Doctor Who and Torchwood

[LJT]

As I understand it they are operating on a much reduced budget compared to the first Ecclestone season and the second with Tennant, and I believe there may have been a further reduction in the past year (just vaguely recalling what I remember reading). The actual show time has also been cut by 5-10 minutes or so as well I believe. The BBC has had to make some stringent cuts in the past few years and it has affected Who.

 

[Kieran McConville]

I stand corrected if all those things are true. A shame, I thought this show was supposed to be one of their big cash cows.

 

[LJT]

It is but what better way to run a cash cow than by reducing its cost to make and therefore increasing profits?

 

[lazarus]

Granted it was a minor point but I framed it that way because the characters, in the story in question, are from well in the future. Now the future is unknowable, but it won't look or sound too much like (insert year of production here). In a weird kind of way I'd probably buy it more if they looked like monks. Just some token to place it outside the here-and-now.

My framing might seem weird but aesthetics are part of things too. You mentioned Star Wars. Alien, a film nearly as old as Star Wars (while somewhat dated in its own way) still just works. Their screens probably look a bit seventies too, but oddly I can't remember what they look like. That is my last word on that.

Actually some of the scripts have been atrocious, but I'm reserving that slam for the last year or two that RTD was in charge, and which I am most familiar with of the revived show. Waaaay too besotten with contemporary British pop culture as the be-all and end-all of human endeavour. Really, while something about it just threw me right out of the story four or five episodes into his first season, I can't and won't say that the Matt Smith era is awful or anything. Not familiar enough.

The first few years, Ecclestone, and the first two seasons with Tennant let's say, while far from flawless, I was pretty on board with a lot of that stuff.


"The kid with the gas mask" aka the Lost Child if I'm not mistaken. I agree, it was fantastic. Wasn't implying any different. Great story, absolutely chilling scenario, and, just incidentally wartime London looked about 100 times more believable than in a dalek story filmed four or five years later (bear in mind this isn't a low budget show anymore, and I'm not prepared to cut too much slack the way I might have done for ye olden days).

I agree with you that I grew really tired of RTD's humor, cultural references, and bloated series finales by the end of his tenure. But since there's a wider selection of writers, there's always some good stories even if the season as whole may seem disappointing. And even RTD came up with some good stuff along the way.

The final David Tennant season had the Moffat two-parter Silence In The Library/Forest of the Dead, which (and I know I just said this about the other one) is up there with the all-time DW greats, and introduced mythology that we're still reeling from and exploring.

The Doctor's Daughter was another interesting episode, the Agatha Christie story was a fresh little homage (something we haven't seen since Peter Davison in The Black Orchid), and there were genuine thrills in Midnight.

And I really felt that Turn Left followed by parts of the finale gave us an effective, tragic conclusion to Donna's arc.

 

[Kieran McConville]

Yes, there were good points in some of those ones you mentioned. That season seemed to pick up with the Silence In the Library/Forest of the Dead and I allowed myself to get optimistic, then he blew it with that finale that I couldn't even finish watching.

DAVROS (only he's there for no reason)
TOWING THE EARTH BACK TO THE SOLAR SYSTEM ON A CHAIN (Fuck you RTD!!)

 

[lazarus]

Thanks for reminding me of that.

 

[mobvok]

3/4ths of a solid episode this week. I wish they had pushed a little harder to find a strong actual resolution, because "mysterious inert cubes" was a wonderful, low-SFX pretext to poke around with Amy and Rory for 45 minutes. The Ponds were written much better than they've been, too, and I really bought they could simply desire a less flashy life of paying the water bill and going to events with friends.

I don't think new-Who ever handled UNIT or bureaucracy well, so I put aside the irritation that the Super CEO was out on patrol investigating jibberish. Smart move, I think, to bring in Kate as the new Brigadier. Between her and Oswin, we're starting to see the skeleton of who the Doctor's friends will be post-Pond.

Speaking of which, if Rory and Amy are going to fall off a cliff or stub their toe or get tossed into a time vortex it DOES seem reasonable to haul out River Song next episode, loathe as I am to endure more of the exhaustion her presence signifies....

 

[lazarus]

The cockiness of River Song can be a bit much, but bottom line is that the episodes she appears in are usually among the best this series has to offer.

 

[mobvok]

I don't mind Alex Kingston's performance so much, but the problem, I think, is that River is also closely tied up with the "reverse lovers/parent" business that aggravated me in season 6. If she's a bit more Silence in the Library or Time of Angels-style Plucky Companion next week where she gets to do her own thing then I'll be ok, but having her be in the same episode as Amy and Rory does make me wary.

