Doctor Who (1 Viewer)

[Adam Lenhardt]

How does the language issue work? Shouldn't everyone be speaking the Venetian dialect of Italian? Why isn't anyone surprised to see a 20th century police box land in the middle of a crowded square?

Loved the opening scene, enjoyed the moral complexity of defeating a species that came not to conquer the planet but to carve out a large enough area to survive. Next week looks interesting since I've always had a special interest in "What is reality?" stories.

 

[ChadMcCallum]

Originally Posted by Adam Lenhardt
How does the language issue work? Shouldn't everyone be speaking the Venetian dialect of Italian? Why isn't anyone surprised to see a 20th century police box land in the middle of a crowded square?

The Tardis has telepathic circuits which means that once you step in it the Tardis gets inside your head and translates all alien text and dialogue but the Doctor also plays some sort of part in this because when his 10th incarnation is unconscious and recovering from his regeneration his companion couldn't understand alien languages until he awoke again.

The Tardis also has a perception filter on it which makes people not so much ignore it but simply makes it un-noticed.

As to your earlier question of whether Time Lords have sex in a way similar to humans they can. Its implied that The Master has sex with several women in series 3 and the Doctor's former companion Donna saw him naked and her reaction to the sight didn't suggest anything was different. The Doctor also had sex with a companion in one of the novels and claims to have had sex with Elizabeth the First. I don't know if they can reproduce with a human but if they're just looking for a good time they're equipped for the job.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

"Amy's Choice" was my favorite episode so far. Even though we knew that the five years hence world had to be fake, since a pregnant settled down Amy seven episodes in would ruin the series, they managed to do a good job of upping the stakes by creating very personal consequences for the decision; it's not just that Amy had to choose one world over the other, it's that that choice would say a lot about how she felt about both Rory and the Doctor. Of course in the end the show had its cake and ate it too, but it still raised very interesting questions. Considering that one of the biggest criticisms of Matt Smith's doctor is that he's too light and breezy, I particularly liked Toby Jones's performance as the dark side of the Doctor's persona. Many of the questions the Dream Lord asked get to the heart of the structure the show is built around, and I found that rather brave. There's obviously a part of the Doctor that despises himself for picking up and dumping young companions when he himself is so old, but the reasoning behind it is obvious: while the regeneration process restores a certain physical youth (at least relative to his actual 907 years), it cannot restore the less tangible qualities of youth that, once lost, cannot be regained. To quote RFK: "This world demands the qualities of youth: not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the life of ease." Amy and Rory are innocent, optimistic, imaginative and brave. They offset the Doctor's experience, cynicism, certainty and recklessness. That Smith's Doctor does his best to hide these qualities about himself makes him more complex, not less.

 

[Tony J Case]

Yeah, I thought it was a brilliant episode with some rock solid acting all around (even Rory, who originally came across bland and boring wasn't too bad). Plus how can you not love a show that makes old people take a tumble off the roof? Awesome!

And it was a nice nod to the past too, with the Dream Lord. A manifestation of the Doctor's darker side has shown up before, but this was way more effective than the Valiyard's appearance in Trial of a Time Lord.

 

[NeilO]

Originally Posted by ChadMcCallum
The Time Lords do have 12 regenerations but there are ways to extend that. I'm not sure if you know who The Master is but he's a renegade Time Lord who has been able to extend his number of regenerations through various means. Regeneration has never been fully explained so there's plenty of wiggle room for a writer to explain away this problem and have The Doctor regenerate in to the 14th Doctor when the time comes, which is almost sure to happen. It would be silly of the BBC to end the show because of a line of dialogue in a 25 year episode.

Based on what River Song says in The Time of Angels, it appears she knows at least one future regeneration of the Doctor and possibly several of them.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

I'd wondered what had happened to the costumes from Land of the Lost./img/vbsmilies/htf/smile.gif

Sort of a lackluster first half. Matt Smith continues to improve as The Doctor, but the lack of Amy for most of the hour really drained a lot of the fun out of things. The best guest star was probably the young boy's father, and he too was gone in short order. The rest of the guest cast was underwhelming, particularly the old man and his South Asian partner, who would have been comfortable on the serialized tripe like "Xena" and "Andromeda" that used to broadcast in syndication on weekends here in the states back in the nineties. I enjoyed Rory's brief run trying to fill the Doctor's shoes without much success or enthusiasm, but it too ended much too quick.
Favorite part? The beautiful wide shots of rural Britain in HD. This whole series has been rural-centric, which I quite appreciate.

