Doctor Who Discussion Thread

[Ellie]

Yeah a reset button would be a lame way out.

I dunno how they're gonna turn this one around with a good plot ;[ I guess we'll have to see, sure they can do it, series has been bloody good this far.

 

[Incognitus]

Problem is, there seems to be so few ways you can get out of this storyline successfully, you know, seeing as

Spoiler

all three of the Doctor's companions this season appear to be dead, the Doctor is sealed inside a box, and the Universe is exploding.

Also, if you have a few spare moments, watch everything Babelcolour does on youtube with his edits of old Doctor Who footage.

Tres epic. There is only about two seconds of footage in the entire thing that didn't come from a Doctor Who episode.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afBkMIgj-Rc

 

[So fist]

so doctor who fights intergalactic rubbish bins with limited vocabulary?

 

[bashful crobat]

of course

 

[Petros]

Alright, with one episode remaining I've got to make my peace with this. Season Five has been a letdown for me. Steven Moffat wrote some great episodes in the RTD years but since then, none of them have held the weight they originally did. I'd say this season has been on par with Season Four for me. Don't get me wrong many of the episodes are a lot of fun, The Pandorica Opens was great, however I personally hated Victory of the Daleks, thought the Silurian two-part episode was boring and just not fun and overall the character development has been kinda meh. There's a blog on youtube that talks about each episode and I kinda agree with it when they say that RTD Vs. Moffat is like Character Vs. Plot Development. RTD's plot were pretty poor and predictable by comparison to Moffat but his character development was second to none. On the other hand Moffat's character development has been pretty minimal. Only the Dream Lord episode has served to develop them a lot.

Overall, this series has been like Final Fantasy XIII for me, it's still great and a league above all the others of it's kind. But given it's predecessors I think it could have been better. This series has been fun and I'm still waiting on the final episode before I give my final score but I think it's a series that's been loaded with filler between the good episodes. Unlike say Series 3, where you had a string of 7 great episodes back to back - 42, Human Nature, Family of Blood, Blink, Utopia, Sound of Drums and Last of the Time Lords - this season has been a very mixed back, with some great episodes, to name a few, Eleventh Hour, Time of Angels, Flesh and Stone, Vincent and The Doctor (brilliantly character driven for this season), The Lodger and The Pandorica Opens and then you've got the boring filler, which I'll admit other seasons had a lot of especially RTD's first season, The Beast Below, The Silurian Two Parter which was so boring I can't even remember it's name, Vampires of Venice and the only episode in Who history that I would genuinely say was just HORRIBLE, Victory of the Daleks.

Still one more episode to go. This has been a slow start for Moffat's tenure. Ironically I thought I would hate Matt Smith but I love him, I literally love Karen Gillian, who I've met in person and is even hotter in real life, but Moffat, needs to find his feet as Head Writer, maybe next season will be more consistent.

Also looking forward to Torchwood's "new beginning" too next summer, with BBC and Starz joining forces to make it a new type of series and with half the cast dead now, it's almost like Doctor Who's sort of year out with the 2009 Specials and new beginning with Matt Smith. Hopefully Torchwood can bring back the great writing that we saw in Children of Earth so that next year becomes a Who-Awesome year.

 

[Guest]

;D

 

[Ellie]

They can't bring back Torchwood.

They just can't.

Make a new spinoff, sure, but don't call it Torchwood. Not after killing off the entire cast in Children'. That would just be playing off the original show's success and just wouldn't be the same.

 

[Guest]

;D

 

[Ellie]

Just imagine if DW was American though - rather than keeping the series short and sweet with some filler, they'd buff it up to 20 episodes half filler.

 

[silver wind]

I'm not a fan of torchwood, too gloomy and bloody. It couldn't be more different than Doctor Who, really.

 

[Ellie]

I liked that about it, it offered the perfect contrast and I felt it was a great compliment to the original series. If it was exactly the same as DW, then there would be no point making a spinoff

 

[Petros]

Well Torchwood is still going to have it's primary cast members, Jack and Gwen, it's just going to be set all over the world now rather than just in Wales. Not sure how that'll work exactly but Starz and BBC both pumping money in means a bigger budget, means a chance for larger scale episodes.

 

[Incognitus]

RTD's plot were pretty poor and predictable by comparison to Moffat but his character development was second to none.

I completely disagree about the fact that there has been minimal character development; each episode has presented a new facet of the relationship between Amy and the Doctor; we have seen something new about Amy in each episode.

