Doctor Who Series 8

[mwgdrwg]

Checked the wiki it is Boneless. Need a name for the merchandising.

Doctor Who should team up with KFC for a happy-meal type thing.

 

[DotCommunist]

I fancy a chicken kiev now

 

[mwgdrwg]

I want a Zinger Tower.

 

[Pseudopsycho]

I want a Zinger Tower.

and crack wings, always a great crunchy pile of crack wings!

 

[krtek a houby]

not just weatherbeaten, weather took him outside and kicked seven shades of shit out of him

So did Batman, way back

 

[ViolentPanda]

That was ace. Original, funny, bizarre, gripping, on the side of da kidz agasint the man and proper scary monsters as well. A whole generation of children are going traumatised by this for the rest of their lives = which is exactly how dr who should be. And the whole 'sounds like shes on the job' phone call to teacher boy was very cheeky and hilarious.

Loved the train driver, too - "I've always wanted to ram something!"

 

[ViolentPanda]

Sounded like boneless.

Yup. He said "I name you The Boneless".

 

[ViolentPanda]

Post apocalypse who...

Pity he's doing an Alvin Stardust impersonation with the hands.

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

Pity he's doing an Alvin Stardust impersonation with the hands.

Killer Graffiti is a much better name

 

[binka]

Wrt thw wedding ring... well he did get married

 

[belboid]

He wears it every episode. It's Capaldi's wedding ring and he refuses to take it off.

Edit: actually, he wears his own wedding ring 'under' the ring in DW. The DW ring is a specially moulded one there to hide his normal one, which he refuses to remove.

indeed, it looks almost pretty

 

[Kaka Tim]

watched it again with ms kak and was even more impressed. My only real gripe is that this could definitely have been a 2-parter - there was a lot of drama stuffed into 45 mins - the suspense of trying to work out what the fuck was going on deserved to be more drawn out.
Dr Who spod continuity inconsistency - "it takes someone with staggeringly little imagination to be immune to psychic paper" - but in series 3 of the reboot, the not notably unimaginative William Shakespere was unaffected by psychic paper.

Anyhoo - best story so far - and Capaldi's dr who is so excellent - troubled, ambiguous, slightly scary but hugely charismatic and authoritative - he is really showing up what was wrong with the previous two incarnations - when he does his 'i am the doctor - FEAR ME!' shtick with malign alien types he is utterly convincing in exactly the way the others weren't - mainly cos they were too cuddly and he is anything but.

 

[danny la rouge]

Pity he's doing an Alvin Stardust impersonation with the hands.

RIP.

 

[ViolentPanda]

RIP.

I'm feeling quite guilty, like invoking the Stardust hands killed him off.

 

[danny la rouge]

I'm feeling quite guilty, like invoking the Stardust hands killed him off.

I know how you feel, whenever I mention a jazz legend on here...

 

[Awesome Wells]

No idea what that was about.

Don't really understand why, when offered a chance to escape (as they saw it) the earth's destruction, Clara loses the plot. So instead of save a group of children, andher boyfriend, she decides 'fuck it, i'll burn'.

 

[Vintage Paw]

I really rather enjoyed that episode. I agree that it seemed implausible that Clara would pass up the opportunity to save the kids. Surely having them pine for their parents on a nice world where they can integrate and live out their lives is preferable to them dying in a horrific, burninating kind of way? Kids who lose their parents through cancer or car crashes or taking their own lives or whatever have to deal with it. It was a strange old thing to write in there.

I can understand it from a dramatic point of view as a narrative device to be able to address a few things at once: the feeling of all hope lost, resigned to your fate, only for it to turn out to be okay after all; reminding us that the doctor is the last (sort of) of his kind and that's a shitty thing to have to deal with; making Clara's affection for Danny more real; etc. But those kinds of narrative devices only really work when they stay true to the characters, and what we've been led to believe is possible from those characters. Discordance is good, but sometimes, in cases like this, it felt rather inconceivable.

Other than that though (which is something I can easily get past), I did really quite like the episode.

