Doctor Who and Torchwood

[mobvok]

That's definitely a complaint I can see. I rewatched both episodes back-to-back and there are a few cheats, like the precredits scene where Delaware.....hunted and killed Rory and Amy? Who decided in 1969 to go back to Utah? And then the show moved on without more than a superficial explanation.

But, I was impressed enough just watching the kinetics of this whole thing go down with a mere taste/sip of the underlying logic that I'm ok giving the show a few weeks to start properly explicating why things happened as they did.

 

[mobvok]

The Black Spot:

Hmmm......Amy and the Doctor brought a lot more to this than the plot did. Especially compared to Victory of the Daleks, this felt like a pretty example of how a series that's found its footing visually and character-wise can....well, I'd call it surviving a weak script. Not that memorable, though. At the start I was rolling my eyes a bit at the exposition and the instantaneous way the Doctor deduced that water was the issue, but the mid-episode correction made me feel a little better. This Doctor certainly has his share of flaws, and being too satisfied with his own cleverness is one thing that's cropped up before.

The "sliding window" thing feels a little too much like a copy of last season's cracks. Bargain discount story arc builder!

Next week looks completely awesome.

 

[lazarus]

The "sliding window" thing feels a little too much like a copy of last season's cracks. Bargain discount story arc builder!

Did this appear again this week? Where?

I must have missed it.

 

[deep]

I was dozing off myself.

But it was when they spent the night in the cargo hole, Pond woke up first and a plank in the side of the ship slid open and there was a woman there for a second, then it slid closed.

someone else can confirm this is correct.

 

[lazarus]

Ok, found it. The woman is heard saying "you're doing fine...just stay calm".

I really hope this whole season isn't just happening in Amy's dreams.

Because that would be lame.

 

[mobvok]

Aye. The woman said "you're doing fine, just fine....stay calm." This was about 25 minutes in after they realized the crown reflection problem.

edit-well, there you go

 

[lazarus]

Sounds like someone talking to a woman giving birth?

 

[mobvok]

They'd be repeating what was depicted in Amy's Choice ever so slightly, but what really got me is how often Rory has either died or is supposed to be dead.

Amy's Choice
Cold Blood
Day of the Moon
Black Spot

4 times in 10 episodes!

We usually only saw Worf get his ass kicked in TNG fights, usually to prove how dangerous the Alien of the Week is. Poor Rory. At least they got the Doctor in on the act in the season premiere.

 

[LJT]

Just wondering if anyone has thought that in the second episode that the ripped apart spacesuit with the life support gear was somewhat like a incubator, with it being ripped open in the process of giving birth to the girl.

 

[mobvok]

Just wondering if anyone has thought that in the second episode that the ripped apart spacesuit with the life support gear was somewhat like a incubator, with it being ripped open in the process of giving birth to the girl.

Hmm I did not think of that but it's plausible. I was confused how the girl popped out/away if the Silence were around here when they abducted Amy, given the Space Suit was a Silence invention in the first place. That must have been part of The Plan for them.

 

[mobvok]

Awwww hells yeah Season 5 is now on Netflix instant streaming. Now I can watch The Eleventh Hour, and not-watch Cold Blood.

 

[lazarus]

I'm so thankful for torrents so I don't have to give a fuck about Netflix.

 

[mobvok]

I'm so thankful for torrents so I don't have to give a fuck about Netflix.

In this narrow instance it's useful for me though because my laptop (approaching 4 years old) is running low on HD space. So there's slightly over a gig of space being taken up by Pandorica/The Big Bang torrented episodes, plus over my internet connection the Netflix episodes are at a higher quality than the torrented files.

Although Vuze has made itself more attractive recently as it can stream files to my PS3.

 

[mobvok]

The Doctor's Wife- the first truly great episode of this season. Had the Season 6 premiere's density (could NOT believe it was only 44 minutes), but in service of a proper plot.

I thought I was watching The Wire at the start, trying to decipher some of the dialogue, although Idris' tense confusion was understandable.

they also killed Rory again, this MUST be a running joke

 

[LJT]

Yeah but it was an imaginary Rory this time, do imaginary killings of Rory count?

The episode had some of the best lines of the story yet,

"She's the TARDIS. And she's a woman."
"Did you wish really hard?"

Corsair the timelord also reintroduces the idea that the Doctor could be a woman, plus his name the Corsair I think may be a play on the poem by Byron The Corsair which plays on the gender roles of its lead characters with the lead Conrad being a take on Byron himself.

Excellent episode and next week's the Rebel Flesh looks to ramp up the scares, plus apparently it's the episode where we start to get some of the answers to series questions.

 

[lazarus]

I seem to be the only one who didn't find this episode to be a masterpiece.

Totally lame that the "old" console room turned out to be Tennant's. Big fucking deal.

They should have recreated the Tom Baker-era room; I can't imagine that costing very much.

