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

I enjoyed that one a lot, the Dalek antibodies were my favourite bit. Capaldi really is excellent, given that Ecclestone was up til now my favourite nu-Who Doctor, I think I just like him to have a bit of gravitas.

Suspect that the Doctor isn't going to take to Clara's new boyfriend particularly well, but I'm enjoying the moral ambiguities at play here.

I also like it when the Doctor's a bit of a dick and Capaldi is extremely good at being a dick.

The main plot felt a bit rushed and slightly nonsensical in places, but enjoyed it overall. Capaldi's shaping up very nicely, particularly liked him getting Vod off Fresh Meat to say 'please', and his rudely abrupt farewell. I really enjoyed the Clara and Danny stuff - nicely written and well-paced.

I'm watching how they're handling The Colin Baker Problem, which is that when they introduce an intentionally abrasive doctor to create contrast, they end up alienating the audience.

Hopefully they will simply avoid this by Capaldi being a better actor and having better writers.

but also was going hey! Clara's already been inside a dalek - I mean, fair enough that she wouldn't know, as it wasn't actually Clara, but the Doctor doesn't remember that?

http://media.aintitcool.com/coolproduction/ckeditor_assets/pictures/5252/original/doclek.png?1327684145

I haven't heard how this series is shaped yet. Is it back to a straight 12 consecutive week series? Matt Smiths last ones messed around with that didn't they? Called it series 7 but had a several month interval or something

Should be 12 eps, straight through

Hopefully they will simply avoid this by Capaldi being a better actor and having better writers.

Ha too right (but I enjoy thinking about this from a writer/producers POV)

no breaks, x-mas special, and clara leaves, apparently, during the special.

THE DEBIGULATOR WORKED!

(and the rebigulator too obv)

no breaks, x-mas special, and clara leaves, apparently, during the special.

stfu

Man i wanna like this so badly, but its pretty dumb unfortunately.
Rewatched the first two seasons of the thick of it tonight instead

what's dumb?

Has a companion ever slapped the Doctor before?

shd do story were doctor who turns bad

This started out as the best nu-Who Dalek episode, low bar I know. It did descend into a pretty typical Dalek episode with lots of explosions, but at least they kept the cgi swarms of dalekss down to a minimum. Capaldi is working out well, I hope they can maintain the unpredictability.

This started out as the best nu-Who Dalek episode

Nah, this is clearly 'Dalek', pretty unimpeachably so.

Yeah, I agree, though the Dalek-Clara ep was pretty good though. I'm only familiar with the nu-Who, so I've no emotional attachment to the Daleks, and most of the episodes featuring them have been pretty meh. I think the basic concept of the Dalkes is pretty cool and can be properly terrifying (as seen in "Dalek", where one single Dalek was enough to make everyone piss their pants), but they keep adding all this extra elements to them that just aren't that interesting. I'm not interested in some goofy-looking Human/Dalek hybrids, or some pathetic old geezer in a wheelchair who created them, these things just take away from the simple existential horror of the core Dalek concept. Maybe the writers think that old-Who fans need this extra shit, because the basic Dalek stories have already been told, but I'd choose the simplicity of "Dalek" over the ludicrousness of "Daleks Take Manhattan" anytime.

I like davros! Basically the only Dalek stories since the first one to do anything particularly interesting with them are 'genesis' and 'dalek', maybe 'rememberence', though it's been a long time since I've seen that one. They're better as a general ongoing background threat than they are as villain of the week.

Oh I think 'power of the daleks' has a very good rep, but I can't be bothered to sit through audio-only lost serials.

some pathetic old geezer in a wheelchair who created them

Said pathetic old geezer has been part of the series since 1975, in fact in all the dalek stories after he was introduced until 'Dalek'. And had his own series of BF.

It's interesting that you think Dalek is the modern one, because it was adapted from a BF audio which is surely the very textbook definition of "old-Who fans extra shit". Rusty in particular has made clear all the extra bits need added on because it's what TV is supposed to look like these days (post-Buffy). HOOT!

I'm also not sure what exactly you think the core dalek concept is.

Personally, I like to think of them as conscripts - forced into the suit and with vision and weapons grafted on (possibly giving them an electric shock when they use them), they're in a permanent state of panic which is why they're always shouting (and why they join chants with each other) and also why they get into extreme states when their vision is impaired; this has caused them to die of fright in the past.

That's an interesting if idiosyncratic take on the Daleks! I thought the core concept was they're horrible and they want to kill everything.

I wouldn't say it's that strange a take on daleks - they are vulnerable organic creatures inside the metallic killing machines, and they are creations of a mad dictator (I'd say this is a reasonable characterisation of Davros), which means they're not necessarily evil but contingently so. This clearly has symbolic power over and above "unstoppable and unmitigated evil".

Oh I'm down with Aldo's interperatation, just hadn't really occurred to me.

No, they were an attempt to break the deadlock in the thousand year war against the Thals by creating a battle suit which would not tire. The Kaleds were then mutated to fit the suit and to take all sustenance required from it. It was established in Remembrance (? might have been Revelation) that the two dalek faction are completely different types of mutants - one is the green jelly seen in Resurrection and one is the crab-clawed thing seen in The Daleks.

