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

because skeletons sitting in water tanks looks great. this was an excellent episode (but then i think all this series has been incredibly good).

capaldi and jlc have both been as responsible for that as the quality of the stories and the writing. missy was hardly a surprise. tho i only noticed when the plaque for the founder was revealed was shown that his name was Dr Skarosa, and surely they would't give him a name like that unless... well.

Catching up on a lazy Sunday - Flatline ATM:

Episode was good-not-great (female Doctor trial run) till the climax, then seeing the restored TARDIS and the Doctor going all HAM was awesome, the first time for me where Capaldi brings something that Matt wouldn't have.

Oddly that's the bit that reminded me of Smith's "this planet is under my protection" at end of The Eleventh Hour - since they'd just undermined one cliche ("I really like this hairband, and every time I wear it, I'll think of the hero that saved it"), I half expected them to put the boot into that one.

Time travelling future Danny is definitely part of an overarching plot

Is that not his descendant?

This is the best nu-Who season fwiw.

Too early to tell, episode by episode (er, but I'm two episodes behind): it's up there with 7, but that was the last (only?) nu-Who season which actually did well by its big plot, and where the finale (both parts) are the best part of the season. If the end of 8 is as incoherent as the Name of the Doctor then I can see it taking a tumble.

are you sure you mean 7?

I'm reminded that the concept of the dead being conscious after their death and feeling everything that happens to their bodies is from an Aleister Crowley novella (The Testament Of Magdalen Blair) and that one of the 'big' Who baddies using a cemetery/mausoleum (where the dead aren't 'really' dead and can be contacted by relatives and loved ones) as a cover for harvesting their bodies to create new soldiers for their armies by encasing them in a metallic suit is in fact (part of) the plot of Revelation of the Daleks.

Danny Rose clearly didn't SPLINK.

Jim pls picture me grinning and poking genial fun, not sulking or being petulant. (and certainly not ...being defensive on behalf of? RTD or Saward or Chibnall or...)

apols btw, I misrecalled slightly:

wasn't promptly shown to be a lie told by a computer program inside a floating hard drive from another planet

it was the human Doctor CHANG!!! who actually said the cremation line, Seb just set it up in the cross-cuts with Danny.

But! I timed it on rewatching, and it's a whopping four and a half minutes between "don't cremate me" and the revelation that Chang doesn't actually know what's going on, and just about everything he has been told about the W3 situation appears to be bullshit. Is that really enough time for the concept to become permanently hardwired in the viewers' heads?

From your link:

And when we do take the time to thoughtfully evaluate incoming information, there are only a few features that we are likely to pay attention to: Does the information fit with other things I believe in? Does it make a coherent story with what I already know? Does it come from a credible source? Do others believe it?

Literally none of these fit the case of watching this episode of Doctor Who, and the paper doesn't seem to take into account the idea of accepting horror movies or fantasy series as sincere information about the way consciousness functions, anyway.

OF COURSE NOBODY SHOULD SHOW THEIR KIDS SCARY TELLY THAT MIGHT PROFOUNDLY DISTURB THEM. But you not showing your boy the ep sounds like good parenting, not that there's been a profound moral failure on the part of Moffatt and the other producers and the actors and Talalay.

Murray Gold was actually really good and restrained this ep! Until the opening of the tombs scene, where a bunch of Missy's lines got drowned out.

Dr Skarosa seems a really weird red herring to abandon. But I certainly hope it doesn't get picked up.

So it feels like Missy/Master has come up with this needlessly complex way of creating Cybermen, when the good ol' "kidnap people and turn them into cyborgs" method would've sufficed...

The Master's schemes are historically completely stupid and overcomplicated and based mainly on hubris about his own cunning, so this fits! (mark s once wrote a great thing or series about the rubbishness of his plans, somewhere.) Gomez currently on track to be the best Master in 40 years, imo and btw

Yeah, I think so far this is one of the Master's - or the Mistress, as we should call her now - more sensible, coherent schemes.

Speaking of red herrings, it seems that people who've died because of the Doctor ending up in the Nethersphere was one too, right? Because it seems the Master's plan was just to create new Cybermen, not snatch people close to the Doctor... OTOH, it's a bit weird that she would've bothered to go both to the past ("Deep Breath") and future ("Into the Dalek") to get the dead people she needs, when there's plenty available in the present, so I guess there could still be some revelation why she chose these particular folks?

