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

Zygons revert to type if the human they're copying is killed. So the dead Osgood has to be Zygon Osgood if we're to get moar Ingrid Oliver.

Osgood is so transparently fan-service/audience proxy/surrogate cynical TV shite creation that it's impossible to take her as more than a nod. No real character, just glasses/bow tie pandering, the eager-beaver selfless nerd archetype from every SF in the last decade.

tbh I was surprised she didn't get killed in the anniversary special

The character is kinda one-note - thought the actress had presence, though (even if her comedy show is unfortunately kind of awful).

The fact she's called Osgood is (not only imo) a crack-handed tribute to the socially-stunted but electronically talented UNIT soldier of the same name in The Daemons.

He also had glasses and clothes that didn't fit 'properly'.

Quite liked the musical, ahem, tribute to the James Bond theme during the skydive.

I thought she (and Kate for that matter) had more potential than the Victorian gang, who really have run their course now and I was pretty happy not to see them past the first episode.

Is this the first time the show has murdered a recurring good-guy character since Jack Harkness?

With Jack, surely you mean recurringly murdered?

Actually Rory is after Jack

Harriet Jones, former prime minister, did die, didn't she? She wasn't always a "good guy", but she certainly was that in her last appearance.

Tennant destroyed her career with 6 words after she had the retreating Christmas invading ship blown up which he saw as murder, last time I saw her. So does she recover?

I'm rewatching the Tennant episodes after having watched most complete stuff up to there. So have seen pretty much everything once already just can't remember her later appearance offhand. She certainly starts out nice so hopefully is redeemed, though her justification at the time would work for a lot of people.

I was a little sad that Danny wasn't saved. Maybe that will be resolved later? Anyway is the same actor now appearing in the supermarket sitcom Trollied? I saw somebody that looked a lot like him in a trailer. Well an actor has to make a living I guess.

Harriet Jones reappears in Rusty's Action Figure Showtime Extravaganza, where it turns out she still secretly controls the "sub-wave" (which is what, a flat line?) frequency comms network. She gets killed by some daleks after they have said her hilarious catchphrase - at the time there were many fan theories she was actually the Emperor Dalek and/or Davros at this point, because the viewer couldn't see her legs and for revenge because EmoWub Doctor destroyed her career.

Yeah coming back to me now. I'll probably see the episode over next few days unless my folder of Tennant era ends before then. It is his era isn't it?

Also been watching Torchwood which I had on the same hard drive.
But not been cross referencing timeline. The hand in the case seen throughout season 1 is the one chopped off Tenant in the Christmas Invasion isn't it? & Captain Jack is taken away by the Tardis for the Master story at the end of that series isn't he?
Also is the first mention of Torchwood in Dr Who from Harriet Jones in the war room in Christmas Invasion?

Yes is the answer to all those questions

Actually Torchwood gets a mention in Bad Wolf, 2 eps before The Christmas Invasion.

soda otm, I always thought Osgood was such an all round cringeworthy creation. The thought of her ever becoming a companion is/was horrifying.

season ranked:

Flatline
Listen
The Caretaker
Deep Water
Into the Dalek
Time Heist
Death in Heaven
Mummy on the Orient Express
Deep Breath
Robot of Sherwood
Kill the Moon
In the Forest of the Night

I would rank Forest as a 6/10 story, to give you a sense of how I felt about the season overall.

Listen
Into the Dalek
Kill the Moon
The Caretaker
Death on the Orient Express
Robot of Sherwood
In the Forest of the Night
Deep Water
Flatline
Time Heist
Deep Breath
Death in Heaven

I'd rank Death in H as a five out of ten and Listen as 10. everything down to Deep Water an 8.

pretty much agree with DJP here. this was an exceptional series.

it really was. I'm not a hardcore whovian but have seen a fair bit and this is unequivocally my favourite series and my favourite Doctor.

Fuck it, I think Time Heist was actually my favourite. So much fun.

