OH MY GOD HE'S OOGLY: nu-Who season 8

Vastra/Jenny and Strax NOT having been seen before was EXCELLENT AND FUN storytelling, not bad storytelling: the Doctor has had thousands of years of off-screen adventures in which he has met thousands of people that we haven’t seen.

I totally agree with this... When I saw the episode, I thought they were just a pair of cool characters, everything you needed to know about them at that point was in that episode. When they became recurring characters, a little more background info was needed, and it was given. Introducing characters without any backstory and then slowly revealing the backstory is such a basic plot device, I don't get why people would be so confused by this?

* What was up with the dinosaur's size? It seems they made it way bigger than it should've been just so that they would get that cool opening scene... But previously, when Dr. Who has twisted historical facts, they've at least tried to give it some justification, and here there was none.

Yes there was, in dialogue between Jenny and Vastra.

That wasn't a justification though, it was just Vastra saying, "you're wrong, dinosaurs actually were that big!". Admittedly this is a very minor thing to complain about, but it just bugged me for some reason.

so what's with the ambiguity now?

We’ve never seen this Doctor before, we don’t know if he would kill. We don’t know if he knows if he would.

If all the previous incarnations have been willing to kill, why would any viewer think this Doctor wouldn't do it? I dunno, it just felt like they were trying to introduce ambiguity where no ambiguity has existed before, which was a bit weird. I guess it's possible the no killing thing will become a plot element later on, though; in that case, mea culpa.

when the Doctor asks where Clara got his number, she does say, "The woman in the shop wrote it down... She said it's the best helpline out there, in the universe". So apparently they really were setting up this plotline back then already

When that was written, the woman in the shop was a splinter of Clara; by the time they made Name Of The Doctor, there wasn’t room to include it.

So Clara meeting the Doctor was originally going to be a Grandfather Paradox? (She gave her past self the number so that Past Clara would meet the Doctor, but if Past Clara hadn't already met the Doctor, she wouldn't have had the number to begin with.)

The Claras sent throughout the Doctors' timeline were not linear, each one existed separately.

(Moffatt did happily do a recursive paradox in the resolution of the Pandorica though.)

That wasn't a justification though, it was just Vastra saying, "you're wrong, dinosaurs actually were that big!". Admittedly this is a very minor thing to complain about, but it just bugged me for some reason.

I don't even know that Vastra is definitively saying that they were that big, it's more the first hint of the verbal d/s play that the episode makes a point of, establishing her primacy over Jenny in public just for the sake of it, rather than making an actual correction. You can assume that Lady Dino got made too big as a side-effect of the TARDIS' dimensional controls, during the trip through the vortex. cf. Planet Of Giants and ep 4 of The Time Meddler.

The Claras sent throughout the Doctors' timeline were not linear, each one existed separately.

But they still wouldn't have existed if Clara hadn't met the Doctor; and if one of them had caused Clara to meet the Doctor, it still would've been a paradox.

It seem these kind of predestination paradoxes (the time traveller was always meant to change the past, there is no version of history where she didn't travel back and change things) are perfectly okay in the Who universe, since they happen all the time. (For example, in "The Shakespeare Code" the Doctor quotes plays that Shakespeare hadn't written them yet, and he "borrows" the quotes from the Doctor.) It's only when a time traveller changes an already established chain of events that things get messy. Or at least they should get messy, but it seems the latter type of paradoxes are okay too if the writers feel like using them. (For example, in "The Time of the Doctor" he changes his own timeline so that he doesn't die on Trenzalore, even though "The Name of the Doctor" had already established that he dies there and his body is left behind. For some reason this doesn't seem to be problematic in any way, even though in "The Wedding of River Song" a similar paradox [saving the Doctor when it had already been established he will die] almost made the whole universe implode.)

This has always been my biggest problem with time travel in Dr. Who. IMO good time travel sci-fi (like the Back to the Future trilogy ) always establishes rules for time travel and sticks to them; the challenge the characters then face is how they can get what they want without breaking the rules. But with Dr. Who the rules change on the whim of the writers: something that was a universe-breaking paradox in one episode is no big deal in another one.

With the introduction of Vastra, as I say above the same actress had played a different member of her species in that episode set in the Welsh mining town with the same Doctor and sidekicks. Which might count as enough of an introduction to some degree. I also think the same species had been introduced with earlier Doctors. I'm picturing a Peter Davison episode where the costume dept had slipped to the point where there is a hobby horse running around in the background that I think may have otherwise been an encounter with that species. I think that itself was a reintroduction of this species from one of the early doctors.

