Amph Doctor Who Discussion (Russell T. Davies returns)

I'd put Martha's up there too.

 

Barbara and Ian got a decent send off too.

 

phrasing !

 

I enjoyed it for what it was.
Though I wish they'd not given away all the surprises before it aired.

I'm curious as to why The Master is there and what his plan is. Simm does a great job with the part.

 

My thoughts exactly. It was almost the perfect episode but the 'reveals' just lacked the proper sting. In fact, i'm sure Moffat would have preferred not to have included John in any of the promotional trailers. I think it was more a move by the BBC in an attempt to remedy declining ratings.

 

The show is losing ratings?

Well, maybe Moffat leaving will change that.
I like his work, but sometimes he comes across as a dodgy fanfic writer who has no respect for lore or continuity.

 

By 'declining' i mean that there was been a gradual downward slope over the previous five years. It's not quite an episode-by-episode slump, but the numbers haven't been too pleasant for the BBC in the previous half decade. It's part of what motivated the 2016 gap year.

 

I feel the exact opposite.

After a slew of dull and filler episodes in what has been (for me personally at least) perhaps the most boring season to date, we finally have an episode that's gripping, disturbing, ups the stakes, and really feels like we're getting somewhere for once.

Spoiler

Though I agree with some other posters that the episode would've been even better had there not been so many spoilers in the wild and even in the promotional material. But such is the age we live in.

 

I really enjoyed tonight's episode. BBCA hasn't been showing any of the promos except during Class and then Orphan Black and I didn't specifically seek them out because I was quite enjoying not knowing what was coming. I'm especially happy that I didn't after tonight. I had no clue that

Spoiler

John Simm's Master was showing up. It took me quite by surprise and I LOVED it! As soon as he said Prime Minister I started bouncing on the couch. I really like Missy and she grows on me the more that she's around. But I loved Simm as the Master.

 

So, I know thinking of time travel makes your head hurt, but...

Spoiler

If Missy is after Simm's Master, shouldn't she remember being on the ship? Would this mean she is a prior incarnation (and he showed up knowing this would happen, since he remembers it from Missy's POV)... could we see her regenerate into Derek Jacobi?

 

Spoiler

So Bill gets "fixed" or "converted" in the end.

Is this pandering to the people still complaining they are fed up with the show pandering to other people by having characters like Bill in it?

 

Yeah, that was pretty grim.

A few thoughts...

Spoiler

First, I'd figured out that they were from Mondas even before BBC America blew that reveal with one of their lousy flash-forward bits.
Second, it looks kind of like the Simm Master not only has the beard, but also the Nehru jacket, too.
Third, so the Doctor thinks that Bill having a bacon sandwich and the Master/Missy once destroying a big chunk of the known Universe, including his dear friend Nyssa's homeworld of Traken, are morally the same thing. Interesting.
Fourth, the Doctor is the biggest freaking idiot ever to draw breath.
Fifth, the big reveal in the OR made me flash back to the MST version of "Space Mutiny". I kept saying, "Aaaaaand Bill's a Cyberman. Aaaaaaaand Bill's a Cyberman. Come on, Bill's a Cyberman! Get on with it!"
Finally, based on past experience, I doubt this'll have a satisfactory conclusion. Like Rutgers football, the new show has great cliffhangers, usually followed by lousy finishes. Given the level of "Joker Immunity", nothing will happen to the Master or Missy. They won't be so cruel as to leave Bill converted. Unless they junk a whole lot of established show history, Mondas will still go Cyber, then be destroyed. And I doubt we'll have an actual, full regeneration, since if they'd filmed one the identity of Capaldi's replacement would've leaked by now.

Of course, I could be wrong...

 

Oh, and

Spoiler

a genuinely scary Cyberman for the first time in almost fifty years.

 

I don't remember the hand-wavey, gobbledygook that they used to explain it...

Spoiler

...but it's already been established that Time Lords don't remember previous interactions with themselves. It's why 10 and 11 were still under the belief that Gallifrey was destroyed rather than misplaced.

Basically, Time Lords remember what's convenient for the plot at any given time.

In this case it was to hide what was intended to be a major surprise that, unfortunately, was thrown under the bus by the BBC marketing team.

 

In spite of the being forewarned of

Spoiler

the Mondasians and John Simm returning

, it still completely took me by huge surprise that

Spoiler

Bill would become the first cyberman, and the character helping her would turn out to be Simm's Master.

.

That was pretty gallus, by the way.

 

Nice to see Zathras getting some work.

 

Spoiler

Bill should remain converted.

It's rather annoying when the Doctor can always fix/bring back those close to him but seemingly can't do it to everyone else affected the same way.
Why not restore all Mondasians?

But they surely remember having been to a place before, even as a past incarnation.

I wonder if any of this will link with Missy's first appearance with the Cybermen

 

Memory is a funny thing in Doctor Who. Just look at how many conflicting ages the Doctor has had over the years.

However, if we are plucking at this thread, then yes, once unravelled you're left with a plot hole that was created in an attempt to give the audience a surprise.

Personally I think that this story is going to explain how Simm's Master escaped Gallifrey and will have him regenerate. Then a newly regenerated Missy takes the technology to enact her plan from Dark Water and makes her getaway, while present Missy ends up redeeming herself somehow...

Spoiler

Thus Bill's death isn't for nothing.

 

The most important thing is they don't mess with the already established Cybermen origin story.
It's many years since I saw The Tenth Planet, but as I recall it indicates they developed on Mondas itself and spread outwards from there.

 

it was established in Day of the Doctor that when a timelord meets an earlier version of himself the earlier version doesn't retain the memory of the meeting .

this was a neat answer to a problem which has plagued the various multi-Doctor stories .

 

Except in this case The Master knew who Missy was & wondered why she had no memory of having been him on that ship before.
She won't later remember having met Simm's incarnation, but she should remember having visited a place before.

The Doctor remembers planets he visited before

 

he says something about it taking a while to figure out who she was .

yes she should retain some memory of the ship but she hadn't actually seen the lower levels yet , plus they often say something about not quite remembering things because they're so old and time isn't linear blah blah .

.

 

It seems like, the case of multi-Doctor stories, earlier incarnations have a vague memory of general events after they occur. For example, in "The Five Doctors", the First remembers his two successors, while the Second still retains his disdain for the Third. Apparently, the only one who has a full, concrete recall of events is the latest one involved, and that's only after the events have fully occurred. In the case of "Day of the Doctor', either history was actually changed (War actually did blow up everybody, but the Moment's bringing in of Ten and Eleven altered things) or a combination of catastrophic events, PTSD and timeline distortion resulted in later Doctors remembering something blew up, not not fully knowing what until it was experienced by Eleven. Or, maybe...

Oh, to heck with it. ♫ It's a just a show; I should really just relax.♫

 

Looks like a bondage gimp LOL.

Overall, I found this season to be the best season with the 12th Doctor.