Doctor Who: Classic or Dud?

if you like Smith you MUST watch The Lodger adam!

I'll give it another go but tbh I'm not running all the way.

Wait what is The Lodger? (Too lazy to google)

the episode from last season with the Doctor sharing a flat with "popular" comic actor James Corden

it's certainly worth seeing from the background season-spanning arc pov

Oh lol I thought it was like a separate TV series. YES. The Lodge is great. Especially Matt-Smith-plays-pub-football scenes...I heard him say in an interview when he was in college he was actually going to be a footballer until he injured his knee or something. :D

Not :D for injuring his knee. But :D for him playing football.

xp but his suppressed anger at the end of FOB when punishing them was good too and its too bad RTD didn't do that more himself

ugh HATED this bcz he just stands there with a cob on and GROWING SUPER POWERS OUT OF THIN AIR

^That's just Tennant giving his 'good Carrie' impression.

what super powers?

"trapping people in a mirror dimension like the Richard Donner Phantom Zone" powers

"transforming people into scarecrows" powers

"magicing up unbreakable chains and wrapping them around people with his mind" powers

ha, the mirror and scarecrow ones were great, didn't put any of this down to 'super powers' more like some practically magic devices he had lying around the TARDIS...but it doesn't matter how!

didn't like the chains one and the one where he "tricks" the woman into a black hole or something tho

I felt "detached" about Matt Smith at first, but by the end of the season (starting from that daft vampire story) he was knocking 'em out the park.

Also, COME ON, that last episode was probably one of the best ever, I think.

Fez!

I *cried* during the part where he is giving his speech to young Amelia, I am pathetic.

Orrite, fez moment was a genuine flash of genius, I'll give you that.

xpost Nicole, I did too. Blubbering idiot, me

Ugh. Awful. I actually said out loud how bad it was more than once when it was on.

Ah c'mon. Climbing into the film, and "I am. I'm showing you now" - brilliant.

Schmaltzy as hell and purely for the kiddies but I loved it. Best Christmas special by some margin.

H8 Katherine Jenkins though.

Dr was a bit thick to not notice the days counting down. And of course he could have whisked her off to some future planet of medicine, bish bosh all yer ills cured with a pill. But who's nit picking.

Throwing away the cornerstone of NuWho to go back and change the history of an individual?

Singing to fish makes them peaceful? Worst shoehorning of guest star evarr.

How did the close-to-death shark get into the basement from the roof, since the clouds had lifted so much that it couldn't even breathe any more? And how did it manage to live for that long (from Gambon being, what, 10 to his current age)?

When did Gambon's actual brain change, because how you think shouldn't change your brain pattern (if that's how it works)?

Why did Gambon's dad take fatally ill people as downpayment? It's not much of an incentive, is it - this person who's going to die will LIVE if you don't pay me! Also, not exactly moral of the Doctor to just leave all those people frozen, is it? He's certainly changed since New Earth when he risked everything to save a room full of people locked in cells who were fatally infected...

Riding behind a shark is the new jumping it.

I guess that means it's me nitpicking by the way.

Never change.

okay I'll skip this thread again then.

great ep btw

Four adults and four kids watching that one. And we all thought it was terrible. It managed to be boring, which is the cardinal sin of Whodom. Too many plot holes for comfort, too.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v165/noodle_vague/Teyla-rolling-her-eyes.gif

doctor who is rubbish

doctor who is in the gutter

fyi bbc america is marathoning all the specials since davies so i'm drinkin n watchin and i will with pride report on respective quality

this is the first special since Davies hoos

like 'all the specials since davis took over and beyond' i meant

wow ok whatever this is, i guess last year's xmas special with dr song and there's gilliam and there's smith, already its' rad. whole diff feel and pacing

i haven't seen anything since tennant left so this is a helluva way to start off, instantly so diff

ahhhhh what a rad open

Yeah the Moffatt/Smith era has gone for a much more magical/children's fiction feel, which is why this was so good at actually feeling Christmassy (as opposed to companion's family bickering round the turkey). Which is why things like the lifespans of flying sharks or why all the soot suddenly disappeared from the Doctor or whatever don't really matter.

