Doctor Who: Oh, look! There's a restaurant at the end of the universe in Hell Bent Readers please note: THIS IS A POST-UK BROADCAST REVIEW – THERE WILL BE SPOILERS! Finally, the Doctor is over his mid-life crisis and his Sonic Screwdriver is back where it belongs. I was hoping that Clara (yes, I'll get to Clara) would keep the sunnies for herself after she reversed the polarity on the human-compatible neural …
As well as Adric, they also killed Katarina and Sara Kingdom. The first Doctor's reign was the bloodiest!
Kamelion also "died", and at the hands of the 5th Doctor himself! And so, with Adric, I guess that makes Peter Davison's reign... I don't know... equal to the first Doctor's perhaps, as Kamelion was an android and it was a mercy killing?
And then there was Astrid and Adelaide Brooke though I don't class them as companions due to my definition of companion, that being a character who has appeared in more than one story, and has travelled between stories by TARDIS, with Sara Kingdom and The Brigadier included due to (i) the length of the Dalek Master Plan and (ii) the Brigadier just because it's right that he should be.
Which would make 10's reign pretty gruesome too. Watch out whoever travels with 15!
You really have to follow the science fiction guide in time travel...
Her death did occur and its a fixed point in time. She is dead and will be dead. She has no heart beat and exists out of the temporal universe. She is both dead and immortal. Its this duality which is in itself a paradox. They should never had been able to pluck her out of her time stream. In doing so, they created this paradox and it will be corrected if she goes back to that moment in time.
The interesting thing is that there are now two Tardis' loose on the universe.
"The interesting thing is that there are now two Tardis' loose on the universe."
I'll think you'll find its the same Tardis, just an earlier version.......she'll take it back to Gallifrey in time to hand it over to the first doctor when he escapes.
If you remember the Doctor's Tardis didn't "like" Clara when she first signed up......that will be because the Tardis remembered that she'd abandoned the Doctor and flown off
Well that would explain why the chameleon circuit broke at the end of the show. I was wondering if that was just a design flaw in all the tardises where they were just dodgy, but if it's the same one, then at some point they give it back to the Doctor, and manage to get one more change out of it.
As a spinoff it would be rather elegant - lots of people call for a female Dr, and its been flirted with with the Missy character that gender is just a 'thing', much as Torchwood did with sexuality. It would give 'Me' a female-based doctor story without upsetting the traditionalists or cannon. And if they do, then I'd love to watch it.
Some people dislike Moffat and what he's brought to the series, but I respect him. He knows about storytelling and legend, has obvious reverence for the subject matter, but I'd playful within it, much as he is with Sherlock. You don't get to make two of the country's greatest exports without being at least a little bit good...
This is obviously using some new definition of the word "best" that I was previously unaware of.
Although I suppose - to be fair - there have been worse episodes during this shark-jumping train-wreck of a series. Like the first two or three which ensured that I didn't so much watch this rest of them as sit in the room doing something else of a Saturday evening while others watched it.
Still saw enough of what was happening to vote for putting it back on the shelf for another couple of decades though...
Shite, sack Moffat.
Nonsense. I could see saying that after the train wreck of season 8, but this season was superb. Over the past 12 weeks the show has returned to it's roots. So much of this season reminded me of the early eras I fell in love with. No, I say let Moffat keep doing what he's doing.
No, I say let Moffat keep doing what he's doing.
Personally I'm finding this series tired, predictable, too many of the sets and plot lines samey. Look at the repeated "shuffling monsters, run away, run away, in dark industrial environment, with emphatic exclamations" crap. I suppose at least the four billion year time loop doffs its cap at the concept of retreading, although I think that's an in-joke at the expense of the audience.
Capaldi is a good actor, was excellent in Musketeers, but as the doctor he's just not the man. His impressively vehement "I will hunt you through the universe" and "be afraid, very afraid" type declarations are then completely frittered by the inability of the over-arching story to allow a vengeful doctor, and that undermines the point of casting the rather grizzled Capaldi.
The rot started with the wet-lettuce of Matt Smith. Capaldi is far better, but still doesn't fit. I suggest a petition to Downing Street demanding a change in the law to force David Tennant to work as the doctor until the end of his days.