I still don't know who Martha is, and why I should give a damn about her. Rose's only characterization became a wish-fulfillment avatar for RTD. Only Donna got developed - but even that was all a bit "bang-crash now-I-see-things-differently".

the silurian two parter was decent but it was boring, at the end of the first part i expected some kind of battle to take place but it did not, and i expected with moffat being hyped as the darker writer for doctor that that would happen, but it didn't.

It *was* darker. A battle would have been an incredibly simplistic way to resolve the issue - we would have had our heroes to route for, and our villains. Instead, the end of the episode had the Doctor reassuring a mother that the lesson her son would take away from the events would make him the strong person she clearly could not be.

The story was resolved in a nod to Doctor Who's "Quatermass-esque" origins: ordinary humans sat down with the Lizards and talked about the issues that faced them. They tried to make peace. Negotiation with the aliens rather than repelling them.
I found the fact that the humans, who are usually the victims in the stories were clearly, however accidentally, the aggressors.

The problem with ALL Silurian episodes is that they are too short, and always end with a nice reset button so as not to impact the wider story and the implication that all the stories could be true.
The original Silurian serial with Pertwee is fantastic - the monster sit around and debate whether is is acceptable for them to use force against "the Apes", whether negotiation would work or what they could hope to achieve etc. It all goes down the drain the moment the Brigadier blows them up "in self-defense". (Which was alluded to in the two-parter).

The Beast Below, The Silurian Two Parter which was so boring I can't even remember it's name, Vampires of Venice

I really don't see how "The Beast Below" is boring filler. You might have thought it was boring, but you certainly can't call it "filler". It was an episode, pure and simple.
It was the "Take the companion on a first trip into the future" episode and in it, we get some great characterization for Amy - this is the third time she's met the Doctor, but she *knows* him, and furthermore, she's independent and his equal. The other companions only developed this after they had traveled with the Doctor for sometime.


The Vampires of Venice? Filler? You've said there's no character development in any episode apart from the Dream Lord ep - but this entire episode was all about character development. Look at where Amy, Rory and the Doctor start out in that episode, and look where they end up!

The only episode I was disappointed with was "Vincent and the Doctor" - it would have been great if I was watching it on DVD, but coming off the Silurian finale... It refused to deal with the fact that it was refusing to deal with the facts, if you catch my drift.


If there has been a common thread throughout this entire series, it has been how far individuals will go to in order to survive; it has been the driving motivation of most of the series villains, from Prisoner Zero up to The Alliance.

and the only episode in Who history that I would genuinely say was just HORRIBLE, Victory of the Daleks.

Spoken as someone who has clearly never seen "Delta and the Bannerman". :wink:

 

[Guest]

;D

 

[Guest]

;D

 

[Incognitus]

most of me is like "holy shit i can't wait" and the rest is like "oh shit this is it until the xmas special and then almost a year on for the new series ;["

Yeah, I know! I've never been this excited about a Doctor Who season finale before!

What the heck are they going to do for a Christmas ep?!

On the series' villain:

Spoiler

Rumour has it that it is Omega - the mad Time Lord from "The Three Doctors, and one of the former pillars of Time Lord society.

However, his identity will not be confirmed until Season Six... He's going to be a recurring villain for Matt Smith's Doctor, pulling many strings behind the scenes!

They supposedly also want to do a kind of NewWho rerun of the "Three Doctors" at some point, with Eccleston, Tennant and Smith.

 

[Incognitus]

Um..... Ooookay. :huh: :fap:

So - is Rory still made of plastic? :|

 

[Guest]

;D

 

[Ellie]

Best

Episode

Ever

 

[Incognitus]

Unless we get our first proper glimpse at "It" during the Christmas episode. I suppose that telephone call was this series' equivalent of Catherine Tate turning up in the TARDIS/The Titanic crashing through the wall.

It would be an absolutely travesty if there was no linking between this series and setting up of next series.




Okay - so next question: What happened?

Spoiler

Is it possible to make a timeline that shows what objectively happened? Like the Series 3 finale had the Year that Never Happened... Did Amy and Rory get married and then become aware of events that didn't happen, but sort of did? Was time rewritten so Amy never went off with the Doctor, but, in the same way she could remember Plastic-Rory, but that didn't make Real-Rory alive again, she remembered going off with the Doctor...

I'm beginning to confuse myself now.