It could be argued (but I haven't thought it through to closely, because I've only just come up with it) that the Daleks would never have been such ruthless killers and had such a bent for galactic conquest had the Fourth Doctor not made his 'bacteria' speech and given Davros the idea to destroy the galaxy.

You'd think Doctor Ten and his guilty feet could have had a two-parter moping about how he did that back when he had curly hair. Frankly, Rusty could have got a whole spin-off series out of it.

established in Remembrance (? might have been Revelation) that the two dalek faction are completely different types of mutants - one is the green jelly seen in Resurrection and one is the crab-clawed thing seen in The Daleks.

"Daleks are blobs. Imperial Daleks are bionic blobs with bits on.”

what's dumb?
― boney tassel (sic)

I think that's nostalgia speaking.

banging head on desk scene made me think that moffatt was trying to revisit Coupling and Chalk simultaneously.

"is ross in here?"
"top layer if you want to say a few words"

Good grief that was a massive improvement on last week's episode, maybe even the whole last series. Better story, performances, direction - even Clara struggling with a bunch of plastic corrugated tubes wasn't the risible moment it could have been.

It was clunky but I liked the whole soldier/doctor good/bad themewankery. And Capaldi finally did something that made me think, "Yep, Matt Smith couldn't do that."

Also, Vod is such a natural fit for a companion, I hope she comes back.

"finally"?

be awesome, you mean?

I thought he was a bit boring in the debut episode. A bit too much "me crazy" acting - like Matt Smith in Nightmare in Silver. But he was great this week. And it seemed like he had a specific idea about the character, rather than a random grab bag of "this could work" business

Before Capaldi was announced, Zawe Ashton won the poll the Guardian did for 'new/first female Doctor'.

See, dalek conversation here is interesting because as far as I can tell they could be contingently evil or inherently evil, and you never quite know

I thought this was a really good episode with science fiction elements played just seriously enough to do what they needed to do, make a tense story that worked

First episode was crap, all kids know you don't just use a dinosaur in victorian london as a macguffin

I thought he was a bit boring in the debut episode. A bit too much "me crazy" acting - like Matt Smith in Nightmare in Silver. But he was great this week. And it seemed like he had a specific idea about the character, rather than a random grab bag of "this could work" business

Okay but you're acting like the debut was five episodes ago instead of last week

Doc Who like the NFL in that respect

the writing and the plotting? the mr. pink school sequence looked like it was written by someone who has not only never been in a classroom but by someone who has never met a woman before. i am willing to acknowledge this may be my fault if it's a matter of turning off an inner critic but the eccleston / tennant years (while often doofusy) didn't feel as relentlessly dumb as these two eps already have.

Let me check here: in a story where a 2,000 year old time-travelling alien with a spaceship that’s infinitely bigger on the inside, and a school teacher, and a bunch of future space soldiers get shrunk down to miniature, and walk through a psychedelic portal into the combination battletank/life support for a brewed-in-a-vat mutant blob descendent of the mutant blob survivors of a nuclear war, and convert it from fascist hatred to remorse by crawling around on it’s memory to remind it of how pretty explosions are when they’re really big ---

--- you’re put off by a brief scene in a 2014 Earth school not being written with 100% documentary realism?

The scene was written by someone who went from being a school teacher directly to writing every episode of an internationally successful five-year series about school characters, set in a school – sometimes he made them a bit snappier, a bit sassier, or heightened and condensed their emotional reactions, for comedy or dramatic effect. The school scene here seemed more flatly, more openly played than that. Dude also went on to write every episode of a little-seen two-year sit-trag, and then every episode of a four-year hit series sitcom, about men sometimes having difficulty communicating to women, with comedic and farcical consequences. This scene showed a dude not quite communicating his interest to a woman, to the amusement of both her and us – it doesn’t seem like a plotting flaw. It also managed to show that Danny Pink has been unattached for a while, is interested in Clara, is sublimating his need for communication and to be vulnerable into work, that he probably has some degree of PTSD after killing a female non-combatant in a war and is trying to atone for it, and that these things are likely to affect the way the two characters relate in upcoming episodes. In plotting terms, it’s doing a pretty hefty job of heavy lifting in a very short amount of screen time.

By “never met a woman before” do you specifically mean that Clara wouldn’t respond to his awkward embarrassment at her invitation by following up to see what was up, because no woman would ever pursue a man who seems to be interested but shy, or...?

(nb I've never seen Chalk)

wait where did "female non-combatant" come from

Someone (Clara?) called him a "lady killer" - like sic I think that was a pointer to a future reveal about what makes him cry.

It was the headmaster

the noncombatant bit comes from the student asking him if he's ever killed anyone who wasn't a soldier. "ladykiller" sequence follows less than a minute later. it's a deliberate hint, even if it turns out to be a feint later.

Yes the non-combatant part was pretty explicit, what with the lingering tear etc. I was questioning the female part, which makes logical sense but will make me roll my eyes so hard from a storytelling standpoint.

I disagree that the school scenes were particularly bad, but I do think that it's valid to take issue with a present-day real-life section of an otherwise fantasy text. There are lines where you draw your suspension of disbelief: frequently these come where fantasies contradict their own internal logic, and part of Dr Who's logic is that there is a contemporaneous real world that matches our own, and that humans behave in a human manner. If someone feels that the representation of those are shit, then it's perfectly reasonable for them to complain about it.

Though as I say, I thought those scenes were fine.