Funnily enough, of the four modern-era Doctors (five if you include John Hurt), the one that I feel was the *least* Doctor-ish was David Tennant. All creds to him as a brilliant actor, all-round good guy and for making the show huge with a new audience (well, huge-er... the first revamped season did most of the hugeness on it's own with no fanfare, to be honest), but I don't rate him as much as the others. Good. Great even. But no gold cyberman-killing star. Sacrilege, I know...
S.
"I suggest a petition to Downing Street demanding a change in the law to force David Tennant to work as the doctor until the end of his days."
oh dear god no - it'd be the end of Who - what with all the 'ever so sincere' monologues with, clowning around and gurning.
He was dreadful - and represents everything that was wrong with Who during the RTD era.
I was too giddy that Dr Who was simply back to care at the time, but he began to grate immensely.
Oh, and your utterly wrong on every level by the way.
It wasn't shite, not at all, but I have to admit that I also didn't think it was all that great either.
The problem with these story twists is that they don't add up. They are highly entertaining, awesomely well executed (the bar scene was chilling, the unarmed take over of Gallifrey was very statisfying, and the old Tardis was also a nice touch). But if you dig deeper, like most geeks do, then you'll end up disappointed over so many loose ends.
So the Sisterhood of Karn was on Gallifrey. So they knew where it was. Why didn't they tell the doctor?
And even though I personally like seeing Clara again I also was hoping that the story would focus more on Gallifrey and the time lords instead of only centering fully around Clara Oswald again.
Shite? Go wash your mouth sir. Acting was very well executed, the emotions then layed into it was awesome. But true; it didn't leave me with the amount of satisfaction that I hoped for.
There was a comment that Gallifrey was no longer hiding by this point - either that, or the Sisterhood saw a review of it on TripAdvisor which the High Council couldn't get taken down.
I did think it was interesting to have the Doctor finally use a gun to shoot someone; he knew they wouldn't be perma-dead but still, it's ending a life. That was pretty big.
To be fair here, I wouldn't say that Moffat should be sacked. Possibly returned to the role of dedicated screenwriter (at which he has already demonstrated his ability) while someone else takes on the responsibility of running the show as a whole, but certainly not sacked.
This series has, however, largely been shite and I really don't understand how anything other than severely rose-tinted glasses (or hopeless addiction to all things Whovian) could make anyone believe otherwise. I really did have high hopes for Peter Capaldi in the role and I think he has tried very hard to make something of the rather shoddy mess that he has been given in terms of plotlines and script but this has been the first season of the "new" Dr Who where I, for one, have found the sow's ear simply too ugly, trite and frivolous to be turned into any kind of purse, much less a silk one.
Still, takes all sorts I suppose. If it rocks your boat, more power to you, but I still think I'd prefer to see it shelved again (or canned altogether) rather than watch another season like this one.
Where in addition to rating Doctors (as before), we get some demographic about the age now, when they were introduced to Doctor Who, and what Doctor they started with?
I'm getting an impression that people have fond memories of the old series and nothing that Moffat or any past, current, or future Doctor could supplant them. There's nothing wrong with nostalgia and saying the new doesn't measure up to the old. That's fine. But clearly from a commercial standpoint, Doctor Who is doing fine with Moffat at the helm, which even for the BBC is a necessary consideration (and why the original series was "suspended" for 16 years).
For the record, here goes:
I'm in my early 50s, I just about remember the last of the second Doctor's episodes, but my memory really starts with the third Doctor and the UNIT-based episodes. Continued to watch through to Sylvester McCoy but found the lack of commitment from the BBC and its impact on the show painful towards the end.
Watched the movie and was disappointed, watched the first episode of the Ninth Doctor and was instantly hooked. I have, overall, enjoyed pretty much all of the new series to date, with particular liking for David Tennent's,erm, tenancy, and now Peter Capaldi's.
Whilst certain aspects of recent series have been annoying (perhaps deliberately so in the case of the sonic sunglasses, given the end of this episode) overall I've enjoyed it. I don't think that, overall, Moffat is quite as good a helmsman as RTD, but he's no slouch either.
I joined with the third doctor, gave up shortly after Colin Baker took over, then picked up again somewhere with Tennant.