"the present" is not the present for Missy. she can go anywhen.

It's also interesting to see where the Misstress's plot goes next... an invasion clearly, but it's not as if the Cybermen came out of St Paul's guns blazing. People seemed unfazed by the whole thing - it was just the Doctor freaking out. So presumably she's going to sell this as the resurrection of loved ones, allowing the Cybermen to safely infiltrate society before turning on the 'kill' switch.

Oops yeah, season 6 is what I meant, and anyway I'm cautiously optimistic about this season now (caught up completely).

Sic, I like you and all, but if that's not you being defensive, I'd hate to see what your defensive looks like :)

I'm also not quite sure that they do prove the cremation thing wrong - how are they getting the consciousness from the bodies otherwise?

It's possible that Danny's a special case of course, captured just before death to draw in the Doctor - but then there's always the question of whether the Master's plans are there for their stated purpose or just rickety enough to draw in the Doctor so the Master can have some (literal, in this case) face time with him.

I'm not sure if they're gonna go there, they already did the "dead people returning to live with their loved ones as a part of the bad guy's plan" a while ago, didn't they? I can't remember which episode it was, but I think it was during Smith's early run?

And yeah, Missy can go anywhere in time, but it feels oddly specific that the people we've seen her pick from the past and future just happen to have been folks who've died near the Doctor, instead of the billions of billions of other people she could've picked from... If this turns out to be just a red herring, I'd say they were cheating the viewers.

(x-post)

Also Jim, I'm not sure if you saw a different episode, but the one I saw had quite a lot of "Just so you know, this is incredibly fucking disturbing" leading up to the cremation line.

yeah but imo that would make it feel more (to kids) like they're being let in on a real secret. Agree with Jim that this could be quite traumatic for kids.

Neither praising nor blaming, but isn't there quite a long history of Who putting things in front of kids that really, really push the boundary even if you're not Mary Whitehouse. Even just the atmosphere in some of the older shows ...

Let's not forget "Love & Monsters." Or the farting ahem gas-exchanging Slitheen.

PS Does the UK have no worthy (East) Asian actors? This is the second time that Moff's cast a half-Asian actor to play what's nominally a Chinese character.

^^ Trying to stoke fake-Tumblr outrage.

I'm not sure if he was supposed to be Chinese..? Britain has a sizable minority of people of Chinese descent (including the guy who plays Chang), and since Missy's base of operations is in London, presumably she simply hired a local guy?

Sorry, I was speaking in shorthand: I didn't mean that he was supposed to be a Chinese national, but that the character has a name of Chinese descent but with some putatively Caucasian phenotypic characteristics. You can understand why I went with shorthand.

Well, the actor has a name of Chinese descent (Leung) too...

I'd understand the outrage if the character was specifically written as Chinese and they still didn't cast an East Asian actor, kind like what happened with the Avatar the Last Airbender movie... But that wasn't the case here, the character could've been of any ethnicity, they could've cast a white guy and named him Dr. Smith, and no one would've noticed.

I'm not being overly serious, just noting that the actor is clearly half-Asian the second time that's happened.

a white guy called Smith wouldn't have had the same "here's another huge clue about Missy's identity, yes you have guessed right" factor

https://wilybadger.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/chang_lee1.jpg

and of course, casting a not-entirely-phenotypically-Chinese actor to play a Chang in London could have gone much worse

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-SIjosTqmWXM/Tg8506QFwsI/AAAAAAAAJoA/J--4tzyZdYU/s1600/Talons+of+Weng+Chiang_chang.jpg

^^ Chiang IIRC.

Good episode. I don't really understand Missy's operation - is it a public venture that is widely known, thus suggesting we are slightly in the future? Or does she have a secret Cyberman mausoleum in present day St. Paul's Cathedral?

i hope the latter

AKM is OTM above, re: "That was super fucked up, but that's why it worked."

Clara: mysterious journey from worst to best nu-Who companion, in a single season. Good work there!

Best Cyberman story of nu-Who, too.

Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel is underrated imo. One of the best examples of Who as action movie.

This needs a Danny update I guess

http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lkun73AYUt1qafmk8o1_500.gif

ok .. a couple of hours ago mk2 (11 yrs) told me he found the whole cremation reveal aspect upsetting.

his mum was cremated a couple of years back, and when that scene played, i cannot deny it, my heart skipped a beat due to an obvious concern.