 

[Joey788]

Yeah, I agree. River's alright in small doses, but in her series 6 eps, there was way too much of her cockiness and her romance with the Doctor. In Amy and Rory's departing story, they should be the focus and she can just be there as a side companion to help out.

 

[lazarus]

While River could certainly pop up again (especially in next year's 50th anniversary special), I imagine the departure of the Ponds will be an opportunity for Moffat to close the book on her part in the mythology as well.

Remind me: have we seen River's first sighting of the Doctor from her timeline yet?

 

[mobvok]

Classic Moffat. That is, not Great Moffat, as Classic Moffat would have meant after The Eleventh Hour had aired, but now that we're two and a half seasons in, Classic Moffat means something a bit different now. All of his ambitious structure (I loved how the plot spiraled around and through the book), along with the maddening "clever" tricks that undermine the rules which caused drama in the first place.

 

[lazarus]

Still not as bad as the Deus Ex Machina often utilized by Russell T. Davies.

What a send-off.

 

[Cactus Annie]

Colin Baker is a contestant on I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here UK 2012. He's probably the most famous guy on there

 

[elevated_u2_fan]

Thoughts on the new companion/Tardis interior?

I like the retro look for the tardis, not so sure about this new companion though...

Not a bad episode considering the Christmas specials tend to be hit and miss.

 

[mobvok]

Oops, guess I didn't say anything about this

Well reading it afterwards, the AVClub reviewer wrote/demonstrated on a plot level that there were a number of layers/contrasts in the way the episode was structured, which is nice in so far as that it shows Moffat spent a lot of time crafting the story, and is less nice in that the episode as aired didn't spend a lot of time really trying to handle it at all.

that said, the Doctor and Oswin are going to be a superb combination; they work smartly together. I don't even mind that they're trodding the romance path again since I realized Who makes more sense using each season as a self-contained story in a vague general continuity. So fine, River Song was his wife last season for whatever reason and that is bottled up there.

Now there were a few things ajar, like the way the director/editor shot the "Souffle girl" realization at the end was a bit ham-handed and I suspect that Moffat swallowed the implausibility of Clara's cloudfall simply to move the plot along/kill her, but overall I have to say I thought it was far far better than last year's trainwreck and almost as snappy as the Season 5 edition. Solid story, and I like that the Doctor is less genial and can be a bit nasty (as seen with Strax).

The new credit sequence will probably look a bit "of its time" in the future, because it looks very busy and that a CGI artist has gone mad with an unlimited budget, but I do like the TARDIS redesign. Apparently the show is shifting sets from Wales to a new location, and had the option of either trying to reconstruct the TARDIS in a new stage or just tearing it up and redesigning, and I like it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QGbsNIZ-uo

 

[lazarus]

I have not been able to figure out why Clara took a leave of absence from her governess position to work at a tavern/pub. It seemed like they were setting her up to be some operative for either Madam Vastra or someone but that thread was totally left dangling at the end.

Any thoughts on that?

 

[mobvok]

Oh that's a good point, I forgot about that. I'm going to rewatch the opening and see if any lines stick out

edit- well, the "Doctor Doyle" part completely escaped me the first time.

no luck divining anything, although the bar owner certainly thought she kept moving back and forth between those jobs. it's hard to tell with the current show runner if it's part of a long-running plan or just a random tossed-off plot bit.

 

[mobvok]

new Doctor Who!

downside is this is the second straight episode of the Doctor introducing himself to Clara. I've literally seen this before, this was the last episode before now.

upside: the wifi-controlled people swarming the Doctor were creepy

downside: let's not have a literal "IQ" switch you can flip up and down on command, please?

upside: lots (and lots!) of wide open outdoor shots. This is not being filmed in a Welsh quarry. Loved the Doctor toodling around on the motorbike with his nerdy goggles.

As a story I felt kind of mixed- stuck reintroducing things, but there was some good moments throughout.

The titular “Bells Of Saint John” refer to the ringing phone in the Doctor’s TARDIS, as it features a St. John Ambulance logo as part of its general Police Box disguise. Nina, one of the children in Clara’s care, is reading a book by Amelia Williams—time-displaced companion turned author Amy Pond, naturally—and Clara is quick to point out that, as good as the tenth chapter is, chapter 11 is even better. I’ll leave you to ponder the deeper significance of that last one.