Part of the problem is that it's harder now, the Doctor has been to most of the important events in the Universe and on Earth, so the writers have to get more imaginative (although I did like the Doctor's instruction to President Nixon about recording everything...)
I think the multi-part stories were an improvement, less of the trivial and a bit more chance for character and plot development. I thought Capaldi was suffering from poor scripts when he first took over, a bit like what happened to Peter Davison, but he's shown how good he can be. I don't think Moffat is as good as Davies but he's produced some good stuff along with a sprinkling of dross.
The doctor would go 4.5 billion years...... or so
... except he didn't, did he? He went a day or two and then died and got reconstructed from the pattern buffer (oops! wrong technobabble) a few hundred billion times with no memory of any of the previous times. It may have taken 4.5 billion years, but the final Doctor only experienced one iteration of it.
"He went a day or two and then died and got reconstructed from the pattern buffer (oops! wrong technobabble) a few hundred billion times"
It was overdue for Doctor Who to jump on the bandwagon and make join the long list of science fiction shows that have done a Groundhog Day episode.
I mean Tardis...
Awesome start, some great old series references - including the McGann hybrid I dissed last episode - slight slow down over did she or didn't she reverse the polarity and revved back up for the finish.
Few niggles:
I think given Me is several billion years old she's the one taking Clara under her wing, especially as she seems to be able to read Gallifrian?
I thought Taridises had a Timelord over-ride switch, so Me and Clara can be brought back?
Apart from that, great end to the series, but I hope he doesn't spend the next one looking for Clara.
There wasn't really a specific reference to it, but a very strong hint when Me was pressing the Doctor on the whole hybrid thing and why he spent most of his time fussing over Earth.
The orphanage in the Gallifrey badlands has featured a few times in the current post-movie revival. Here's hoping the popular sci-fi circle isn't squared and they have an episode where the Doctor goes back to baby-boom America to write a book on childcare...
You'd have thought the Time Lords would know enough to avoid self-fulfilling actions - they effectively torture the Doctor for 4 billion years because they're afraid of a mythical "hybrid" and, guess what...
Surely the whole torture thing was completely unnecessary? If the Time Lords want to find out who destroys them in the future they simply need to go to the future in a Tardis and have a look. The whole last two episodes could have been done in 10 mins. :-)
Ah yes, but if they had done that, they wouldn't have tortured The Doctor so he wouldn't have been in the future kicking their arses.
They needed to create the events that lead to their destruction before they could go and witness it, unfortunately in doing so, they didn't need to go and witness it as it was already too late - problems with torturing a time traveller.
What they should have done:
Someone: "This hybrid jobbies going to conquer Gallifrey"
Timelords: *fingers in ears* lalalalala
And everything would have been golden. We Humans learned this a long time ago, most advanced species in the Universe my arse.
@stucs201 That's often the case with prophecy, you interpret it in one way, only to find that you can still fulfil the prophecy in a completely different way. The Doctor standing on Gallifrey at the end of the universe fulfils the prophecy, however the Timelords bring about their own destruction by not realising that the true meaning of the prophecy may not be their destruction at all.
in the gen 1 Tardis console room. But the set distracted me enough to forgive the dragging pointless dialogue during that 5 minutes. The rest of it was pretty damned good. Capaldi is superb - line in the sand, not saying a word, just acting with his eyes.
Methinks that was a cover for the Doctor lying again. No reversing the phase; no "unsure what this will do". He takes the knock again, just like the last 4.5 billion times. Or one can easily postulate: does he just turn it off and pretend?
Given that 'me' at the end was pouting fit to burst (and making her jealous is probably a 'berserk button' moment par excellence) when Clara walked in I can see fanfics aplenty... but think about the BBC doing a relationship between those two.. lesbian necrophilia (since Clara is not alive.. but not dead.. so undead.. oh dear) on the Beeb? makes Brookside look positively dull.
Hmm.. Martha..
The problem I have with Clara is as a companion she's the gormless wonder but that's not really what she's there for; she's there so 70% of the audience tune in to drool.