The 'Miss' stuff at Clara suddenly had me go *lightbulb* "Miss/Missy, so that's why the emphasis on her being a teacher this series." But I'm not so certain, tbh. I'm still rather confused as to the Missy stuff. Many theories half-work, but they all have their "but what about" clauses. I thought Missy's little 10 seconds of screentime at the end (not the trailer for next week) was pretty weaksauce, tbh. It feels rather predictable for her to be showing up nearly every week with a bit of an ominous "I'm saying something cryptic, I bet you wish you knew who/what I was, lol" thing. It was good at first, but now it's a bit boring. I'd rather it was a bit more drawn out, with some proper interesting stuff in there, or not done at all. Or, perhaps, more cryptic where we don't even see her but see other things (a la Bad Wolf). As it stands, it's becoming a bit like Moffat's big fucking crack that he needed to pan the camera towards at the end of every episode like a big neon sign that said "THIS IS SO SUPER IMPORTANT YOU GUISE AND I'M REALLY CLEVER."

Anyway, still looking forward to the finale, but not especially because he's led into it very well. Just cuz I like finales.

 

[Vintage Paw]

Also nice use of the whole ecological thing. It certainly worked better than the seemingly pro-life/anti-choice moralising in the moon episode.

 

[Vintage Paw]

Thinking about it, we've seen a reversal of sorts during the course of the series, where Clara has become more doctor-like (with her literally becoming the doctor last week), and the doctor becoming more what we'd expect of the companions (and previous doctors) -- trying to save people.

Clara's decision to have the kids die felt like a continuation of that reversal.

I think this will be important.

 

[Vintage Paw]

So, regarding Missy, I reckon she's 'chosen' Clara in the sense that of all the companions the doctor has had over the years, she's picked Clara for some reason, and she's going to use her to channel herself through her and get rid of the doctor. For what ends, I don't know. The "Scottish accent, I think I'll keep it" comment is a sticking point here. Maybe she intends to become the doctor once she's got him out of the way and Clara is her way to make that happen?

 

[Vintage Paw]

Oh, and Clara not wanting the kids to go through losing their parents echoes her losing hers I guess. But she turned out okay, didn't she.

Edit: wait, did she lose her parents or not? I can't remember. I just remember something about that damn leaf, the power of memory, and a load of bullshit.

 

[Awesome Wells]

Or she is Clara. Evil Clara with a goatee from the mirror universe

 

[Vintage Paw]

The "she is evil Clara" theory was fun (not) for a while, but the "I chose you well" comment about her from Missy then makes no sense.

 

[Vintage Paw]

I'd like it if she was an ambiguous, morally-grey kind of villain.

Being the guardian of the nethersphere, she sees day after day all the people the doctor fails to save. He's a pretty shit doctor if you look at it that way.

"Am I a good man?"

"I think you try to be, and I think that's probably the point."

Well, what's the point of trying if you can't save people?

Maybe Missy wants to replace the doctor because she thinks he's fucking shit at it all, and she could do a better job? And she has become all bitter and twisted and is coming at it from the wrong direction and ends up being an evil old baddie in the process.

I like that kind of morally grey character.

 

[SpookyFrank]

Good episode only spoiled by the little girl's sister reappearing at the end for no fucking reason. Had she been lost in that shrub for the last year or what?

 

[DexterTCN]

Good episode only spoiled by the little girl's sister reappearing at the end for no fucking reason. Had she been lost in that shrub for the last year or what?

She got the phone message.

 

[beesonthewhatnow]

Where the fuck were the several million other Londoners?

That was rubbish.

 

[SpookyFrank]

Where the fuck were the several million other Londoners?

That was rubbish.

They were all on the tube and they couldn't get out on account of trees blocking the exits. Also they were all being told to stay in their homes.

How far is London Zoo from Tafalgar Square?

 

[T & P]

That was shite.

Just as it looked the series was picking up, another mediocre episode. Shame really, this series will likely not be remembered fondly, and that'll be unfair on the actors- the fault has chiefly been with the storylines.

 

[PursuedByBears]

I liked it. Doctor Who traditionally has not made a whole lot of sense. Peter Capaldi is v v good and Jenna Coleman is a great companion. Not as amazing as the last two weeks but very pretty.