As to scale of Dinosaur, I thought it odd that the T-rex was able to swallow the Tardis which must have happened at the earlier prehistoric time they then traveled from. & I thought the external skin of the TArdis was supposed to be some protection from the external forces during time and space travel. Not sure where I'm getting that from but think I've heard it. Could be that there is some kind of bubble thrown up by the Tardis that would include things in its immediate vicinity. Have just remembered seeing things like Donna waving from the open door of a flying Tardis and Matt Smith and possibly David Tennant hanging from a flying one, all of which are at low speed in space and time. just surprised that a dinosaur would be able to fly through millions of years on the outside of a Tardis.
EDIT & now i find that the previous Xmas episode had Clara hanging on the outside of the TARDIS causing the Tardis to extend its shielding and slow the journey down. Which wouldn't make a great deal of sense with its ability to bring the Dinosaur forward in time. & surely it would just dematerialise from inside the beastie anyway.

Just trying to think what had been seen previously of Capaldi as the doctor, I was thinking he'd been introduced but I guess that was just the extracurricular stuff like the Zoe Ball introduction show and however many seconds you see of him in the Day Of The Doctor. Now looking up the episode title I find taht he was introduced. So did they crash into a prehistoric era, encounter the dinosaur in a Tardis that had lost sync with its surrounding dimensions in terms of size since the Doctor wasn't in control? Or are there any other continuity flaws that one can retrofit?

Sorry, just realising that the end of that needed more explanation if you hadn't seen the way Capaldi was introduced. Just seen it said that he regenerates in the control room, complains about his kidneys and asks Clara if she can fly the Tardis which he says is crashing.

I don't think it's worth worrying about the dinosaur and the Tardis too much - it's just a fun bit of spectacle to open the episode. They've established the shield thing throughout the Moffat era - the Doctor taking Amy for a space walk in S5 etc. Sure, it's a bit of a stretch to bring the dinosaur along for the ride, but hey, it's not hard SF.

Re the Doctor potentially murdering the droid... surely this is a big deal. Yes there have been times when he's done dark shit, but he's hardly one to off villains with gung-ho gusto. He always tries to find another way - that was the point of the Day of the Doctor. So for the 12th to potentially go back on that is disturbing. The deliberate ambiguity of the Droid's demise seems to tie into the 'Am I a good man?' theme.

Fair point that they've introduced new character traits for Clara rather out of the blue, but at least they've recognised the need to write her properly.

Yes there have been times when he's done dark shit, but he's hardly one to off villains with gung-ho gusto.

Was it really "gung-ho custo" when he was struggling for his life? The cyborg guy was trying to kill him! Previous Doctors have had no problem killing villains in similar situations, that's why I found it weird that all of sudden it was a big thing.

I thought this could probably have done with being a good half an hour shorter than it actually was, most of what was between the credits and the restaurant scene felt like padding, although it got a lot better after that. A big part of this is that regeneration crises are just boring, especially when the stakes aren't actually rising as a result of the Doctor's (physical or mental) absence.

The "you don't see him, you're only seeing his face" stuff was forced and lame, but then again I'm increasingly irritated by Moffatt shows' tendency towards real-time knowing meta-dialogue with the audience. The most recent series of Sherlock did it as well, isn't it enough to just tell a good story without having to pre-emptively address every social media criticism that might emerge at the same time?

I'm a fan of the Vastra/Jenny/Strax characters, though, and I'm fairly sure some people on this thread hate them so wouldn't really have enjoyed a large swathe of this

I don't hate them by any means but they're being overused at this point, the Strax joke was great for a while but is starting to wear thin. I don't think the actress who plays Jenny is particularly good, she mostly comes across as a bit wet, and I'm sure that's not the intention. Vastra is cool but they should do more with her. I like how we're now at the stage where they can show a lesbian kiss on prime-time kids' TV without even the Mail bothering to act outraged.

The breath-holding bit was silly really, a bit of a rehash of "don't blink", except everyone watching is capable of holding their breath more than once in a row.

But Capaldi really was excellent I thought, and there's the making of some decent onscreen chemistry between him and Jenna Coleman, in a way there wasn't with Matt Smith. The restaurant scene in particular was great, both in terms of the two characters bouncing off one another and then the creepiness that followed.

xp Added to that, the droid in the skin blimp was the master-droid - if he/it was destroyed, the others would all power down and themselves be destroyed. Along with being in a struggle, the Doctor seemed to be aware of that, which mitigates, if not excuses, his actions.

Vastra is cool but they should do more with her.

This is totally true: she's supposed to be this sci-fi Sherlock Holmes, with Jenny as her Watson, but we never actually see her doing any detective stuff. That's why a spinoff series featuring the three would be a cool thing, then they'd be able to develop Strax and Jenny too, beyond the two-dimensional roles they occupy now. According to Wikipedia, BBC has actually suggested a spinoff, but Moffat has declined because he doesn't have the time to do it. Couldn't they just get someone else as a producer/showrunner?

