. So we end up with yet another story that hurries to a conclusion just as it begins to find its feet and as such never delivers the emotional wallop it needed. It was, however, perfectly in keeping with the rest of this season.

[Lorfarius]

It was okay but needed to be stronger. Although I'm starting to come round to the feeling that the angels have been done to death, the only thing told about them was the farming business. I'd say either develop them more or let them go now.

[Alex W.]

What a cheap and unearned bag of wank built around Deus Ex Machina that was.

This season has been uniformly terrible.

[lordcookie]

It was okay but needed to be stronger. Although I'm starting to come round to the feeling that the angels have been done to death, the only thing told about them was the farming business. I'd say either develop them more or let them go now.

They are still following the Alien template which means tonight's episode was Alien3...

with much loved characters killed off screen.

That means the next episode will feature some strange Angel-Doctor hybrid abomination before we get two terrible Daleks vs Angels specials.

[Harsin]

So he can't go back to New York in 1938 (or was it 1938 full stop) because of technobabble. What's to stop him going back to 1939 if he really wants to see them?

All those theories that the episodes leading up to this were in the Doctor's future came to naught then.

While the Statue of Liberty as an Angel made for a nice special effect, it didn't make a lick of goddamn sense given the entire concept of them and their ruleset.

[JohnC]

While the Statue of Liberty as an Angel made for a nice special effect, it didn't make a lick of goddamn sense given the entire concept of them and their ruleset.

I actually expected

an implication that it was an Angel, but it doesn't move because there's always someone looking at it. And some threat that if people do stop looking, it would be Very Bad.

But it actually moving didn't make sense. I think it would be noticed somehow.

[Garwoofoo]

So he can't go back to New York in 1938 (or was it 1938 full stop) because of technobabble. What's to stop him going back to 1939 if he really wants to see them?

Yes, exactly.

Or they could simply get on a plane to, say, London in 1938 and he could pick them up from there and carry on.

Even if the "fixed point in time" dictated that they had to die in New York aged 82 and 87 then the Doctor could just have dropped them off at some indeterminate point in the future. In fact it would have been quite handy as they wouldn't have been able to be killed at any point before then.

Unless I've missed something it was typical Moffat technobabble bollocks with plot holes you could steer the Tardis through.

[Harsin]

I actually expected

an implication that it was an Angel, but it doesn't move because there's always someone looking at it. And some threat that if people do stop looking, it would be Very Bad.

But it actually moving didn't make sense. I think it would be noticed somehow.

That would actually have been a really nice concept and just the thing to frighten kids half to death in the best traditions of Robert Holmes.

Far better than the scenario that nobody in the entirety of Manhattan happened to look out of their window as it stomped down Madison Avenue like Godzilla.

Also it was weird that they had a big reveal before the credits and then played it as a mystery what was causing the loud noises and the ground to shake later on.

[Mentazm]

Why does the doctor even need companion(s)? Let's have a radical shakeup next time. Female doctor. NO companion(s).

[Hexx]

Did the farm make no sense to anyway?

If they keep knocking Rory/whomever back in time again and gaian wouldn't there end up with long periods where there's multliple Rorys staying in the room waiting to be knocked back again and gain?

Kind of like Bender's Big Score :S

OK ep. Some good, some bad. Standard Moffet stuff of too many (interesting) ideas thrown together with non fully developed, and some scenes/lies that were clearly thought of first and then the story/plot wrapped around them

[WibbleWorldGiddy]

He's great when he juggling his japey persona with a really dark undercurrent, like he did in earlier episodes. He's got a killer thousand-yard stare and a face that flicks from childlike to ancient looking with ease. However, most of the writers/directors/whoever is to blame seem content to have the character act like a Butlins redcoat most of the time.

Matt Smith's performance continues to impress as The Doctor, but the gurning and vocal inflections that he does to show his japey side are starting to get on my nerves. He seems to be channeling Boris Johnson, rather than Patrick Troughton nowadays. I hope the writing downplays the goofiness as we move into the 50th anniversary year.

[loathsomeleopard]

That was pretty enjoyable -- not sure if it was better than Asylum, but a definite mark above the rest of the series. For once, I didn't want to claw my eyes out whenever River was onscreen (although the regeneration energy thing was just daft), and the Angels were nicely menacing again.

[Red Alignment]

Just finished watching my recording of this from earlier, and, oh man it was terrible. What a waste of two decent companions, offed in such a hurried manner without genuine emotional weight.

I mean, their 'deaths' were almost quick enough to be literally blink-and-you'll-miss-it. With such a tangled mess of made-up bollocks explanations hanging everything together.

I'm basically watching DW out of habit at this point, like my dad did during the second half of the '80s.

[kensei]

Can someone do a 'Doctor Cycle' diagram for you moaning fuckers.

Regeneration! Tentative hope

Oh my God this is the bestest favouritest Doctor Ever

He's still good, but there is a bit of overacting

This Doctor is the worst person in history with his gurny overacting

Repeat.

