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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

Amph Doctor Who Discussion (Russell T. Davies returns)

Discussion in 'Community' started by Darth Guy, Jan 3, 2013.

  1. Miana Kenobi

    Miana Kenobi Admin Emeritus star 8 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Apr 5, 2000
    I'm with the "meh" crowd. I liked parts of it, but it just started to unravel closer to the end.

    And Davros on a submarine!!
     
  2. darthcaedus1138

    darthcaedus1138 Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Oct 13, 2007
    Not quite.

    :p
     
  3. Miana Kenobi

    Miana Kenobi Admin Emeritus star 8 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Apr 5, 2000
    Haha took me a second to figure out what was wrong.

    Though what if Davos turned out to be Davros on a submarine? [face_thinking]
     
  4. Juliet316

    Juliet316 Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Apr 27, 2005
    Yeah, it seems somebody should have thought about what to name their OC a little more carefully. I suspect we'll get a lot more Davos/Davros mix ups this week leading up into the episode.
     
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  5. solojones

    solojones Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Sep 27, 2000
    Very meh for sure. The monster plot was a boring retread solved super easily without any twists turns or failures really. Matt did his best in the emotional scene but story-wise that part didn't feel earned. They hadn't been struggling through a bunch of different obstacles. In fact they hadn't been doing much of anything during most of the episode.

    BUT I do have a theory. The last episode had some callbacks to The Idiot's Lantern, the Eleventh Hour, and a couple other eps. This one had super strong connections to 42, The Beast Below, The Big Bang, even The Satan Pit. The big thing in this one, though, was the repetition of the notion that a person is a collection of stories, of their memories, which of course was also how Amy brought the Doctor back after they rebooted the universe with the big bang 2. Also the previous episode brought up the notion that the WiFi bots choose something from someone's subconscious and project to look like something familiar that they will expect.

    So I was wondering.... what if the reason the Doctor is seeing Clara over and over is simply because he expects to? What if it's not actually her but just some sort of projection based on his memory of her from Asylum? She could be someone else or he could be talking to himself and some of the stuff she is doing he could be doing himself. He was gone for a large middle chunk of this episode and we didn't see where he was. And potentially even some of the actual events occurring could be a hodgepodge of his own memories. That might potentially be a way to call back to and revisit a lot of stories leading up to the 50th. It could have something to do with the Great Intelligence or potentially even something that happened to the Doctor or the Universe when Amy brought him back at the end of series 5.

    Anyway, maybe I'm thinking about this too much. Just a thought though.
     
  6. Juliet316

    Juliet316 Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Apr 27, 2005
    I had thought about that, but I doubt it
    especially given there's 50th anniversary set photos of Jenna on a motorbike. I do believe Moffat if when he says we'll find out who and what she is at the end of the season, but if she's just a projection in his mind, I doubt she'd be in the 50th.

    I have my own theory of Clara, but I want to properly sit down and see the current episode before I go ahead and type it out.

    Edit: LOL at MSN being a week behind the Tennant and Piper news.
     
  7. Darth Guy

    Darth Guy Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Aug 16, 2002
    SHE'S HIS GRANDDAUGHTER'S LAST INCARNATION BEFORE SHE DIED

    SHE'S THAT STUPID GUY FROM SERIES ONE WHO GOT A HOLE DRILLED IN HIS HEAD IN DISGUISE

    SHE'S THE TWELTH DOCTOR

    SHE GIGGLES AND LAUGHS INAPPROPRIATELY AND WAY TOO M-- wait, that's not a theory. That's just kinda annoying.

    I didn't mind the episode so much. The effects were jarringly bad, though, which I'm not used to at this point. Yeah, the Doctor riding up the building in "Bells" was bad, but that was ambitious. In this episode even them standing in front of a green screen looked awful. I figured it might've been the .mkv I was watching, but I read other people complaining about that too.
     
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  8. darthcaedus1138

    darthcaedus1138 Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Oct 13, 2007
    She's a trap. I don't know who's set the trap, but she's the perfectly interesting person that would draw the Doctor in and make him want to find out about her.
     
  9. Mar17swgirl

    Mar17swgirl Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Dec 26, 2000
    Ahem. This is Doctor Who. You're not allowed to complain about bad visual effects. :p
     
  10. darthcaedus1138

    darthcaedus1138 Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Oct 13, 2007
    This show has a long and proud tradition of terrible visual effects.

    But I thought the costumes and Akhaten itself looked great. The sets and the hovermoped were the only really bad parts.
     
  11. Rosslcopter

    Rosslcopter Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Sep 2, 2012
    I don't really understand. When it ate the leaf the leaf disappeared. If it was eating the Doctor's memories shouldn't he have forgotten everything now? The hell is going on here?
     
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  12. soitscometothis

    soitscometothis Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Jul 11, 2003
    I don't care about bad special effects or crappy sets, but the sloppy writing really bugs me. The old show might have been shoestring, but at least most of the plots held together. Why can't the writers concentrate on solid plots instead of flashy emoting finales and REALLY BIG THINGS HAPPENING!
     
