Dr. Who

[Khaldun]

Smith: Doctor's Wife is very memorable. Vincent and the Doctor. I liked the Christmas Carol one. The Pandorica Opens, esp. for Smith's big speech to all of his enemies, that's really stuck in my memory. The bit at the end of the Eleventh Hour is also super-memorable. The episode with the Dream Lord and the one where Amy gets caught outside and ages, those stuck with me some. I found The Lodger hilarious.

Capaldi: So far, yeah, only a few are really sticking with me. The Orient Express one was quite good, I thought. I liked "Listen" except for the very bad decision to show the bedcovers rising while the characters refused to look behind them--that was simply stupid, because it fucks with the conceit of the whole episode. The one where he's at the school where Clara works was pretty good, I thought--it made me like the Danny Pink character and I wish they hadn't gotten rid of him at the end of the season. (He'd be a better companion than Clara.)  And come on, the two-dimensional bad guys and mini-TARDIS episode was great--both funny and creepy.

[tazelbain]

It's a real shame. I don't know why anyone would think giving the Doctor a moral colonscopy over and over again is good idea

[Ironwood]

Smith: Doctor's Wife is very memorable. Vincent and the Doctor. I liked the Christmas Carol one. The Pandorica Opens, esp. for Smith's big speech to all of his enemies, that's really stuck in my memory. The bit at the end of the Eleventh Hour is also super-memorable. The episode with the Dream Lord and the one where Amy gets caught outside and ages, those stuck with me some. I found The Lodger hilarious.

Vincent and The Doctor I'll give you, even though it's not my cup of tea.  The rest are shite. 

Capaldi: So far, yeah, only a few are really sticking with me. The Orient Express one was quite good, I thought. I liked "Listen" except for the very bad decision to show the bedcovers rising while the characters refused to look behind them--that was simply stupid, because it fucks with the conceit of the whole episode. The one where he's at the school where Clara works was pretty good, I thought--it made me like the Danny Pink character and I wish they hadn't gotten rid of him at the end of the season. (He'd be a better companion than Clara.)  And come on, the two-dimensional bad guys and mini-TARDIS episode was great--both funny and creepy.

Listen was meant to be good, but tried too hard to be Blink and, as you say, plotholes you could drive buses through.  Also, fucking driving the TARDIS by the power of Glue.  It was worse than Jack Sparrow and the Compass.  The Janitor one was really good, I thought, and shows what you can do with The Doctor when he isn't screaming I'M THE DOCTOR to everyone in the universe as they all blow him.  Yeah, the flatland one was probably the standout thus far.  Some of the physical comedy in that was great and Coleman was at her best there I think.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Capaldi deserves better writing.

[Ironwood]

In fairness, so did Smith.

And so do we.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I agree but I like Capaldi a lot more as the doctor than anyone else in recent memory and he is getting the shit end of the stick when it comes to scripts.  It genuinely bothers me that he may always be looked at as a poor doctor simply because the stories are atrocious.

[Ironwood]

Ditto.

[Khaldun]

I think what I would say is that Smith has had quite a few good scenes from Moffat, where if you isolate him from the overall story, the scenes are I think quite well-done--good dialogue, great interpretation of them by Smith himself, etc.   And he's had situations or set-ups that seemed promising or interesting. Where it all falls apart is plotting, which is never great and is often terrible; and characterization, which is even inconsistent for the Doctor and has been frequently awful for everyone else, including and especially the companions. Without good plotting in individual episodes and good characterization within episodes, you can't possibly sustain season-long themes and arcs--the weakness of each episode intensifies and magnifies if the showrunner is also trying to tell a bigger story over multiple episodes.

Moffat would be a fine writer for Doctor Who inside a writing staff with a different showrunner, and arguably was in fact exactly that under RTD. He's not meant to be a showrunner for this show, despite having some good things he brings to the table. So what he's leaving behind, mostly, is two great actors who inhabit the role perfectly who are nevertheless being fairly seriously undercut by the showrunner's weak spots. Each of them will have some great scenes and 'takes' that we'll all be looking at clips of for years, but not that many episodes that we're eager to watch again.

[Ironwood]

Awful.