Capaldi would be fine as the Doc bar the CoE Torchwood arc, you know, where he wipes out his family on primetime TV and inspires several meatspace idiots to do the precise same thing. I fervently wish they'd stop doing the test drive thing for Dr Who on other related series.
After a penultimate episode as good as Heaven Sent, I was worried that this week would be a let down. (There are precedents.)
However it was really good.
I liked the twists. Making out Me was the hybrid. The implication that the 8th Doctor was telling the truth about being half human, but without confirming it.
Was this a good episode, or another mediocre one with moments of genius... I really am torn on it. There were some lovely touches, some great moments from Capaldi who seems to be at his best when there's no Clara around... and that's not just because I have disliked that particular companion all along for her gormless and useless contributions to the plots of the last 2 seasons... whilst the writers desperately try to paper over the flaws in her character and give her depth and meaning.
I actually cried out 'Thank F*ck for that' when the new sonic screwdriver appeared at the end... good riddance to the glasses... the most pointless sonic device ever conceived of in this show.
I can see how the writers might want to set up a return of Clara, or a spin off. Maisie Williams has been excellent in her role and I'd like for her to reprise it at some point. But Clara's time is done and they should have killed her off and be done with it instead of this.
Once again we have a timelord character regenerating from male to female, the second time it's happened in the Capaldi era. Not only that, they went from white middle aged man to young black woman... They are certainly gearing up to do something similar with the Doctor, and that I think is long overdue if they can pull it of in the same way they did with Missy.
But aside from all of the wonderful genius moments... there was a lot of overindulgent and pointless melodrama that left me feeling bored.
I can't make up my mind if I really enjoyed this episode or not... the moments of brilliance overshadowed by the pointless bits or did they do enough to edge them above it all... it's 50/50 right now. Perhaps I need to watch the season again in the new year and look for little things I may have missed... but I was looking forward to the death of Clara and I feel cheated by what they did in the end.
Roll on the xmas special is all I can say... and please start a new arc so we can finally put this one ot sleep.
> Was this a good episode, or another mediocre one with moments of genius.
Well, there were certainly mediocre moments: e.g. the pilot in the shuttle-thingy saying: "You must come with me, this is a military vehicle" (my emphasis). Really? A big flying thing with two big guns sticking out the front and you need to tell everyone that it's military?
I appear to be in the minority, but in my opinion, every Moffat story seems to have the same flaw. He's planned out some scenes, then he has connected the scenes. He hasn't remembered to actually make a story. We had the scene where The Doctor returned to Gallifrey and confronted Rassilon. Having done this they very swiftly skipped through a quick note that Rassilon might come back, some mentions of the prophecy, then onto the scene where he rescues Clara. Some quick shots of people panicking and running around, then we're onto the scene where they're walking around the matrix with all the old favourites jumping out. Then a Clara to Doc conversation to lead onto the scene in the tardis...
I could go on, but personally I watch these episodes and feel like I'm just being pulled around into little bits of script. The actual plot to the episode was very weak, just a lot of suggestions of a plot, which is what he's been doing right through his time scripting. I keep finding myself saying "Ok, where are you going with this then? Oh, you're not".
Perhaps he should have used some rolls of wallpaper. John Cleese and Connie Booth used this technique to write Fawlty Towers. Sketching out (literally) the plot strands on the paper meant that nothing was introduced without a resolution, and in the end everything (sort of) made sense.
"I appear to be in the minority, but in my opinion, every Moffat story seems to have the same flaw"
That's because he's trying to squeeze four episodes into one and still get in the human interest bits between the doctor and the companion. So, sometimes whole plot devices are rendered into one declarative sentence.
I think the problem that Moffat has suffered is the same one that plagued Babylon Five and Star Trek: DS9 back in the day. It seems like the majority of science fiction series (and franchises) at some point attempt to do the whole "encompassing story arc" thing. Unfortunately, the producers and writers get so obsessed with trying to shoehorn in oblique little references to past and future events, plot sidelines and other self-referential details that they forget to make the individual plot elements, characters and episodes within the overall story compelling in their own right.
It's like someone having the vision of some wonderful, elegant building in mind and then spending so much time, money and effort on the pretty drawings and architect's models that, by the time they come to build the thing for real, they can only afford the shoddiest of materials and the end result is a slipshod, rickety assemblage of poor quality bits and pieces.