A sort of cross between Christmas Carol and that episode of Star Trek with Joan Collins

Liked bits of that but it was rather slow in places. Needed more fish and less singing.

(at the time I assumed her family prob thought they had been quite clever giving him a fatally ill woman as their loan security, so I didn't see that as a plot hole at all, but I guess having a big counter of days until death on her ice-box was a bit of a giveaway to him so eh. still I am happy with the slightly creepy childhood dream style of magickal bollocks from Moffat where RTD's magic nonsense plot resolutions made me itchy)

i didn't realize this was the 3rd special with smith already, where the fuck have the years gone

not really interested in doctor who but saw a bit of this and that redhead assistant is just ridiculously hot

no joke

http://www.comicsreporter.com/images/uploads/aldo.jpg

this thread, you guys

Thought this was pretty bad. It mostly seemed to be an advert for Katherine Jenkins CDs. The CGI looked awful. The schmaltz was pretty terribly overboard and the plot holes were glaring, but those things can often be made up for - they just weren't on this occasion.

ha that rapid fire deduction at the start is v holmes

omg Nicole thank you for the Aldo jpg

I liked this special a lot. I will admit the "Back to the Future"-trained part of my brain was freaking out abt young & old versions of the same guy being in the same timeline together. Definitely way less embarrassing than cyber-cavemen or machine gun robo-Santas or space Titanic. Felt more scifi-y than xmasy but that's fine with me. Also the shark singing woman had my same name and there was a lot of cool knitted stuff in this ep so those are two sweet onuses that probably no one else got qa kick out of.

haha onuses was supposed to be
bonuses

lol

i didn't realize this was the 3rd special with smith already, where the fuck have the years gone

this is the first special since Davies hoos!

wtf are you watching?

or why all the soot suddenly disappeared from the Doctor or whatever don't really matter.

he's still a bit sooty out in the fog, he doesn't get properly clean until after he's spent a few hours or days or weeks travelling around in time finding Michael Gambon's old home movies and accumulating enough local currency to bribe Gambon's entire staff AND Mrs Mantovani - plenty of time to take a sonic shower in the TARDIS during all that

^^ expert plothole filling-in, there, take a moment to appreciate, you don't see it every day

(also, the close-to-death shark got from the roof to the basement and was able to breathe because the place was built on a fog marsh and therefore fish could live in the cellar, this was actually explained?)

I wished with the singing they'd chosen slightly less religious carols or elided out the most jesus-y bits, it kind of didn't seem appropriate to the magical scifi future her to be warbling 'our god heavn cannot hold him nor earth sustain' (you aren't on earth anymore!!). and considering they cut the carols weirdly anyway...

(also, the close-to-death shark got from the roof to the basement and was able to breathe because the place was built on a fog marsh and therefore fish could live in the cellar, this was actually explained?)

No, the fog had lifted from the roof and it couldn't even swim any more because of it - have no problem with the basement being a fog marsh* but there was no way for it to get there. I suppose the hand-wavy answer is that enough fog had escaped from the basement and worked its way through the house to support the shark...

* no, wait, there is. The whole thing is about seeing a fish because everyone else at school has and he's the only one that hasn't. Then the kid shows abolutely no surprise that his basement is full of them (ignoring the frozen bodies) and even explains why, like he's always known, even implying he's been down there before with his father (which is why he knows about Abagail). Surely that would be the best story for a 10 year old possible! Also, he's quite comfortable in and around them, but it was established in the scene before where he doesn't see the small one and only sees the shark as it comes through the door then dies/not dies that he hasn't seen any.

the basement's not full of them the first time iirc, it's on a subsequent awakening that Smith flashes the half-a-screwdriver at one?

Dr was a bit thick to not notice the days counting down.

Smith's Dr has been established as a) easily distracted and b) prone to missing things rly rly obviously under his nose (not the first Dr like this, but it was hammered home in the immediately previous story) - once the alarm goes off and distracts him, it makes sense that he doesn't spot it again - they're always poised to get her out and partying, with hats and scarves and fezzes ahoy, rather than studying the box for the first time as when the shark's in it