Or does she have a secret Cyberman mausoleum in present day St. Paul's Cathedral?

seems to be inside her TARDIS - note the roundels on the doors as Capaldi leaves & emerges on St Paul's steps, and the resemblance of the garden in Deep Breath to a console room

although I guess now we figure that bit would have been in the li'l Matrix

seems to be inside her TARDIS

Ah, that makes perfect sense.

^^ Chiang IIRC.

Li H'sen Chang.

PS mark - hope yr kid is okay in the days/weeks to come, re this

D'oh, got mixed up with the episode title. I guess he's slightly Anglicized (if you will) if Chang is supposed to be his surname.

seems to be inside her TARDIS - note the roundels on the doors as Capaldi leaves & emerges on St Paul's steps, and the resemblance of the garden in Deep Breath to a console room

Ah, well spotted--that was puzzling me too.

THe other confusing thing is the Mistress yelling that the last time they met, the Doctor left him/her for dead, which doesn't really fit at all with either of the Master's nu-Who "deaths": is this a pre-John Simm version of the Master (although every other time the two have met, it's been consecutive in their own timelines).

But a great and super-dark episode. Not one I'd be showing to young children, but I loved it. Gomez is great--the Master as psycho Mary Poppins is inspired.

I should add that I was about 90% certain that Missy was the Master, but the reveal was still a wee bit chills-inducing.

Is this them softening us up for a potential female Doctor?

That and Clara being the Doctor in "Flatwhatever."

DOCTOR DONNA

In an episode where Danny kills a child and dead people are burned alive, I did think the protracted torture of Change before he died was a bit much.

THe other confusing thing is the Mistress yelling that the last time they met, the Doctor left him/her for dead, which doesn't really fit at all with either of the Master's nu-Who "deaths": is this a pre-John Simm version of the Master (although every other time the two have met, it's been consecutive in their own timelines).

Well, the Doctor left him with the other Time Lords, who would presumably have executed him... Perhaps, if s/he is in love with the Doctor is some perverted way (as was implied here), he expected the Doctor to come save him, and when that didn't happen, s/he felt the Doctor had "left him to die".

One big implication of the Master's return is, if he was able to escape the time lock on Gallifrey, why not the other Time Lords too? I guess they might still reveal that his resurrection as a woman and return to Earth are a Time Lord plot of some kind.

Seriously, all the people questioning how barking The Master's plot is here need to watch Time-Flight then report back.

So far The Master has escaped from a black hole, been trapped with the cheetah people on a destroyed planet, been executed by the daleks, been sucked into the Eye of Harmony (these last two in the same story, and how unlucky to end up in a black hole twice!), been shot and "refused to regenerate" and was then burned (which Series 6 clearly states makes a Time Lord 100% genuinely dead, no comebacks), and possibly (there's actually no evidence he ends up in the same place as Rassilon) gets sucked into a pocket universe and/or black hole (third time's a charm!). He's also overcome the mythical regeneration threshold at least twice, turned into a magic snake, been a ghost and become a weird glowing skeleton that shoots laser beams. There's enough handwaving there to take off - so I really don't need to know how he turned into Michelle Gomez any more than a throwaway line of dialogue.

There's an encounter between Matt Smith Doctor and the Master in the officially licensed IDW series Prisoners of Time. I know, I know, canon.

I'll admit, all the stuff about "you deserted me" did make me think it was either The Rani (particularly since the plot was biology based) or an insane Romana - which was a very, very strong rumour.

I'm assuming that the little boy time lord Clara visited WAS the doctor? After all, if she's somehow a tool of missy's , then she'd be intertwined with The master's timeline too--and we have seen him as a little boy before

It's also interesting to see where the Misstress's plot goes next... an invasion clearly, but it's not as if the Cybermen came out of St Paul's guns blazing. People seemed unfazed by the whole thing - it was just the Doctor freaking out. So presumably she's going to sell this as the resurrection of loved ones, allowing the Cybermen to safely infiltrate society before turning on the 'kill' switch.

do we really have to redo the end of season 2 of nu-Who

this fukkin ruled btw

UGHH I just found out on Tumblr that not only are people slashing Missy and the Doctor, but they're doing it furry-style. /shudders

that seems... unnecessary