Whereas, if they concentrated on the key individual elements first (immediate plot, character, etc.) and then built the story arc around those afterwards, they might stand a chance of coming up with something bigger, better and more compelling. Foundations first and then start building your soaring spires - not the other way around.
(And yes, of course, I realise that they have to have at least some vague idea of where they want the whole thing to go but it still feels as though too many series put the end-to-end story arc first and then forget to build it up out of good stories along the way.)
Ah, you must have misunderstood the phrase "frozen in time" used to describe the hidden Gallifrey - IIRC in a comparison with the "photographs" used by the Zygons to travel into the future England. What this actually meant was "not frozen in time", as also shown by the regenerations top up.
My understanding - but this is Moffat Who we're talking about, so could very easily be confused as it has't been explained - is that originally Gallifrey was Time-Locked as part of the Time-War. Then in 'Day of the Doctor' they did the whole 14 TARDIS's "we've been calculating this for hundreds of years, just like when we tried to get the sonic screwdriver to work on wood" thing which moved Gallifrey into a pocket universe, but the War Doctor allowed himself to forget what they'd done so he assumed the Time-Lock was still the case all the way through the 9th, 10th and most of the 11th Doctors.
The Doctors tried to break through the Time-Lock / Pocket Universe at the end of the 10th Doctor's reign in 'The End of Time', but that was obviously foiled by The Doctor and The Master.
Then there were the Events at Trenzalore when the 11th Doctor grew old and "died" in 'Time of The Doctor', when some kind of rift opened and the Time Lords were able to grant The Doctor a new regeneration cycle through it. That was never really explained very well at all, just that they were asking "The Question", knowing that if it was answered they'd found the right universe.
As for the whole "We found Gallifey at the End of the Universe thing" - well, we've been here before when The Master was reintroduced after using the Chameleon Arch, before he turned the TARDIS into a Paradox Machine and brought the Troclafane back to enslave earth, and The Doctor saved everyone with the power of prayer and love or some such nonsense.
As someone else said - Moffat tends to write individual scenes of high quality, but then forgets to link them together with a story.
Wasn't that where the Master was hiding from the Time War? Or is Gallifrey even further along?
Since it would take longer than 4.5 billion years from now to the end of the Universe, is there something about Timelord tech that always puts you at Gallifrey's current 'now' point? A sort of Temporal lock, so you can't go up and down the timeline and (say) prevent them evolving?
In brief, yes, IIRC. I can't remember exactly where the canon comes from - is it Trial of a Time Lord?
The 'Time Field Buffer', the ultimate form of temporal transduction barrier, prevents travel into the past of future of Gallifrey, though it was theorised that by using two type 89 Tardis and the Star Of Rassilon these barriers to be penetrated, something that The Master attempted. I believe that even the Time Lords don't have control of these, which arose as a consequential result and vital component of the development of time travel.
I know, but I grew up with Who. One of the programs that made me who I am today - shaped my interests. Or was it that I had a natural predisposition to science and technology which expressed itself as a liking obsession with Who? Met Tom Baker and Liz Sladen as an 8 year old competition winner on a visit to Shepherd's Bush studios. Drove a Dalek, played in the special FX unit studios making sugar glass and painting rubber masks... tried on props/costumes like the TimeLord cloaks etc. excellent day out that was. And that was that. Loved the programme as a child. Watch it today out of interest and habit. Some of the things they do hurt a little bit. Others things create fist pump moments.
The restaurant at the end of the universe, the TARDIS as a building (he never got to use that idea when he was writing for Doctor Who so instead it appeared in Dirk Gently)...
And so much for searching for Gallifrey, it just appeared at the end of the series. What's supposed to happen with it now, is it just supposed to float about at the end of time?
"The restaurant at the end of the universe, the TARDIS as a building (he never got to use that idea when he was writing for Doctor Who so instead it appeared in Dirk Gently)..."
Didn't he use it for Professor Chronotis's rooms in "Shada", which technically could be called part of a building (or perhaps an apartment)?
Oh...is that my anorak over there?.................