[Tebonas]

The sheer amount of retcon and Moffat wannabe-cleverness going on there is staggering. Poor Capaldi can't catch a break with his scripts.

[Ironwood]

The cup of tea line just summed up the contempt that he has for his audience.

[Khaldun]

This one was better--it's just the cup of tea and the sunglasses and the "I had a plan all along" kill it--the little bits where Moffat thinks he's been clever overwhelm the genuinely or potentially good bits.


It's like the uncanny valley: it's not the vast distance between good and bad that makes Moffat's writing annoying, it's that it's close and then he fucks it up with lots of unnecessary dross.

[HaemishM]

Finally watched the first two episodes of the season.

Goddamnit. Really, just goddamnit. Despite the "Missy's just alive because" thing, and the whole "let's ignore that UNIT calls Clara out of school and nobody blinks a fucking eye" thing. It's typical madcap breakneck pace setup by Moffat. Then let's forget the cringeworthy entrance of the Doctor playing the fucking guitar, and the fact that the dumbo medieval companion with the beard is a fucking Dalek. We know at the end of the first episode that the 2 deaths didn't really happen. We get way too much of "the Doctor's secret shame!" 

And then we get one of the best acted and best written scenes in the entire thing (the Davros opens his eyes scene) and I'm thinking "This may be the best episode of the Doctor since a long time). Missy has fantastic lines all throughout and I really dig her interpretation of that character. It's all building to an emotional crescendo with the Doctor giving his life energy so Davros can see the sunset.

And then...

God...

Damn...

It.

More of the same stupid bullshit, including literal rivers of Dalek shit.

[Khaldun]

Mind you, I liked perfectly well that Davros was just taking advantage of the Doctor...the show needs some nasty villains. And even though he was, there's still some very interesting character work in the preceding discussion. I just don't need the whole "oh, I had a plan all along, oh here's my magic sunglasses, oh, I knew that you'd be attacked by rivers of Dalek shit". It would have been fine for Missy to save the Doctor from his own folly--and then remind him of it the next time they meet.

[cironian]

It seemed to me like he was only pretending that it was all a big plan of his, just to keep his enemies fearful of him. That seems like something he would do if he barely managed to scrape by due to Davros messing up the distribution of the stolen regeneration energy.

[Khaldun]

Also, though, the Dalek sewer thing makes so little sense. For one, since when are the Daleks immortal? For another, why would decaying old sewer Daleks be angry at other Daleks? It's the one thing Daleks don't do generally--they don't attack one another. Why is that any different if you're a decaying bit of old Dalek poo? This is where Moffat just doesn't think through stuff--I can imagine other ways where a bit of regen energy turns out to be a disaster for the Daleks because there's something Davros didn't understand--that piece of the plot can work just fine. But the sewers thing is an elaborate set-up that just doesn't pay off either as a concept or as a plot mechanic.

[Tannhauser]

Capaldi's really grown on me as the Dr.  Nice, fresh, tart take.

[Ironwood]

The down side is Elena loves this shite.  And she doesn't want to watch it alone.  And wife unit flatly refuses.

I am, at this point, entirely willing to hire a serial killer to sit with Elena rather than watch it with her.  It's so fucking offensive.

I wonder what deep fucking joy tonight will bring.  Something uniquely retarded, I'm guessing.

[Soln]

Awful.  Good luck with the sonic sunglasses.  /flush

Fake edit:  Haem said everything I wanted to mention.  Gomez and Capaldi are terrific actors.  Just can't stand the writing and emo companions.

[Ironwood]

Damn.  That one was actually ok.  Capaldi channelled Tom Baker like a Motherfucker and it was supremely awesome.  Episode was like Fang Rock as well, so a lot of call back in my own head.  Coleman is so fucking beautiful it may actually burst organs someday.  Some really funnny lines.  So, not bad.

...

Except :

Sonic glasses are fucking retarded.
Time solves everything, I suspect, with no regard for sense.
Two Parter, so could go all retarded.

[slog]

Good Episode tonight.  Noticed it was written by Toby Whithouse.

[Malakili]

Yeah, better episode. It reminded me a lot of The Orient Express, which isn't a bad things.

