Dr.Who

It's not just you, I also thought so. This episode, much like last weeks, seemed to be about the Doctor and Amy, with the story being just a vehicle for exploring that. Anyone familiar with X-Men comics from the 1980's will have come across the enslaved-star-whale-used-as-ship plot before.

 

Absolutely incredible episode. One of, if not the, best episode of New Who so far.

 

Actually, if you look at the Queen, she even resembled River Song a bit in her hair style and face, apart from the color differences.

 

Stunning. Simply stunning.

 

Decent episode.

The Smilers were pretty good (as expected from a creepy monster when Moffatt writes) and the whale was good.
Moffatt seemed to be making ironic statements about "democracy" and the cruelty of humanity and Matt Smith's serious acting part was well done.

Karen Gillan is very expressive, which is a good trait for her character to have.

Queen Elizabeth X didn't do much but she was OK. Cool to see a cameo from Terrance Hardiman, not seen him on TV since his heyday playing The Demon Headmaster.

The Whale itself was interesting.

There seemed to be a slight continuity clash in the episode though. According to the Queen, they had fled Earth after The Sun had destroyed it. Problem is this event had been witnessed by The Doctor in the year 5billion, which means Starship UK must've existed after that year.
But given Amy Pond's age relative to the time she was in (about 1000 years older according to the machine) the Sun was not due to destroy Earth for a long time.

 

No Richie, he said that solar flares had made the Earth uninhabitable by burning up the atmosphere. It's likely that after a few thousand/maybe hundred thousand years considering chronologically all the future space-type episodes have been away from Earth up until The Long Game/Bad Wolf in the year 200'000+. Plenty of time for the Earth to cool down and humans to return to reclaim it.

According to wikipedia, this corresponds with the Tom Baker episode The Ark in Space, which also says the Earth was rendered uninhabitable by solar flares and that it would take 5'000 years for the biosphere to repair itself.

 

I see, fair enough then.
Although, I'm not sure regaining atmosphere would be very likely. Most of the other planets in the Solar System died as a result of losing their atmosphere, Mars hasn't had one for millions of years.

Still, I don't think one has to stick too rigidly to science in sci-fi. After all, some science argues that the sort of time-travel the Doctor does is not possible.

 

Terraforming. If it's possible to give Mars an atmosphere over the space of a few thousand years with our current understanding then to do the same to Earth in the future would be a lot easier.

 

A dead planet may gain an inhabitable atmosphere, but a dead core can't be restarted by any means we know of. If Mars has nothing inside of it with which to create and sustain atmosphere the artificial one will simply fade away over time.

Earth still has an active core and should still have one for a long time.
Terraforming it when the core is still active would probably work though.

 

Well, an OK episode. However, next week's looks better with River Song and the Angels.

 

Whilst I'm a fan of Gatiss, that episode was turd.

 

I quite enjoyed it. Nice to have some new Daleks running around the universe. And in technicolour, lol.

Oh, and Richie. I told you they were Spitfires

 

Terraforming is not dependant on a liquid iron core, or volcanism.

 

Yeah they were. I was going by what a friend of mine said and he is supposed to know better

I like the new Dalek Paradigm and their names - Scientist, Strategist, Drone, Eternal & The Supreme

 

I decided to watch confidential on iplayer and liked the way Moffat was saying he envisaged them as a template for the key roles of a new Dalek race, imagining one day an episode where they might walk into a room full of red Daleks and they'll all be scientists (or whatever the red ones are meant to be )

And I also like the way they have absolutely no idea what an eternal Dalek might be

 

Confidential is usually pretty good. I generally watch it on BBC3 right after the episode airs on BBC1.

 

Eternal Dalek sounds very interesting.

Not sure I'd like a great room full of these new Daleks. It would be better if they were just the leaders of a division they specialised in (such as science, strategy etc) where the Time War model Daleks would do all the work at their orders.

 

That's why I think they're pretty much colour-coded according to their assigned tasks.

 

I wonder what Eternal's job would be

 

At a guess i'd say some kind of breeder that will ensure the Dalek race goes on forever.

 

It does make things a darn sight easier (and less deadly). Need the core for the magnetic field, or otherwise we'll cook.

Fairly average episode, which seems par for the course with Gatiss episodes. I'd be looking forward to next weeks a whole lot more if it didn't have River Song in it...didn't have River Song in it

 

Not a fan of River Song then I take it?

 

Not in the slightest. She's just...weird.

 

So is The Doctor.

 

Well, I liked part one of the Angels...bring on part 2!