And for all the running through the various hallways of the TARDIS, it was pretty unimaginative, especially compared to what we got to see in Castrovalva, which probably had nowhere near the budget they're getting now but gave us a very expansive look at the Cloister Room, the Zero Room, etc.

 

[mobvok]

This is what Neil Gaiman had to say in an online chat:

Why did you use the Tennant era TARDIS as the alternate control room? I would have loved to have seen an earlier version? SPT777

So would I. But I was not able to reach any of the earlier producers in time and ask them to keep their sets up.

Because I came up with the story before the Year Four Specials aired, I was able to ask them to keep the Christopher Ecclestone TARDIS interior. It stood in the studio for an extra eighteen months, and they lied to anyone who came past about why it was still there.

Huh.

Yes, things changed when it slipped story arcs. It became Rory and Amy, not just Rory[think he means Amy], which meant changing the way that the House toyed with them/kept them busy while it took over the TARDIS. It meant that the TARDIS was no longer trying to warn the Doctor about the events of The Big Bang, or how he could get out of it.

 

[lazarus]

Whatever. I still say rebuilding what was already a cheap-looking set couldn't possibly have cost that much. And there's no way the actual console isn't intact somewhere.

 

[LJT]

I think you underestimate budget constraints at the BBC. They were also initially meant to show the swimming pool but it got pulled due to finance.

 

[mobvok]

I'm fairly ignorant of Ye Olden Who, but as a general guess I would agree that replicating what they did cheaply in the 60s and 70s probably wouldn't be that difficult, but it would require a lot more effort to not look like ass on an HDTV or clash too strongly with the modern aesthetic.

 

[lazarus]

Actually, I think it's the opposite. Part of why post 60's who looked so cheap was because it was being taped on video instead of film, at least the indoor scenes.

Had they shot that old console room on HDTV, it wouldn't look that bad.

You really should try to seek out some classic Who. If you can get past that budget cheapness, there are some great stories, and of course some of the actors playing the Doctor are really great.

 

[mobvok]

Two really modest spoilers for next week:

Spoiler

The Muse song "Supermassive Black Hole" is probably going to be played in the TARDIS (combination of "Supermassive Black Hole in the TARDIS" and "Muse/Dusty Springfield will be heard" individual spoilers)

It will join the proud ranks of Britney Spears' Toxic in the annals of pop-culture Who glitz

Rory does, in fact, make a joke about his deaths. So there's that.

Video, instead of film. Hmmm. Yeah I've given a superficial effort to look at some of the older versions, and I'm interested in seeing Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker some more. It's hard for my brain to process William Hartnell as the same guy though. He's...so old! Disadvantaged by being the first one out of the gate, I suppose.

There are also some Torchwood tidbits coming out, both of which sound depressingly off: a Starz promo that played some clips over generic music that sounds like your local news broadcast's 6pm breaking news music, and a web series with Eliza Dushku airing parallel to this season called, I kid you not, "Web of Lies".

 

[lazarus]

Hartnell's stuff is largely lame, to be honest. Troughton is a step-up for sure.

But you might be better starting with Pertwee. His first four stories are very good, particularly 3 and 4 (The Ambassadors of Death and Inferno) which are both pretty epic.

 

[mobvok]

The Rebel Flesh:

Somewhat of a generic genre experience, but reasonably well done and with a decent idea underpinning it. I think I said something similar about The Black Spot, but that was worse than this. Actually I might compare it to an older X-Files episode from when they were still based in Vancouver. Gray, murky, but has atmosphere.

Jennifer was the worst part of this, I hated her scenes. And they keep handling the running plot elements in a ham-handed way with gratuitous redundant shots of the Doctor staring at the Schrodinger's Baby on the monitor, and the eyepatch lady staring at Amy. I don't mind the elements! You need to do something different with it, otherwise its treading water.

 

[clarityat3am]

Can anyone recommend a reliable torrent site for me so I can watch today's episode of Doctor Who? It seems Pirate Bay has had it's servers seized and I really, really need my Doctor Who.

Love, your tv-less sitemate,

Nicole

 

[mobvok]

I use Kickass Torrents. Awfully convenient for me on the West Coast, as the torrent is usually ready around 1pm.

 

[clarityat3am]

I use Kickass Torrents. Awfully convenient for me on the West Coast, as the torrent is usually ready around 1pm.

Thank you! Panic attack averted!

 

[lazarus]

That sucks about Pirate Bay. I'm glad I got my torrent from them early this time.

 

[clarityat3am]

That sucks about Pirate Bay. I'm glad I got my torrent from them early this time.

They seem to be back again. Maybe my googled information was incorrect. Hmmm...

 

[mobvok]

Here's a slightly better version of the Torchwood Miracle Day trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVktcOQD1zA

Lots of explosions, but it looks like they snuck in a few quick Captain Jack character moments. Gwen looks like a mass murderer toting around so many weapons. Still hoping RTD pulls this off. In a few interviews he gave several months back he sounded totally reinvigorated following the Children of Earth episodic model rather than pounding out 13 individual stories.