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  13. Juliet316

    Juliet316 Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Apr 27, 2005
    Part of my theory is that if she's a trap, than she's an unwitting and unaware one courtesy of the Great Intelligence.
     
  14. Mar17swgirl

    Mar17swgirl Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Dec 26, 2000
    20-something-year-old dead dried leaf is a considerably more fragile object than a living, breathing, 1000-plus-year-old Time Lord. ;)
     
  15. Darth Guy

    Darth Guy Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Aug 16, 2002
    Yeah, the logic of what the thing "ate" didn't make any sense. The physical objects were valuable not in and of themselves, but because there was a "psychic imprint" or something that made them hold sentimental value to the owner; yet they were physically consumed. No idea why the Doctor's memories (or even the Doctor himself) survived intact. Saying he's not "fragile" doesn't explain it. He can die easily enough, certainly at the hands of a creature like that, and it was only Clara's leaf that defeated it.
     
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  16. Mar17swgirl

    Mar17swgirl Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Dec 26, 2000
    Oh, I see what you mean. Well, the way I see it - the creature "fed" on the stories tied to those objects of sentimental value, but that doesn't necessarily mean that by doing so it erases them. It's like telling a childhood story to a friend for the first time - the fact that now they know it, too, doesn't mean that you forget it.

    As for Clara's leaf being what defeated the creature - that scene actually reminded me of Monty Python's Meaning of Life and the Mr. Creosote sketch. He eats ****load of food, but it takes a "wafer thin mint" to make him explode. :p It's similar here - the creature can absorb the Doctor's long memories and experiences and knowledge, but it takes a single leaf loaded with the possibilities of what could have been to destroy it.
     
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  17. Everton

    Everton Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Jul 18, 2003
    The Doctor is a powerful, conscious being. He can control the intrusion. The leaf has no such advantage. Leaves simply fall apart.
     
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  18. Chewgumma

    Chewgumma Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Apr 14, 2009
    I never really had a problem with the production values. We were given something like 30 new aliens in this episode and a pretty decent large scale CGI set piece. They tried to stretch a tiny budget out to do something on the scale of a hollywood blockbuster and I admired it for that.

    In fact one of the problems I had with the episode was that you had some great designs that did sod all. We get given the Vigil, a group of really cool Stormtrooper-like aliens, but they're hardly in the episode. And when you do see them they're in the dumbest scene in the episode where they're struggling against a sonic screwdriver, which here was upgraded to full on weapon status (I know it was used as a weapon in The Day of the Moon. But with River berating its effectiveness in battle you're left to wonder how on earth the Doctor is helping. Here they go full Harry Potter and turn the sonic screwdriver into a spell flinging wand). Then you have what is built up to be the main villain, this rather impressive prosthetic that I really liked. But it dies of a heart attack as soon as it breaks out of it's glass cage which felt like a waste.

    Maybe, but it shouldn't have been stated earlier in the episode that feeding the old god your memories is the same thing as having your soul ripped from you. If you're going to go to the effort of establishing a rule set for your villain you don't go breaking it further down the road. Certainly not in the same episode you set it up! Otherwise you drastically subvert the threat it poses.

    I have heard some theories that this does come into play further down the road with the Doctor fogetting the answer to the ultimate question, providing a get out of jail free card that lets Moffat get away with not answering "Doctor Who?" But I'll be very surprised if anything in this episode comes back into play later on this year.
     
  19. A Chorus of Disapproval

    A Chorus of Disapproval Head Admin & TV Screaming Service star 10 Staff Member Administrator

    Registered:
    Aug 19, 2003
    Anything less than Davros on a submarine will leave series 8 an abject failure. He also needs to be told that he is a megalomaniac and subsequently offered jelly babies.
     
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  20. Random Comments

    Random Comments Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Sep 25, 2012
    Does anyone have any explanation for the end bit? Didn't they just destroy the worlds by getting rid of the sun, leaving them to freeze and die?!?
     
  21. A Chorus of Disapproval

    A Chorus of Disapproval Head Admin & TV Screaming Service star 10 Staff Member Administrator

    Registered:
    Aug 19, 2003
    Don't worry about them. Galactus was arriving off-screen.
     
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  22. Admiral Volshe

    Admiral Volshe Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Sep 2, 2012
    And a parasitic sentient gas giant at that :p
     
  23. Random Comments

    Random Comments Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Sep 25, 2012
    He said it was the sun around which the seven worlds orbited.
    Then he pointed to one of the "worlds."
     
  24. Chewgumma

    Chewgumma Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Apr 14, 2009
    Even if residents of those planets in the system don't freeze to death they would be sent hurtling into space by the sudden change in gravity.
     
  25. Darth Guy

    Darth Guy Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Aug 16, 2002
    Like someone said earlier, it was a gas giant planet, not a star. The world they were on was probably a moon. And IIRC it wasn't destroyed; the god-thing just died or something. Maybe I'm wrong. I was pretty bored by the end.
     
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