Doctor Who

[ZERO_ninja]

I think I enjoyed that? It raced by I barely felt the length of the episode. The Doctor in a domestic situation was entertaining, I continue to be surprised by how much I like his and Bills dynamic. The episode itself was very atmospheric and brooding and David Suchet was fantastic and creepy. That said, it was an episode where it does feel like very little happened and the plot resolution sort came and just happened with nice ideas but the execution of it was a bit cheap and I didn't really feel the payoff of it all that much (plus a very convenient day is saved). I think I'll go with a 7/10 for the atmosphere and Suchet but I'm not sure the episode will stand up to a rewatch. It's also continuing s10's "been there done that" trend which I hope it breaks out of soon, though that does look like it'll definitely change come mid series.

[Salamander]

I more or less agree.  The execution of the haunted house angle was done very well, but I'm not sure the explanation was equal to it, and the ending was very, very convenient.

Spoiler

If this was just somewhere the Doctor and Bill ended up by chance in the TARDIS, I'm pretty sure all the other characters wouldn't have been brought back to life, they'd just have stayed dead - but because they were part of Bill's normal life, the need to avoid repercussions required them to be easily resurrected.  It felt false.

I also don't think they should have spoiled the appearance of the chief "monster" in preview material, but oh well.  Good first half, anyway.

Edit: Actually, the more I think about it, the less sense the plot makes.  Emotionally, it works, but logically it needs more polish (pun half-intended).

[Big Panda]

What I don't understand is why didn't all the other people it swallowed up over the years get brought back too?

[Your Vest Friend]

I think that was pretty clear to me; She absorbed energy and went through each group's lives over a 20 year period. Ergo, by the time the next group was called the entirety of the previous group had been absorbed, so there was nothing to bring back. This group survived because they'd literally just been taken so there wasn't any time to take that much energy.

[Big Panda]

So, I have a theory about what the circumstances will be of the Doctors regeneration. As we know from the trailer they showed that teased the rest of the series, the Doctor

will be going through a regerative episode, expelling regeneration energy, probably in the last episode of the series (titled "The Doctor Falls"). It could potentially be a "false regeneration" like Ten and Eleven had, but for the purpose of my theory, we're going to assume it is a real regeneration.

This is what I think could happen: the last episode of series 10 will end with the Doctor about to regenerate, only for time to suddenly stop. Like Clara, he's been pulled from the final moment of his timeline via Gallifrey's extraction chamber (maybe by the First Doctor? If the rumours of David Bradley coming back turn out to be true) and the Christmas special will be him going on whatever adventure he's been pulled away for (maybe his part in the Day of the Doctor climax?), and it ends with him returning to his regeneration.

[Salamander]

5 hours ago, VEDJ-F said:

 

  Hide contents

I think that was pretty clear to me; She absorbed energy and went through each group's lives over a 20 year period. Ergo, by the time the next group was called the entirety of the previous group had been absorbed, so there was nothing to bring back. This group survived because they'd literally just been taken so there wasn't any time to take that much energy.

 

 

Spoiler

I just wish they'd been simply absorbed into the wood or something rather than devoured and crumbling before our eyes.  But I do like that "back to the estate agents with you!" ending, and if it had been otherwise then Bill would have eventually been arrested for murder, so I'll let it go.

[Big Panda]

So that rumour I reported on about David Bradley returning as the First Doctor has been addressed by Bradley himself...

[Salamander]

Any thoughts on last night's episode?  I found it very well-realised.  I thought it was interesting that the "monsters" superficially resembled the execution of the Vashta Nerada in the sense of being corpses in spacesuits, but the rationalisation and visual presentation were completely different.  It was good to see a threat which didn't leave the heroes unscathed, either, even if they ultimately walked away from it all.

Spoiler

It would be amazing if the Doctor's blindness stuck for the entire rest of his time in the role, but there's no way it will.

 

[The Tenth Doctor]

I thought last nights episode was alright actually. Most of this series has been rubbish but last nights was actually interesting. Sure, there were bad bits (Bill's I'm not a rascist bit was awful) but it did feel threatening and had a good feel, as well as high stakes. Capaldi was shining through and it will be interesting to see how he copes here on.

[ZERO_ninja]

Easily best episode of the series so far. Mathieson is a gem for the show. It was an easy 9/10 for me this week, and glad to finally have an episode this series I really connect strongly with.

[ZERO_ninja]

Well I absolutely loved that.Think it might drop to an 8/10 on a rewatch but first time through 10/10. I'd say more on it but people might pan over the thread before watching.

[Big Panda]

It took me a few minutes to grasp what I'd just watched, and I was left incredibly satisfied.

[Tylinos]

Okay, time to nitpick something that's really bugging me in an otherwise flawed-but-good episode.

 

The random number generator argument.  So, that was complete BS.

Yeah, random number generators aren't actually 100% random.  But try running multiple seperate random number generators on your computer, milliseconds apart.  They have different results.  You only get the same result if you just run a single RNG once and toss that result onto everything.

I'm pretty sure beings who could make a simulation recreating all of Earth wouldn't make this kind of simple mistake.  Well, unless it was an intentional thing, that reading Veritas sets all of its readers to the same RNG so they'll notice, but the episode didn't really indicate that was the case. (Or if it did, I must have missed it.) If nothing else, the Doctor heavily implied it's because computers are bad, rather than an intentional thing.

It just takes me out of the episode, since this is supposed to be a big deal, but it completely misunderstands how to do RNG right.  It really wouldn't have taken much to make the idea work, either.  And that just bugs me.