Seriously, Tennant / RTD all over again.

[Comrade]

I quite enjoyed it.

It kind of felt like Moffat was trying to write a "proper" sequel to Blink to me - it was full of clever, similar ideas, like the novel, or the gravestone. I thought it was a good send-off for Amy and Rory, being simultaneously tragic and nice. There were far too many plot holes surrounding it though.

I think that one of the problems with this series is that it's too much of a reaction to the criticism of last series - instead of an increasingly complicated narrative arc, they try and get these grand ideas squeezed into a single episode. One of the problems with Doctor Who as a format in general though is that with such fantastical settings and characters needing to be completely introduced every week, time is already at a premium. Suffice to say, this really should have been a two-parter.

One thing I noticed though - at the beginning it's stated that the "present" is 2012; last week Amy said they'd been with the Doctor for 10 years - is this finally the explanation for Rory's ID date in the first ep of Doctor 11? A bit of an anticlimax really, but a nice touch nonetheless.

[Gommy]

I enjoyed it, but it felt like it could have been great with some of the ideas it had, but it just missed and ended up very average. As above I think the 1 story episodes is too much of a limitation every week. This needed 2 episodes.

They wasted the statue of liberty. Since when did the angels clunk about when they moved. The tagline was never 'Don't blink - but if you do listen to the clunking noises'.

Wasn't the statue of liberty given to the Americans by the French? Missed opportunity there to give it scope across 2 timelines-and some vague interlinking to history. Heck they could have had 1 completely independent story in New York. Then another completely standalone episode down the line based in France, the result being the doctor ends up putting this massive ticking time bomb of a giant angel right in the middle of New York, because he doesn't know what else to do. If they want to go down this doctors guilt with his companions they have to constantly insist on doing when they leave, then why not have him realise as he's putting the angel in new york that it's his fault.

Note I wouldn't do this. I'm sick of companions having to have these horrible heart felt departures. Could they not just go 'look doctor we actually want to hang about on this planet (not necessarily earth) for a while and make a life for ourselves'.

I would have tried to and do something more to the angels, these days the chases with them are generally pretty rushed and they're losing the impact. Maybe even make the small angels be against the statue.

[joeplus]

Eh, good and bad.

The Angels were properly scary again, unlike in the S5 two-parter. I loved the baby angel blowing out Rory's match. However, the Statue of Liberty thing was bullshit and reeked of Moffatt over-reaching his budget. People would notice!!!

[Pekoe]

The problem always seems to be that the writers start with an idea without an ending.

It always feel like that they've written themselves into a corner where the only means of resolution is a reset by someone committing suicide.

[whizzo]

One thing I noticed though - at the beginning it's stated that the "present" is 2012; last week Amy said they'd been with the Doctor for 10 years - is this finally the explanation for Rory's ID date in the first ep of Doctor 11? A bit of an anticlimax really, but a nice touch nonetheless.

Nah you misheard them. They said they were ten years older. And even stated the exact words "not for earth"

The Tardis is a time machine.

[Not Thread Owner]

Right then, its back on the Doctor Who trail tonight!

And did the BBC just tell me this was the SEASON FINALE

FFS. It's SERIES.

(Or possibly even serial )

[lordcookie]

Francesco Francavilla has been doing posters each week for new Who episodes:

[mayor_mike_haggar]

I'm sure they could have done a better job of hand-waving why they can't travel in time again after being zapped by the angels. Something peculiar to exactly how the angels shift you in time or whatever. I mean, if bloody River could find them to deliver a book for publishing, then it's not really going to be beyond the doctor to pop by and say hello, is it?

And, as massive a plot hole as the statue of liberty sneaking about in new york is, I can kind of forgive it because it's such a cool visual. How exactly it got there would've been an incredibly cool story, though.

[Garwoofoo]

The more I think about it, the more the plot holes upset me. They're just so big, so glaringly obvious that it's inconceivable that no-one spotted them during writing or filming. The Statue of Liberty undermines the whole concept of the Angels, and the entire resolution of the episode whereby Amy and Rory are separated from the Doctor is so massively flawed it simply doesn't hang together. The episode is a dud.

So the only explanation is that the plot holes were considered by the production team; and then it was decided that it didn't matter, that a cool visual (the statue) and a tearful ending were more important than the episode actually making sense or being internally consistent. Which is exactly the same problem that plagued Who in the last couple of years of the RTD run: barely-coherent stories and ludicrous reset buttons being used to justify "cool" but ultimately unworkable settings and images. Add in the fact that the protracted and much-heralded departure of a major character has meant we've essentially been in a holding pattern for half a series (Tennant/Gillan) and the fact they keep messing about with the schedules (Tennant's year of specials / a series split in two over the Christmas break) and it's all horribly horribly familiar.

What the hell happened to Moffat? His RTD-era episodes were superb and they were great because they made sense, had great sci-fi ideas that held together and always wrapped themselves up in a satisfying way. Nothing in this current series has been anything worthy of the man at his best.