 

[Tony J Case]

Originally Posted by Adam Lenhardt
I'd wondered what had happened to the costumes from Land of the Lost./img/vbsmilies/htf/smile.gif

Oh, pishaw! You want land of the lost, I got your land of the lost right here!

It gets even worse:

Of course admittedly the Myrka there was the victim of a ever diminishing pre-production timetable and countless production problems, so I cant quite hold the creative team at fault here. Mostly. (:

As for the episode - a solid start, but I always withhold judgment until I see both halves. The show could live or die in the next 45, so you'll get my final thoughts then. But so far it looks promising.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

A generally lackluster conclusion with a truly gutwrenching moment and a really intriguing ending. I knew they'd have to write Rory off eventually, because he interferes with the chemistry between Amy Pond and the Doctor, but I didn't expect the show to kill him, certainly not so soon. In a way, what they did was worse than kill him because they stole from Amy even the memory of him. The moment on the hill at the end, where she waved to herself sans Rory was especially cruel because she obviously still mourned Rory even if she didn't know who she was mourning or why. Amy is such a breezy, effervescent character normally moments like that one and the later scenes in "Amy's Choice" give Karen Gillan a chance to flesh the character out and make her more three-dimensional. And then the Doctor's shrapnel is a piece of the TARDIS itself, implicating his misadventuring with the destruction of the fabric of space-time, and with it the erasure of Rory from existence. Can the poor Doctor bear any more guilt? What happened with the TARDIS that went so catastrophically wrong that it seems to be causing the end of the universe?

After that downer of an ending, it's probably just as well that they got Richard Curtis to pen next week's episode. Whatever the scifi plot of the week, the focus has to be on redefining the Doctor's relationship with Amy now that it's back to being a two-person show.

 

[Tony J Case]

I thought it was a brilliant episode - but then I've always liked Who when it's the Doctor trying to find a peaceful solution. Any action hero can go in phasers blazing, but having the lead trying desperately to broker peace is something special. It's especially heart-wrenching since the Silurians always ALWAYS get the shaft, either by misunderstanding or stupid military.

The episode gets a lot of stick, but I've always liked Warriors of the Deep because the Doctor is trying everything he can to stop Stupid Silurians from blowing up Humans and Stupid Humans from blowing up Silurians, desperately trying to find another way.

And Rory getting killed was unexpected. Not quite as unexpected as Owen getting killed mid-season in Torchwood, but not too far behind. I wonder if when the Doctor inevitably sorts out the Crack in the Universe, will all these erased people come back, or will they have the balls to kill Rory for good?

 

[ChadMcCallum]

The last two episodes really felt like a 6 part Pertwee story with less padding and better pacing. I wasn't too thrilled with how different the new Silurians looked but The Doctor calls them a relative of the Silurians we all know and love which works for me. Rory's death was unexpected but I can't say it really affected me, even though I do like the character (possibly even more than Amy who's only purpose in life appears be standing there and looking good, which she does quite well, but at this point in the series she should be a better developed character). It seems pretty obvious that Rory will not stay dead for long. The Doctor will go back and somehow save him, possibly resulting in the cracks in time and space.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

So it just us Americans that leave the CH sound off the end of Van Gogh? That was bothering me the entire episode.
Otherwise, I think Richard Curtis did a lovely job. He used Vincent Van Gogh's pain and unique world view to explore Amy's pain. I love the idea that there is something immutable about the soul, so the pain of the loss survives even if the memory of the loss -- or indeed the loss itself -- ceases to exist. Amy had some complex moments in this episode, and Gillan really stepped up to the plate. The moments where Van Gogh connected to the part of Amy that loved Rory was really quite affecting, and the scene with them walking to the church where Van Gogh mentioned her loss where Amy was smiling with a tear in her eye was utterly heartbreaking. "It's alright; I understand" met by "I'm not sure I do" hinted at a rich internal life within Amy that hasn't been adequately explored. The cinematography was lovely, and Tonny Curran was stellar as Van Gogh. The resemblance was so-so, except for the most important part -- his eyes -- which were dead-on. I enjoyed the fun of a Scottish actor playing Van Gogh with a Scottish accent and, noticing Amy's Scottish accent, assuming that she was a fellow Dutchman in France.