Sadly Shada was never completed in time for a canon broadcast due to a studio technician strike. It has recently, however, been done as, I believe, animation. So it is now BBC canon. At last. Rewatching Pirate Planet and City of Death recently, DNAs wordplay just shines through. It's a damn shame that he couldn't have done more / isn't still around to pen a few more episodes. My God! What he could have done with Capaldi... hardly bears thinking about, it just makes you depressed.
The trouble is, that the show implied that he'd been waiting that long to get out of the test. But the truth is that he was re-made every time he got caught, and didn't remember what had happened before. So in reality he was only in there a few days or hours or whatever.
Moffat's script's tend to be collections of ideas that don't often make sense, but are there to create emotions in the viewer. The last two were not that bad, but let's hope the Chritmas one doesn't have magic elves or more bad Santa's. It's a scifi programme BBC, not a pantomime, by all means make pantomimes, but please leave the Doctor alone.
Well of course it is... Tolkien was a fetishist for anything in UK history and the Vikings/Saxons are a fairly big chunk of that. Hence alot of the names he creates, uses for people, places and creatures are yanked effortlessly from all those obscure parts of Viking/Germanic myth that didn't get made into opera by Wagner. As Ashildr is basically the OE (old English) form of the modern Hilda and OE is what you get when Germanic languages and half forgotten latin collide..
Although what would happen if someone called 'me' Hilda I hate to imagine, something along the lines of black eyed and veiny I imagine.
Thankfully we were spared the experience of Moffats take on Pervy Hobbit Fanciers although, if you squint you could kind of see Clara with hairy feet and a pipe..
Just for the love of <insert deity here> don't mention carrots...
Or blowing the Horn of Gondor.
Actually I think there are many parallels between Tolkien and Moffat... they both have some great ideas and stories but often fail to tell the story in an entertaining way, afte rall they both have their Tom Bombadil moments.
I think its time to stop treating Dr who as "High Art" it isn't, it never was and it never will be. The two things that make it mostly unwatchable for me these days.
1) The OTT and in your face PCness of the show
2) The interminable fanwank its become.
What I'd like to know is why they had a Rover 600 as the "American" car owned by the chap who was looking after the unconscious Doctor in the *USA* desert. Not like the BBC to skimp on that prop, given they probably had plenty of pick-up trucks as crew vehicles which would have been far more appropriate.
It's not a Rover 600, it's a Cadillac Seville which has a vaguely similar profile to a Rover 600.
They were available in the Uk for a short time, but being late 90s US built cars, they were even worse put together than a Rover 600, which is saying something.
That, and a front wheel drive V8 isn't really what UK buyers were looking for, because our roads have corners in 'em - a transverse mounted V8 driving the front wheels ain't a recipe for a pointy front end. Suffice to say the Uk car press ridiculed them endlessly.
I can understand the confusion though, at a glance they aren't dissimilar, but if you look at the roofline/door shuts towards the rear and front of the car there are clear differences - and the headlights on the Rover 600 don't wrap around as far.
Cadillac Seville of the correct era: Clicky for piccy
Rover 600 from similar angle: Clicky for piccy
The scene featuring the car in the episode occurs at 52min 30secs on iPlayer, should you want to compare and contrast. I can easily believe it being simpler to shoot the scene in the US than it would be to try to find a Seville in a presentable state in the UK, too.
I've always found the fact that they tried to sell the Seville over here to be an oddity, which is why I recognise them when I see them. That, and I'm a major car geek.
Steven R
After 'going too far' I think the Doctor realised he was the one who had to forget, turned the neural block device around and held the 'business end' leaving Clara to push the button end.
Up to that point he'd been holding it by the button end and was very doubtful about being able to 'reverse its polarity'.
Seriously, coming two days on the end of finishing Life is Strange, this one hurts. And yet...
Well, Clara's still around. And in a way, she's an absolute immortal, moreso than anyone else since her death is an FPiT (though that probably doesn't mean she should go hopping in front of any Extermination beams any time soon.)
Ashildr's back, too, and the two of them are now running free throughout all of Time and Space, but...
I don't imagine the Doctor could have failed to get the hint when Clara said "for all we know, she could be me."
I think he just realized that he needed to play coy to let them leave.