Capaldi is definitely my favorite doctor since they started making the show again.

[Khaldun]

That was actually good.

Not just well-plotted, but with some interesting characterization twists.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Capaldi is definitely my favorite doctor since they started making the show again.

[Ironwood]

Good Episode tonight.  Noticed it was written by Toby Whithouse.

Oh Man, that explains it.  He did School Reunion with Sarah Jane and K9 and Giles from Buffy.  I've looked up his other credits and, yup, he did some really good ones.  Like Vampires of Venice, which would have been a great Capaldi episode.   

Maybe I'll hold out hope for the second part not being fully of Moffatry then.  If he can keep his fucking claws off it.

[Sir T]

According to wiki it will be the same writer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Before_the_Flood_%28Doctor_Who%29

[Ironwood]

Yeah, but Moffat has 'creative control' and several of the writers have done interviews where 'Steven has come in and punched up the script'.

You can actually tell when Steven has Punched Up the Script, because there is a surprising cock-shaped smear of excrement all over the pages where he's whammed his shitty typewriter cock all over it.  If you were ever sitting watching the Mummy Orient one and you thought 'wait, that's a little off', it's dick-smear at work. 

But I digress.  About Steven Fucking Scottish Cunty Moffat.

[HaemishM]

Sonic sunglasses are just so goddamn bad. It makes me cringe hard enough to pinch nerves in my back every time he uses them. I thought the episode was decent, though the first time I saw the 2 ghosts together muttering, I thought "welp, why not just sit in the Faraday cage and have the fucking deaf chick read their goddamn lips" and then the episode would be done in 60 minutes instead of 120. But that would be cheating. Still, it did hearken back to things like Fang Rock as Ironwood said - that's actually the episode I was thinking of when I saw the underwater Scottish base.

And yes, with ghost Doctor, I'm expecting there to be some full on Moffatry ahead. Also, if the Doctor has no qualms about going back in time to fix something now, why does he not just do that EVERY FUCKING TIME?

[01101010]

And yes, with ghost Doctor, I'm expecting there to be some full on Moffatry ahead. Also, if the Doctor has no qualms about going back in time to fix something now, why does he not just do that EVERY FUCKING TIME?

FIXED POINTS! CAN'T CROSS THE STREAMS!! WARGHLE-BLARGHLE!!! 

[Khaldun]

I sort of had the impression though that the Doctor was just going back to investigate (for the moment) not to change the past? I'd have to rewatch to be sure. I'm ok with that--in fact, the Doctor doesn't do that enough when he's confronted with a situation where he really doesn't understand what's going on. Arguably for most of classic Who he didn't because the TARDIS was so unreliable that he couldn't be sure of arriving forty years in the past in the exact place he was already in.

[Ironwood]

He's done it a couple of times before, in fairness.

But I can't say I like it as a solution very much.  As an investigation, maybe, but it's quite hard to justify narratively and, frankly, I don't think they ever really did.  Tom Baker just made it look cool.  Capaldi might too.  Who knows.

[Khaldun]

As far as timey-wimey goes, that wasn't bad. The open was very odd--I can think of maybe one or two episodes ever where the Doctor has done a 4th-wall-breakingish thing like that before. Wasn't wild about it. But I liked the basic way it dealt with the 'bootstrap paradox'.

[HaemishM]

It was a lot less Moffat-y than it could have been. Still do not get the insistence on the whole guitar shredding thing as anything other than to tweak the older, pissier fans like myself. And goddamnit, the sunglasses.

Actually thought the Fisher King looked pretty badass.

[Ironwood]

Beethoven Bookends to the episode were retarded and unneccesary and the Deaf Girl becoming Daredevil was fucking stupid.

Sonic Sunglasses still need to be binned.  Truly stupid.

[MahrinSkel]

Beethoven Bookends to the episode were retarded and unneccesary and the Deaf Girl becoming Daredevil was fucking stupid.

Sonic Sunglasses still need to be binned.  Truly stupid.

Yes, because a Sonic Screwdriver that can do everything from analyze chrono-molecular composition to delivering stun bolts, *except* drive screws, is totally more believable.

--Dave