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

That is whenever its a historical earth setting there would be a further sci fi element. But I think initially the historical thing was a selling point at least from the story dept to the main Bbc establishment.
Must be sometime in Troughton that it changes?

I grokked it when it was explicitly mentioned in dialogue by Ruby, and continued to grok it when Maebh asked the sister to come home while speaking to every phone on the planet.

These plot details are contingent on actually understanding the dialogue, a fifth of which I couldn't make out.

Did you get what the title is a quote from, and the tiger was a reference to?

I don't remember what the episode title is, but I presume you're pointing towards Blake?

Loved the set-up, production design and atmosphere in this one. The actual plot was really quite daft though - particularly the idea that everyone on earth would stop cutting down trees as a result of a cold call from a little posh English girl.

Yeah, I thought this looked terrific but the story was just awful. I think Frank Cottrell-Boyce is an overrated and shitty writer anyway.

This was an okay episode, but I think they should've just framed it as a pure fairy tale, having the Doctor explain it "scientifically" just made it all the more obvious how utterly unscientific it all was. Like, even if the "oxygen pillow" somehow stopped the solar flare from burning the Earth, that doesn't explain why the radiation that comes with solar flares didn't give everyone terminal cancer? And I didn't quite get how the trees' ability to produce more oxygen would've made the impact of the Tunguska meteorite less catastprohic, as was suggested here?

I also didn't appreciate how the little girl's sister was magically returned by the tree fairies in the end. Presumably she had simply ran away from home, and there was no supernatural explanation for her disappearance, so it would've been much more satisfying to have her return home because she heard her sister on the phone and began to miss home, not because of tree magic.

If the science is daft, aren't we still in fairy-tale mode?

I really liked Danny's take on why he's not tempted to travel in the TARDIS. Actually I just like Danny as a character and think he brings a lot of needed balance to Clara's tendency towards mania (which is also great now that it seems like an actual character trait rather than a authorial edict).

The story itself was total nonsense but then again I watched and enjoyed The Leisure Hive so I'm not going to be too negative.

Lot of chat here about Who's tonal inconsistency from episode to episode, season to season - but isn't that the point? Or, at least, an accidental positive.

First two-parter next week! I've not missed them this season, compared to the one before.

Actually I just like Danny as a character and think he brings a lot of needed balance to Clara's tendency towards mania

Me too. I don't know how companions usually work but I'd imagine that their function dramatically is to be an everyperson to the Doctor's weirdo. Clara, however, has gone native in a few ways (to what extent is currently in the crucible) so that role has shifted to Danny. Dude's got some secrets but they appear to have made him stronger and more grounded than anybody else in the show.

Lot of chat here about Who's tonal inconsistency from episode to episode, season to season - but isn't that the point? Or, at least, an accidental positive.

Exactly--the point is that it's a show that, theoretically, can do any kind of story, any setting, any time, any place. Hard to think of a show with more potential for tonal freedom. As long as there's some consistency in the central characters to hold it together, it's fine by me.

Of course, if the tone of aparticular episode is done BADLY, that sucks, but it's the execution at fault, not the nature of the show.

This season has perhaps had the most consitency of tone of any of the new series. Personally I don't think that's a bad thing - you can have an entirely different subject matter each week and still have a unifying tonal palatte. Several of the classic seasons pulled this off.

holy shit

HahahahahaahA

who spotted the logo

the windows?

"There's something I'm missing..."

DOORS CLOSE

(spotted the doors and windows WEEKS ago)

that's when I got it but my o/h noticed the logo/signs throughout (on everything). Mainly because he couldn't work out why you'd design a logo like that.

I called Missy = master but kind of hoping it wouldn't be

couldn't work out why you'd design a logo like that.

nethersphere

Also looks a bit like Gallifrey and its sun.

Oh I dunno, I really enjoyed that, one of the very few I've liked this year, but but but...telling your audience of children that cremation hurts the person being cremated is just the most absolutely NOT OK thing I've ever seen a kids' show do. Any recently or soon-to-be bereaved child watching that has just had one of the worst things they've ever had to deal with made a lot worse and yeah, I can't get past that.

That's really freaky but a) it's Halloween weekend and b) it's most likely some kind of manipulative bullshit they'll expose in Part Two.

it was already shown as not being true in this episode

Was it? I missed it, hard to believe most kids wouldn't also have missed it.

And I don't think kids' minds work that way anyway, it's not enough to say "HORRIBLE THING IS TRUE" then later in the episode or in the next episode say "oh it's ok, they lied", the thing that will stick is the original horrible idea. Hell, even if I'm wrong about that and the idea only stood unchallenged for 10 or 15 minutes, that's still not an ok thing to do to someone whose gran may well have died last month.

It was just a ruse to get people to press 'delete' and be turned into Cybermen.