So, I'm sad. I loved The Impossible Girl, and Grandpa Doctor. I'm sad to see it end, so very, very sad. On the other hand, they ended this in a way I can actually be glad about:
Clara's not dead (not really,)
Clara didn't get memory-wiped,
Clara didn't somehow "give up the life" and go back to being an absolute mundanity,
Clara didn't get trapped by a timey-wimey wibbly that the Doctor could fix in about two days if he only gave it a few minutes' thought*.
Clara exited to have her own adventures. By now, she's the equal of the Doctor; hell, I was half-thinking that the actual Doctor could buy it for real, and Clara could actually assume the name as a title, maybe he'd pass it on.
*Amy and Rory were sent back to early 1900s New York, and the Doctor noted that he couldn't land the TARDIS anywhere nearby. All he had to do, however, would be to land the TARDIS as nearby on Earth as he could get and take a train/plane to NYC to pick them up and take them back to the TARDIS.
> Amy and Rory were sent back to early 1900s New York, and the Doctor noted that he couldn't land the TARDIS anywhere nearby.
No, the point was that the Time-Lines were so messed up that he couldn't get to that time period, full stop.
No, he was constantly re-spawned meaning he was only ever a few weeks away from her.
This also puts lie to the nonsense last week about him being able to taste/feel moving through time when teleported. Unless the prison was in its own time bubble?
He wasn't looping in time, he was repeating the same actions over and over for 4.5 billion years. We joined him after he had already been doing it for 7000 years which is why the stars were different to him. Every time he transported in, it was a fresh copy from the hard drive so he didn't remember the previous attempts. Then he works it out by the end and causes the loop to repeat again.
The question I have is if every time he repeats a skull falls in the water, why wasn't the pile super high after 4.5 billion years? Only the rooms inside the castle were resetting since the pile was already 7000 years old.
Sure, yes, some of it was a little ropey and wordy and, yes, there were flaws, but overall I loved the last three episodes, not least for the fact that even the Timelords are terrified of the Doctor, even more so than of Rassilon!
To borrow a line from Pratchett: “Sergeant Colon was lost in admiration. He'd seen people bluff on a bad hand, but he'd never seen anyone bluff with no cards.” All the Doctor has is his reputation, but that's all he needs and you *really* don't want him to be angry with you...!
So we get to the end of the universe, but we still don't find out who the Hybrid is. Is it Who? Is it Me? Is it Him and Clara? Who knows? (Or does he?!) There's got to be more to come on that story...
Meanwhile, some other great in-references, him possibly being half human, four knocks, telepathic mind-wipes, reversing the polarity, and I also loved the touch of the Diner seeming to the same one that he meets Amy, Rory and River in. Was that one actually a Tardis in disguise? Who knows, but never mind :-) plus a great line from the Doctor when asked if he'd been travelling? "Yeah, from time to time..."
Finally, of course we have, Run, You Clever Boy, Run, but this time he doesn't Remember...
Some people may not like it, some may sneer and bitch, but I loved it and that's all that matters!
There was some weird arse version of StarTrek:TMP on SciFi channel this weekend. The editing was shit, really, really shit. Does anyone know WTF that was all about? Blurred background characters, non-sensical dialogue, jump cuts, Bones walking on and off the bridge like his underpant elastic was caught in Kirk's chair...
Editing is very important. I thought it was quite good in this Who, but it could have been a much longer episode. The story did seem to jump between tableau set pieces and never made enough of The Matrix, The Cloisters etc.
I think a major defect in the new Doctor Who is the domestication of the series. This has been a problem ever since the Donna companion where we meet the mother, attend a weding, meet the boyfriend, see them at work teaching in some school etc. The doctor and companion should be off on alien planets trying to save the universe not solving some domestic issues. The second major defect is in squeezing the plot into one forty minute episode. Leaving no time for plot development or have the doctor or guest actors do their thing. Apart from the bad special effects the Tom Baker series were the best.
The "domestication" as you call it started with Rose & her mum on the Powell Estate, and that was RTD's decision to take the new series down that route. It's been pretty much the default since then, because it arguably made the series more successful. RTD is very good at writing fully-rounded "real" characters, and this is part of the success of his other work. Watch "Queer as Folk", "Second Coming", and even "Cucumber". The characters live and breathe from their very first appearance, and this in turn brought Doctor Who companions (and their families) to life.