Though I suspect production costs are also one reason there hasn't yet been a spinoff, because the Victorian-era setting would make it more expensive than Torchwood and Sarah Jane Adventures were.

Want to know how Silurians had giant dinosaurs? Did they experiment with genetic modification? To find out listen to: http://www.bigfinish.com/releases/v/bloodtide-647

Couldn't they just get someone else as a producer/showrunner?

Even if current Who contracts allow this in a way that classic ones didn't, do you think "they" would choose to alienate the head writer and executive producer of two of their biggest worldwide successes currently(/ever)?

I've seen my first "MOFFATT IS THE NEXUS OF ALL MISOGYNY" reaction to this episode of Facebook and I don't get it.

I do agree that it was semi-aggravating that every character was fixated on The Doctor but that tends to happen in regeneration stories, so I got over it after about a second.

Also, afterward BBC America was showing random hodgepodge episodes and literally every single time a 10/Rose interaction came up it was horrible in a way I don't think the show has really been since. I don't get why that whole Thing was okay (especially when they circled back to Rose at the end of Donna's season and gave her her own pet Doctor) and Moffatt showing that a terrified person can still stand up to a murderous android by drawing entirely on her own experiences is the epitome of misogyny, particularly when the show later goes on to explicitly acknowledge all of the ways they fucked up 11/Clara during their goodbye conversation.

I don't get it either; this episode was almost less bad about women than the entire series has been since inception.

I guess accusing a woman of being a control freak when she's shown no real evidence of that beyond wanting a bit of independence is dodgy. But I'd still probably put that down to clumsy writing rather than moffat hating women.

Like, I understood the arguments people were making re: Amy/11, I just disagreed with them. I also understood all of the ways in which the plot mechanics were set up almost by design to sideline and marginalize Clara, (although as sic says I think some of this was meant to be intentionally unflattering for the Doctor and Smith's charisma carried a lot of fans past that realization) and how that's shitty. I don't understand how hitting the reset button on the entire Doctor/companion relationship and having a character whose was most notable for being at the center of a mystery no one really cared about start to become more than just a cipher who asks the right questions is proof that the show has fallen into an irredeemable pit of misogyny.

Having said that, I think there's always been more to Clara as a character than people have said (most notably in "Cold War" and "Hide", where she is clearly terrified of and bothered by what's happening around her but fighting through that to participate in events anyway) but the aforementioned stupid mystery was so hamfistedly done that it never had a chance to coalesce. I'm hoping that the trend continues and Clara becomes as cool as she was when she was a helpful Dalek.

cp: the "control freak" thing is a fair point; I think they intended to sow the seeds for that throughout her original stories but it got downplayed/overshadowed by the stupid mystery

I skipped the last Doctor and tuned in to watch this season cuz hey maybe this new Capaldi guy will be good and while I was predisposed to him I felt like I was watching an episode of Buffy and just gave up after 20 minutes

lol it got much, much better after 20 minutes

I'm just not interested in the emotional politics jibber-jabber, I couldn't even keep up with it some of it was rattled off so fast

Buffy is awesome so I do not understand how that is a complaint.

sometimes I like different shows to do different things but I mean the critique only in a general way - supporting cast soap opera hijinks were never what interested me most about Dr. Who, and seeing them become so central is sort of disconcerting. It makes sense that it's filling that cultural gap of nerd-soap-opera, I get why it's happened and it explains why the re-launched show has achieved an entirely different level of popularity/reached a new audience that is much different from the one I grew up with. Whatever, it's fine, I'm old, I can always watch my Tom Baker DVDs if I want glacially paced, intermittently humorous, high-concept sci-fi nonsense.

it did get much better after twenty minutes btw
though it never completely stopped being nonsense
i'm old too.

I liked this, but the first part was just so badly directed. Those loooong shots might have been good for the melancholic and unsettling scenes, but it just killed all the humor in the first part.

I haven't seen Ben Wheatleys A Field in England yet, and now I'm less inclined to.

it did get much better after twenty minutes btw
though it never completely stopped being nonsense

let's be fair; if it wasn't nonsense, it wouldn't be Doctor Who

I haven't seen Ben Wheatleys A Field in England yet, and now I'm less inclined to.

film is amazing. bears absolutely no resemblance to this episode, or any of the other Wheatley films I've seen

Yeah, everyone should watch it, it's nuts.

"I felt like I was watching an episode of Buffy and just gave up after 20 minutes"

does not compute

also most of the last doctor's run was really good so you missed out there.

I wouldn't say 'most', but definitely some fun stories.