Also, age 23 was missing from the 101 Things book, and Clara couldn't type 23 for the pw, instead going for 24.

 

[lazarus]

I thought this was fairly lame. The notion that he won't take the TARDIS "into battle" was total bullshit as he does it almost every episode.

The Christmas episode was more fun, funnier, clever, etc. Modern-day episodes in London centered on new technology are usually lame, with the exception of Blink. And the pre-credit homage to that episode was quite desperate.

 

[mobvok]

Link

Two returning actors have been named for the Doctor Who 50th Annniversary Special, which apparently starts filming next week. One is pretty obvious and should be fun, and the other should never, ever, ever, ever, ever return.

 

[Joey788]

I couldn't agree more with that sentiment.

 

[Alisaura]

I'm not really feeling the second half of series 7 so far, two episodes in. I don't think it's (just) the budget or production values either, which I usually don't really notice, although the BBC must be in dire straits indeed if DW has a smaller budget now than they did when no one knew if new-Who would be popular.

Also, I'm a bit fed up with being drip-fed episodes at a rate of 6 or 7 a year. If they're doing it so they can get a whole year's budget for fewer episodes and therefore a higher per-episode budget, I can forgive it, but I dunno if that's what's happening.

 

[Cactus Annie]

Is Clara really River Song?

 

[mobvok]

ooh a good one this last week. Really enjoyed how slow the pace was, having the Doctor and Clara wander around the mansion for the first 15 minutes without cramming 14 different ideas in.

....the end with the pocket universe got a little handwavey, but god that was a great forest for them to film in. I could watch another 10 minutes of just Matt Smith wandering through it.

 

[Alisaura]

There's definitely been an improvement, that was a great episode indeed. I'm really looking forward to the next one, I love a bit of TARDIS action.

Very apprehensive about the season finale though. :-/

 

[mobvok]

Steven Moffat is not a great showrunner- episodes keep showing the same pattern. An episode with a boatload of cool ideas, but a lot of sprawl/not a lot of time to breathe, with really exciting moments followed by tone-deafness.

The scene with the Doctor convincing the salvagers to jump inside, and then set the self-destruct was amazing. A+ for Matt Smith. Everything else about that crew was useless and a waste of time. Cut them out! Have a control room Time Gadget break and set everything on its way. Use the extra 10+ minutes freed up to have Clara wander around interacting with past and future selves, or have them just talk and hide from zombies.

Loved the Eye of Harmony. Weird zombie logic. LOVED the cliff-side confrontation with Clara and the Doctor. Hated that they strummed up the big heroic music and made the leap of faith the wrong triumphant note. LOVED the blank TARDIS stage. And then a (quasi) reset of everything. Hmmm....

 

[Cactus Annie]

Did anyone else hear the ninth doctor speech that said something about not even Genghis Khan could get into the Tardis? I couldn't, because I've got a lot of wax build up on my ear. But big deal, it was from Rose and I've already got season 1 on DVD. Does anyone else have Doctor Who on DVD?

Yes, I really like Matt Smith as an actor, well in Doctor Who anyway. I haven't seen him in anything else, so I can't compare him to David Tennant in Broadchurch or Hamlet. But I haven't seen Tennant in Hamlet or Broadchurch much either, so I can't compare these performances to anything.

I really enjoyed that last episode as well, but not as much as Angels Take Manhattan or that one with the human spoons a few weeks ago. I think I prefer it to Snowman, but I did think that this Christmas episode dragged a tinsy winsy bit in the middle. I drifted off into a daydream, and that usually means that whatever it is I'm watching has lost my attention. Unlike GI Joe, which overstimulated me to the point that I started running and darting about my flat.

But yes I do like assessing and judging acting. I find it easier to tell a good actor/performance than a good singer/performance. I'm tone deaf, but with acting all I have to do is think to myself "am I convinced?" It's fun!

 

[mobvok]

that was a flat out dire episode. Actually it felt like a pile of genre tropes that was beyond me, where everything out of Diana Riggs' mouth was stock villain hyperbole and the heroes are running around with a giant glowing red vial of Bad Poison like it's 1960s Batman. And now we have kids on the tardis?

 

[Cactus Annie]

Ye, I do find that the show is turning very childish also. When the doctor was tied up in that room and had a red face, did anyone else think it was like that scene in Hellraiser?

That red liquid, was that some gunk left over from Ghostbusters 2? I thought that Matt Smith was a bit too hammy in this episode.