Loving Missy.

Good god, what an episode.

It was just a ruse to get people to press 'delete' and be turned into Cybermen.

Can you explain the mechanics of the Cyberplot then? People die, their consciousnesses get uploaded into the Nethersphere, they get song-and-dance and are presented with an app that will delete their human essence... but how does that get their bodies Cyberfied?

Good question - I guess we're supposed to find that out next week.

And for the Americans, what was the building that 3W was in?

xp ah, was afraid I'd missed something (again).

Also, funny that the Nethersphere appears to have exclusive iOS licensing when that ~other~ mobile OS would've been much more apt.

Was it St Paul's cathedral? I noticed a scene from the Invasion being not very well recreated.
Think that was one of the more iconic cybermen images from the 60s.

It was St Paul's Cathedral.

& to clarify that was cybermen walking down a set of stairs I think is very close to St Paul's

Yeah, think it's heading towards the Millennium Bridge, St Paul's in the background.

Cyberman on the Millennium bridge, and possibly the London Eye, needs to happen next week.

Like the opening credits of the Apprentice, with Cybermen.

And I don't think kids' minds work that way anyway, it's not enough to say "HORRIBLE THING IS TRUE" then later in the episode or in the next episode say "oh it's ok, they lied", the thing that will stick is the original horrible idea.

This is what got Hinchcliffe fired, when Mary Whitehouse said that kids would assume the Doctor had been held underwater for a week due to a cliffhanger

So that's who Missy is

That's a really flimsy parallel sic. You really don't think "loved ones I know who have died might have then gone through horrific pain" might be a more upsetting premise for children than "hero of a TV show who almost dies at the end of every episode might die, again" was? I think you're being disingenuous in claiming these are comparable situations. Apart from the different nature of the underlying message, you're comparing a clear and complete statement (later refuted, much less clearly) with an incomplete depiction of an event. And the fact is, people, children especially, really do find it cognitively more difficult to overturn an established premise than to continue to accept it (eg http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/misinformation-psychological-science-shows-why-it-sticks-and-how-to-fix-it.html). The same presumably isn't true if that premise just isn't fully stated in the first place.

aghhhhhhhhh

this was great!

so the doctor made out with the master *waggles eyebrows*

also i enjoyed what i took as a little malcolm/in the thick of it nod with the "why all the swearing?" invisible paper government bit

this season also said the moon is an egg with space dragons inside, and that wasn't promptly shown to be a lie told by a computer program inside a floating hard drive from another planet

kids tend to learn what fiction is as they grow up, and that villains often tell lies in it

idk

The cremation bit was fucked up but all the more effective because of that. This was an exceptional episode, as were the last two, really; whole season has been, likely, the best run of the revived series. figured Missy was the Master the second time she appeared; and I'm surprised that I'm ranking any episode that features Cybermen and the Master, but this was expertly done.

still can't believe they waited til this season to make clara awesome

it's like night & day

how dare a character grow and change due to her experiences >:(

for real though if you go back and watch the seven eps of last season that she was in, without paying attention to the Doctor being a fuckwit about her, you'll notice the same person

meant to include "I bet" in there

as far as I'm concerned she was a walking flirting catchphrase machine

and now she's an actual person

it had nothing to do with the doctor being a fuckwit about her. she never seemed to have anything to do!

in Bells she cracked the GI's haunted wifi on the balcony and located Miss Kizlet

in Cold War she swallowed her terror and braved up for the adventure, never screaming like a "Dr Who girl," and talked dude out of launching nukes and Ice Warrior out of having his rescue UFO zap the planet

in Akhaten, her compassion and care for children were what led then to figuring out what was going on, and then her own sacrifice and letting go of memories was the sacrifice that killed or appeased or w/e the angry sunface planet god thing

in Hide her continuing to ask questions is what prompts the Doctor to figure out what the Crooked Man lovelorn alien's deal really is, instead of abandoning the pair to time-split torture

she smashed up Diana Rigg's Heath Robinson death machine with a chair in Crimson Horror

and across the "Of The" trilogy, she: personally entered the Doctor's timeline, had her identity shattered into infinite fragments, and saved the Doctor from attack, diversion or death across the entire span of history*; convinced the Three Doctors to keep thinking through the implications of their actions and save a planet full of children (and some arseholes) and relieve himself of several centuries of emo angst; and talked the now-/still-trapped Time Lords into posting the Doctor an entire new regeneration cycle so that he could stop a dread prophecy of evil from dominating the entire universe, even though it was going to leave them sealed up behind the crack

* let's underline here, she MADE THE DRAGONFIRE EP 1 CLIFFHANGER MAKE SENSE. if that's not "anything to do..."

I don't remember what her catchphrases were. (RYCBAR wasn't catchy.)