Favorite line from the Doctor, bored and disgusted: "This is how time normally passes: Rrrreeealllly slowly, in the right order."

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Oh, forgot to mention the terrific appearance of Bill Nighy in a bit role as the Van Gogh curator. I just read the review on AICN, which misses the point of the ending completely: He felt the ending didn't pay off because the relationship between Amy and Van Gogh wasn't adequately developed. The ending works because Van Gogh is and always had been a mental stand-in for Rory. Somewhere deep inside Amy's soul she tried and failed to save Rory a second time, but at least her effort was not forgotten. That foreknowledge of his future greatness made no impact of Van Gogh's decision to take his own life is entirely in keeping with my experience with mental illness. Someone as afflicted as Van Gogh, showcased here as bipolar, would be fixed in their path without proper intervention, of which none was at the time available.

 

[Tony J Case]

Vincent and the Doctor is, hands down, the best episode of the season - and a contender for one of the best since '05. The first first 30 minutes were a pretty good - if average - romp, but the last 15 were brilliant. The "Starry Night" scene alone was a brilliant way of letting us see what was in Vincent's head. That scene was amazing.

Next week should be the Doctor Lite episode. Cant wait to see what the Grand Moff does with it this time around.

 

[Tony J Case]

Hmm, the edit button doesnt work. Ah well -

So has anyone noticed that there's a theme about sight and perception running through the season? We've got Amy's room that you cant see unless it's out of the corner of your eye. A giant eyeball watching the proceedings, a shapeshifting monster, and of course the the Weeping Angels and "windows as a door to the soul".

And here, Van Gogh has a visual acuity far beyond the norm. He can ‘see' things others simply cannot, almost beyond this dimension. There's the Starry Night scene - leading the Doctor to see the universe in a way that he's never done before. And of course there's the monster that nobody else can see, and apparently Van Gogh can see the "hidden truth", with Amy's unknown sadness., seeing beyond whatever The Crack In The Wall is doing to erase people.

 

[PhilipG]

I enjoyed the beginning and end of the episode, but it would have been so much stronger imo as a character study without the monster.

I note that next week "stars" the execrable James Corden (apologies to his fans, but I can't stand him - c.f. his recent http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment_and_arts/10272333.stm
So it just us Americans that leave the CH sound off the end of Van Gogh? That was bothering me the entire episode.


Adam, I believe so: Americans say Go, Britons say Goff. We're both wrong.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Obviously, this episode was about saving cash for the big two part series finale, but I liked it all the more because of that. The idea of an episode where the Doctor lives as a normal contemporary bloke is terrificly appealing, and the humor depends on Matt Smith's very odd performance and appearance to work. The banter between him in the flat and Amy Pond inside the TARDIS was fun, and the will-they-won't-they drama between the British Andy Richter and Sophie got enough attention that I actually cared by the end of the episode whether they got their shit straightened out or not. The final beat was terrific, tying things back to the plotline threaded throughout this entire series. Amy may or may not remember Rory, but she now knows that she lost someone very important to her, and that the Doctor has kept that from her.

Meanwhile, River Song is back next week. I think it'd be interesting if one of the adventures with River Song was with a young River Song, to further complicate their highly entangled history. It looks like:

Pandora's Box is at the heart of this whole thing.

 

[Kevin Hewell]

Can't wait to see River again.

 

[Tony J Case]

The lodger is clearly one of those "EIther you'll love it or hate it" episodes that divide fans so . . .well, divisively. But then you get that any time you take the show's paradigm and turn it on it's head. Me, I thought it was a brilliant episode, with a solid set-up. The notion of something nasty lurking at the top of the stairs works beautifully, a sure fire move to send any kids watching behind the sofa. The opening bits between Matt and James are charming too, both in fine form.

And I loved the Football match. Very fun.

And oooh - creepy evil Tardis! I could easily see Anthony Ainley running around in this Tardis back in the good-ol-days . .. well, if the BBC had kicked the show any sort of a budget.

 

[ChadMcCallum]

The "Next Time" trailer for the Pandorica Opens looks epic but are they really bringing the Drahvins back? How obscure. The Chumblies would be a better choice. At least they were somewhat memorable.

 

[Tony J Case]

Oh shit - that was quite a cliffhanger. I dont even begin to wrap my brain around how to get out of THAT one.

Next week cant get here soon enough!