Time Heist
Listen
Death on the Orient Express
The Caretaker
Dark Water
Flatline
Deep Breath
Death in Heaven
Into the Dalek
Robot of Sherwood
In the Forest of the Night
Kill the Moon

I think most of the episodes were solid 7s or 8s, and then Listen and the Caretaker couldve been 9 or 10 if not for their ropey emo endings.

Deep Breath is the only real stinker here, which by default makes this probably this the most consistent nu-Who season, if not the most enjoyable (for me, season 1 and 5/6a were patchiness but more fun). Like season 7, it didnt have any super standouts, but the writing and acting just seemed massively more confident. (A good Gatiss episode, even!).

"Dark Water," chums, not "Deep Water."

oof. oh yes. dark breath, the robot of the night, time dalek, caretaker in heaven, flatline on the sherwood express etc.

look, I didn't correct everyone who said "Death on the Orient Express", I feel some reciprocity is due

I got everything wrong. everyone else's fault of course :/

genre writing have annoyingly interchangeable elements.

That's no way to speak of Danmickrory.

lol. I meant genre *titles*.

Just got as far as the Tennant era library 2parter and not only does it feature River Song recognising him after large amounts of previous meetings though it's a different doctor.
But more relevant to this particular thread, the girl really resembles a young Gemma Louise. Coleman So I wonder if there was any level of consideration when she was cast. Probably just coincidence. But if they wanted to cast somebody as a childhood version this actress at this point would have been great. Had me wondering for a moment if this was old enough to be her. But I'd guess it was 5 or 10 years too late.

So the Doctor meets Santa Claus? I liked the comedy brought to the Doctor vs. the merry Robin Hood mythos but not sure it would work w Santa.

Also I loved how he fixed things by abdicating responsibility. All episode they were piling things onto him: "you are the president of earth!" "now you have control over an eternal cybermen army!"

i liked the extended clip, and i am
a sucker for nick frost

I'm sure Santa will be revealed to be an alien, right? (With possibly a little wink that maybe it was the real Santa Claus after all.) That's what they've done to all the other mythological creatures in the show, so why not him?

The President of the Earth thing bothered me a bit, because it's never been established that any politician besides maybe a few British ones even knows who the Doctor is, right? How did they get countries like Venezuela or Iran to accept that this supposed alien with a Scottish accent should have that power? Maybe if people would still remember the events of the season 3 finale, you could justify it, but they pressed the reset button on that.

my impression was that The Doctor was U.N.I.T.'s nominee and everyone was like "OK you guys would know best"

Well yeah, but considering how some countries feel about the UN, I doubt everyone would just let them decide.

I guess the idea is people think readjust their priorities in the face of an alien invasion, cf http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090731013009/watchmen/images/5/5d/Alienmonster.jpg

Sorry, badly put together post. Just woke up.

Basically the whole episode had this really forced way of getting to the moral choice at its climax: the Doctor is named the King of Earth out of the blue, Missy's whole complex plan was there just to get the Doctor to admit they're not that different, etc. The plot didn't have the sort of natural flow that would make these twists seem inevitable, you could pretty much see the writer pulling the strings.

(xxpost)

The two-parter that opened season 6 had the Doctor helping out Nixon so yes, some other heads of state besides British ones have encountered him.

black helicopters, blue police box

That was the worst Nixon impression I've ever seen, btw.

Panto Nixon, panto Churchill.

at least Nixon was the only bad thing in his story; the Churchill Dalek story was bad enough to be in season 2

Ironsides Dalek was cool.

(So was it asking “would- you- like- some- TEA?”, though that was a riff on Power Of The Daleks’ “We- Are- Your- SER-vants,” but I hadn’t recon-watched Power then.)

bbc america going all in with a reboot-a-thon leading up to this year's wobs special at 9pm xmas day

Christmas Specials back to being forgettable and mediocre again, I see.