I'd say "most"; 11's tenure didn't really fall apart until "The Angels Take Manhattan" (which I still enjoyed, mind you)

I watched the first episode of his run and just hated the actor, sorry (this happens sometimes with Doctors)

Capaldi def more appealing

You must like eyebrows a lot.

can't really argue with that, but Smith grew into that role quickly, I think....Capaldi is obviously more of a natural. And yeah, I think most of smith's run was great. I don't even really agree with the 'falling apart' bit; the worst thing about his run was the frantic pace in some of the stories, particularly in the middle of the River Song/baby / Doctor is dead arc, where shit just got confusing for me. I didn't have the problem with the Clara storyline like some others did. I did get sick of hearing 'impossible girl' a million times though.

It took a while for him to grow on me, but IMO Smith was the best of the three nu-Who Doctors, definitely the most versatile. If you dislike "emotional politics jibber-jabber", there was a lot less of that during the Smith/Moffat era than the Tennant/Davies era, plus Smith was more subdued as the Doctor than Tennant was. As a whole, I thought season 6 was the best of the 7 we've had so far, even if didn't have the best single episodes.

(xpost to Shakey)

I sometimes think Nu-Who has yet to top its first season.

I really like Matt Smiith so hope he goes onto something worthwhile. Shame they didn't finish the Ruby In The Smoke trilogy with him and Billie Piper.

First season is a strong contender for the best, even if, in retrospect, I don't really like Eccleston's take on the Doctor (a little too hammy, a little too grinny).

Late to the party sorry but I'll throw in my 2 cents for what it's worth

- Love Capaldi Doctor! Maybe even more than I hoped I would. Comedy was great, his interaction with Clara good & v moving at the end there

- the whole DONT BREATHE thing was so dumb & so tiresome

- let's never mention Vastra & Jenny & Strax Cirque Du Soleiling in from the ceiling on scarves ever again

- Capaldi looks p dope in his natty Doctor threads

- let's never mention Vastra & Jenny & Strax Cirque Du Soleiling in from the ceiling on scarves ever again

nah this was lols, bcz you could tell what the joke was going to be, but then it was well-paced and framed so just a shared delight with the makers and the audience

Yeah, I liked that scene, it didn't feel like Circue du Soleil to me, rather than "Victorian Mission Impossible", which I thought was fun.

but then it was well-paced and framed

nb in contrast with all of the following bits of fight scene

I also liked Strax Zoidberg - in general I'm more than okay with varying tone of "New Doctor has existential crisis" vs "Some unengaging nonsense with monsters who are disguised as other things" - but then in general I'm okay with varying tones anyway. I thought it was a nice touch to throw the 'broom' question at the clockwork man from a Doctor who has just changed all of him and is trying to figure out what's unchanged.

Actually, the point where my love of varying tone possibly refuses the fence = if I remember correctly, after Mme Vastra tricks him into knocking himself out, there's a very kid's TV sound effect.

I thought it was a nice touch to throw the 'broom' question at the clockwork man from a Doctor who has just changed all of him and is trying to figure out what's unchanged.

Just so no one misses the point, in this scene they have the Doctor holding a plate as a mirror in front of the cyborg guys's face - but the flipside of the plate is also reflective, so the Doctor sees his own face there. It was such an obvious thing, but still a nice touch.

Also, my first thought about the end was that heaven looked like the place in 'the Girl Who Waited', but that totally isn't it, at all, right?

Turns out it actually is the same garden! That's probably a coincidence, though: apparently the real garden they used is conveniently located just outside Cardiff, so it's been used in Torchwood and Sarah Jane Adventures too. Still, the visual parallel between this ep and "The Girl Who Waited" made me think of another theory regarding Missy's identity... In that episode, Old Amy felt she was abandoned by the Doctor on that planet; what if Missy is some previously unseen companion that the Doctor did actually abandon? We know he can be a bit of a dick, and that he has a short attention span, so it's perfectly he has had some companions he'd totally forgotten about, left behind in some planet or era they don't belong to.

Furthermore, there's a clear parallel between the Doctor telling Clara he's not her boyfriend, and Missy telling the cyborg guy the Doctor is her boyfriend. What if Missy was a companion who, just like Clara, thought the Doctor loved him, but this time, unlike with Clara, the Doctor never bothered to clear things up? If the Doctor forgetting her made her go a bit crazy, that would explain why she still thinks the Doctor is her boyfriend. Also, based on the first ep the theme of this series seems to be the Doctor facing his old mistakes, so having an abandoned companion as the villain would fit into that.

Of course all of the above would also fit if Missy is some kind of a parallel timeline version of Clara... But that wouldn't explain why she has a different face.

Completely out-there guess - she's the Valeyard of River Song. Largely based on her 'real' name (Gatekeeper of the Nethersphere), which is all a bit Trial of a Timelord/Matrix related; also that Moffatt doesn't seem to be able to leave his favourite characters alone so I doubt we've seen the end of either the Weeping Angels or River Bleedin' Song.