Amph Doctor Who Discussion (Russell T. Davies returns)

The bits I agree with (with the exception of the s after the apostrophe in Gatiss' name)

 

Checked the Guardian's style guide just to make sure this wasn't a US/UK grammar difference (though since I did IB, which is a UK based curriculum and the rest of the style stuff I learned was UK style according to my college professors who later tried to correct where I put quotation marks, I was fairly certain it wasn't ) . Nope. Gatiss's is correct, particularly because it's pronounced "Gatiss -es Episodes" not simply "Gatiss Episodes". Ahem:

EDIT: There's one exception to this for singular nouns and names ending with the "iz" sound (Jesus, Moses, Bridges)... but that's neither here nor there. Don't get my started on grammar and style, I'll get way too interested and distracted from other things

 

Good to know, cheers

Though there are exceptions. St Thomas' Hospital for example

 

I'm guessing nowadays it's an either - or - thing, since my English teachers always pounded it into our heads not to put a possessive apostrophe after anything ending with an 's' when I was growing up.

 

Well, if someone puts it in the name of something one way, then that's the way it is. Bizarrely, Johns Hopkins in the US is not a possessively named hospital... the guy's name was just Johns, not John.

English is a silly language. But hey, they gave me a degree in it and once in a while it's got to be put to use somehow

 

Yup, I was taught that if the word ends in an s, add ' for singular and 's for plural. I had never heard of the "if you would normally say Gatisses" condition until today.

Bridget Jones's Diary has always annoyed me. But perhaps that's because I don't pronounce it Joneses

 

Yeah going on how you'd pronounce it is the easiest way to remember. So actually I could see how Bridget Jones might be a confusing one because, in fairness, I rarely pronounced that "Joneses" either But, for example, if you were going to talk about Ulysses' journeys, you wouldn't ever pronounced that "Ulysses-es", because his name already ends in the "iz" sound you'd add to indicate the possessive anyway. Maybe that's why it sounds odd for Jones's as well, since it nearly does.

This conversation is helping me forget how disappointing this episode was, thanks Though I will say to its credit... crap, I was really trying to think of something fun and positive to say there. Er they didn't um ... make any jokes about having oral sex with the pavement?

 

There were good bits. Most of which were the interplay between our heroes rather than the story itself. I enjoyed The Doctor and Jenny having some time together on screen, in fact Jenny was great throughout. Strax continues to make me laugh. Vastra is always cool, but I do wish she would actually do something once in a while.

Dame Diana Rigg was good in a limited and predictable role. Her reveal of Mr. Sweet was pretty effective. Clara's dress was gorgeous (what? It was!). She demonstrated her 'smarts' when she prompted The Doctor in the direction of the tower.

 

Anyone else think that Mr Sweet was the Great Intelligence? No? Just me then. I'll be over here, studying Jesus'es teachings

 

I wondered if he might be revealed as the GI, yes. But then, I think the episode rather hoped the audience would suspect as much, thus making the actual reveal a little surprising.

 

And they would have gotten away with it too...if it hadn't been for those meddling kids!!!!

 

Okay, shoot me, but I really enjoyed the episode. Mainly because I wasn't really having any great expectations of it? It being a Mark Gatiss episode, and his DW work has always been rather average. Of course, it wasn't anything super amazing, and there were some weak bits, but I did genuinely enjoy it. I guess this is another one of those "love it or hate it" episodes... I would rate it higher than Cold War, though.

Random thoughts:

- I really liked the setting. And starting the episode without the Doctor was refreshing.
- Evelyn Napier from Downton Abbey!
- Did not see the Doctor's reflection in the dead man's eyes coming.
- Vastra and gang are awesome as always. Especially Jenny. Strax, bless him, is hysterical.
- I totally called the Doctor being the "monster" chained up in the locked room.
- I liked him spontaneously kissing Jenny in gratitude and Jenny slapping him.
- Loved the old film-style flasback/explanation of what Doctor and Clara did prior to the start of the episode.
- Doctor and Clara's Northern accents = Especially "Trouble at mill"
- Okay, "Thomas Thomas" was cringeworthy. But Strax versus the horse was hilarious.
- And so was Vastra and Jenny treating Strax like a kid high on sugar.
- The revelation of the threat and the solution weren't particularly elaborate or grand, but they were solid and made sense. Good enough for me.
- And I also liked the ending - okay, the kids' performances weren't the best thing ever, and they jumped to the "time travel" conclusion a bit too quick, but I did like them blackmailing Clara. Heck, it's what I would do.