However from the very start of 2005's Series One, a vocal side of fandom has always complained about this (we also saw the birth of the "gay agenda" at this time). In any other Sci-Fi series focussing on the characters' home life and close relatives or friends is seen as good writing, but in Who it's called "Soap".
This seems to be a perspective unique to some Doctor Who fans.
The problems for (older, like myself) fans from the original era are, I believe, as follows:
1) We don't give a shit about the domestic arrangements of the various companions. If we wanted to watch a soap, we'd choose from the many available.
2) Why must everything now seemingly come down to an almost constant will-they/won't-they between The Doctor and his young female companion?
3) For a vechicle that can go anywhere in space and time, the TARDIS does seem to return to (South) London a lot. A lot of the time to deal with #1 or #2 it seems. I was never a fan of the 3rd Doctor being stuck on Earth, bring back the randomiser!
It's probably us older fans which are the problem to be honest. What we'd really like is something like the original series, with a bit of a lick of paint and slightly less shoddy effects. But that ship has long sailed, and I don't think it's coming back. We're probably better off watching our copies of the old stuff instead.
I'm an older fan from the original era and I really enjoy the new series. I'm 54 this year, the first Doctor Who story I ever watched was "The Moonbase" with those pesky Cybermen, and I continued to watch all through the Troughton years.
Doctor Who's viewing audience was pretty poor by the time the 2nd Doctor changed into the 3rd, averaging about 6 milllion. By the time the 3rd Doctor bowed out after 5 series of largely Earth-bound stories, almost 9 million people were watching. Setting most of those stories in mid-1970s Britain seems to have done no harm at all, and made it one of the most popular eras of the show.
I thought most of this series was about the Doctor winding up in bootstrap paradoxes, he explained it a few episodes ago and a fair few after that had the paradox in place.
Last week it was going around the area, finding messages from the previous doctors to hint at what is happening, but how did the 1st doctor discover it to leave the messages for the next doctors to discover?
This one is the Doctor stealing the tardis which Clara nicks, takes back to Galifrey (eventually) and then gives it to the 1st Doctor, making her the impossible girl and starting Dr Who.
I have enjoyed it all since the re-boot. It's not perfect, not the ultimate best, never will be; there's a too diverse audience for it ever to keep everyone entirely happy. It has its highs and lows, there were episodes I have disliked and others which I have really enjoyed. I can easily find fault, but I mostly won't; I'll just accept it for what it is. I have long accepted I have to sit back, be entertained and carried along. This last series was a thoroughly enjoyable ride. And that's good enough for me.
Personally id like to see squidward as the next doctor. Also the teaming of murray gold with an aggressive drum and bass producer, spor perhaps. There would be better catchphrases too, there'd be less of "i am the doctor, fear me" and more "careful, you nearly sat on my plate of chicken, i dont want anus on my chicken". As for companions, thats for squidward to decide, i can only hope that it isnt clara fucking big breast, and moffat, lets face it, thats just an anagram of fafmot. I think he should regenerate to squidward at the start of the christmas episode, before anyone does or says anything, this would be emotional for me. Dont get me wrong i enjoy caplaldidllies nostrils, but dthats justy not the christmas that ive paid for.
final comments:
Squidward should be a fixed point in time and pudding
There would be numerous references to series 5, episode 2
The show would be called squidward who
On a series note if anyone finds my lunchbox id like to have it back, if its dirty clean it first please.
I didn't bother to read all the comments on here so someone may have posted something similar to this. If no one else spotted it, my daughter who's a super Dr geek certainly didn't and it blew her mind when I told her, here goes.
The whole point of the story line about was the hybrid and that's exactly what the episode and series ended with being created. You now have 2 immortals, neither can be killed as Clara is already dead and as for Me we know why, who are flying around time and space in a TARDIS, they are the hybrid. Me alluded that it was The Doctor and Clara, not so but that should have given you your clue.
I think the next series or 2 will revolve around getting back to the hybrid were the Doctor has to deal with his creation one way or another. How the story will get there is another thing.
PS I only watched the episode last night hence the late reply.
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