I'd say 7/10 from me. Might vary on rewatch.

Although, I do wonder: Why did the Doctor try to take Clara to Victorian London? Was he trying to get her meet her Victorian self?

 

Actually, though as I pointed out the 'as it's pronounced' thing is a good way to try to remember when to us 's at the end of a possessive singular, as I also mentioned the actual rule about it with a noun like Jesus or Moses is that because it ends in the plural sound anyway, you just add an apostrophe... even though, yes, we actually do say "Jesus-es". It's also partly a tradition that this is how you write Jesus' and Moses', so they got grandfathered in a bit. We don't pronounce the 'es' ending in possessives on other names ending in that sound (like Ulysses). Just for some reason we had already started doing it differently for Jesus and Moses, so they got grandfathered in a bit. Like I said, English is silly

They did? Would you care to explain what exactly made sense about them, because they sure as hell didn't make sense to me I had no idea why this woman bought into this plot. Did she really believe she was sending people to some promised land? Why? Just straight up crazy? That's a rather boring cop out. What the hell was the throw away line about the nectar she was getting in return from Mr. Sweet?

I could interpret that as this parasite latching itself onto her, injecting her with this 'nectar' which is perhaps actually an addictive toxin that she then needs a constant hit of in order to keep going. And then it would explain why she's also stopped thinking clearly and has become delusional. That is an explanation that sort of would have made sense. But if that's what they intended, they definitely didn't make that clear one bit. I just had to make something up just now instead, and I did a better job than Gatiss did at explaining to the audience wtf was going on. Come on, dude.

 

That's exactly how I saw it, I think it was implied pretty clearly. Or does everything have to be spelled out?

 

I thought that's what the reveal was gonna be. But as soon as he ended up being a mini red lobster slitheen with bad teeth, I discarded the idea.

 

I despised the Thomas Thomas gag, but overall I loved this episode. The late arrival of The Doctor in peril reminded me of the best of the Sylvester audios, and Matt Smith as a red Herman Munster was creepy fun (he was born to play The Monster). The Victorian team stuff was fun and I liked the anti-religious overtones of the plot.

 

Eh? What anti-religious overtones? Because the way I understood it was that Mrs. Gillyflower was nuts (most likely from Mr. Sweet's "nectar") and tried to purge the world of everyone she deemed "imperfect" (the sick, the weak, the ugly, the handicapped) and preserving only those who were pretty/clever/strong enough, effectively creating a new race of perfect "übermensch".

 

I think V-2 was talking about how Gillyflower was using a sermon preaching armageddon and hellfire and referring to Sweetville as a second Eden. Having said that I never considered that to be an idictment of religion as an organised system. It was more of a narrative device explaining how a megalomaniac like Mrs Gillyflower could get so many people to listen to her and follow through with her plan. So I'd say the story was more similar to The God Complex in that it was about how people's faith can be weaponized against them.

 

Oh. Right. Yeah, I guess I agree with that.

 

I think this bit was pretty unambiguous:

 

Probably not, since at that point she was already dead. The Doctor knows this("Okay, so...not London, 1893" and she died in 1892).


Anyway. I've said before that a glimpse of Victorian Mystery Team is all they need, and any more would just show how little substance the idea has, and yet they continue to bring them back again and again, even though their episodes are always flat and forgettable.

Oh, and about the pictures of Clara. Do we remember that guy who ran the website about the doctor from Rose? Maybe, somehow, they stumbled across such a website--maybe one dedicated to Clara's appearances, even. I dunno, it's something, anyway.

 

I thought it was a good episode, fun without being silly and a decent amount of threat. Even The Doctor had to be rescued which is a rare thing.

Strax FTW

 

I was more looking forward to Strax and his inability to filter interacting with Clara and making a quip about how she wasn't dead, which didn't happen.

 

Strax isn't all there bless him, perhaps he'd forgotten he even met Clara or that she died

 

Perhaps all human boys look the same to him.