Still, at least the reveal fixed an entirely different plothole that had been nagging me for the entire episode.  Namely, the TARDIS had somehow lost its ability to auto-translate, and the Doctor never noticed, despite the Pope needing a translator right next to it.  Not being the real thing explains that well enough.  (I mean, I guess the Doctor might have just shut it off because of the university, but you'd think he'd try turning it back on so they could read Veritas.)

 

But yeah.  Flawed-but-good, even apart from that.  Wish I could've liked it as much as everyone else seems to, but hey, at least I didn't dislike it.

[PickleBrows]

10 minutes ago, Tylinos said:

Okay, time to nitpick something that's really bugging me in an otherwise flawed-but-good episode.

  Reveal hidden contents

The random number generator argument.  So, that was complete BS.

Yeah, random number generators aren't actually 100% random.  But try running multiple seperate random number generators on your computer, milliseconds apart.  They have different results.  You only get the same result if you just run a single RNG once and toss that result onto everything.

I'm pretty sure beings who could make a simulation recreating all of Earth wouldn't make this kind of simple mistake.  Well, unless it was an intentional thing, that reading Veritas sets all of its readers to the same RNG so they'll notice, but the episode didn't really indicate that was the case. (Or if it did, I must have missed it.) If nothing else, the Doctor heavily implied it's because computers are bad, rather than an intentional thing.

It just takes me out of the episode, since this is supposed to be a big deal, but it completely misunderstands how to do RNG right.  It really wouldn't have taken much to make the idea work, either.  And that just bugs me.Still, at least the reveal fixed an entirely different plothole that had been nagging me for the entire episode.  Namely, the TARDIS had somehow lost its ability to auto-translate, and the Doctor never noticed, despite the Pope needing a translator right next to it.  Not being the real thing explains that well enough.  (I mean, I guess the Doctor might have just shut it off because of the university, but you'd think he'd try turning it back on so they could read Veritas.)

 

But yeah.  Flawed-but-good, even apart from that.  Wish I could've liked it as much as everyone else seems to, but hey, at least I didn't dislike it.

 

Spoiler

The Doctor does say that all sub-routines that are part of THE SAME computer program would generate the same string of numbers at the same time.

You're totally right that separate RNGs would be practically guaranteed to produce different number sequences but  near enough everybody we saw in the episode were inside the simulation program so think of each individual character as a sub-routine.

 

[Tylinos]

4 minutes ago, Joy said:

 

  Hide contents

The Doctor does say that all sub-routines that are part of THE SAME computer program would generate the same string of numbers at the same time.

You're totally right that separate RNGs would be practically guaranteed to produce different number sequences but  near enough everybody we saw in the episode were inside the simulation program so think of each individual character as a sub-routine.

 

Sub-routines which were each separately generating different RNG sequences on their own.

The brain's a weird thing.  We all process things at slightly different speeds, even when we're asked the same question at the same time.  Different people would be processing for RNG milliseconds apart, unless the corpse-things got lazy when programming Virtual Earth and went "ehh, close enough" by making everyone think at the same speed.  Which is possible.

(Or, again, it could've been intentional that reading Veritas locked RNG together like that, but the episode didn't say that happened, so that's pretty much just headcanon.)

[Salamander]

I'm still not sure what I think about last night's episode.  It was certainly a very Steven Moffat episode, with shades of quite a few of his previous stories, and I find it interesting that it was mid-season as it felt a bit like the set-up to one of his finales.  But at the same time, it was also very much a set-up episode; objectively, not a great deal happened.  But I give it a lot of credit for taking a plot device I usually dislike and actually making it consequential.

[Salamander]

I enjoyed the secondary plot in this week's episode; I liked the idea of the real danger being a simple accident which the main characters had no way of knowing about.

Additionally, I think I've cracked next week's episode, based on the trailer alone.  Spoilers if I'm right, every possibility I'm way off:

Spoiler

The Doctor's whole plan to release the Earth from the grip of the Monks is to have Bill kill him.  This will deny the relationship of love that was the basis of Bill's consent to the Monks, and will erase the effects of their dominion (conveniently including the Doctor's death).

Edit: Of course not, but they were properly misleading trailers.  Fortunately, that's something I'm happy about; trailers which give everything away just make the show itself redundant.

[ZERO_ninja]

HOLY SHIT!!!!

https://www.bigfinish.com/news/v/coming-soon-tales-from-new-earth-gallifrey-time-war-and-the-return-of-the-war-master

This is one of the most exciting DW announcements ever for me. I'd always believed Jacobi would have made a beyond incredible Master (add to that I never really liked Simm it felt especially painful). Now I actually get to have Jacobi Master and a Master spin-off series all in one. (Shame they can't really have the Jacobi Master interact with a Doctor though, well without some extreme memory shenanigans that they're definitely not above doing).

[Big Panda]

So here's a theory I have about Missy:

 

She's actually an ordinary woman who's been possessed by the Master.

She's been seen crying a couple of times during her last few appearances and she claims not to know why. Maybe this is her real self showing through?

The version of the Master inhabiting her is John Simms Master.

[PickleBrows]

33 minutes ago, Ernest-Panda said:

So here's a theory I have about Missy:

  Hide contents

She's actually an ordinary woman who's been possessed by the Master.

She's been seen crying a couple of times during her last few appearances and she claims not to know why. Maybe this is her real self showing through?

The version of the Master inhabiting her is John Simms Master.

Spoiler

I'm beginning to think that there HAS to be some connection between a Missy revelation and the Simm Master returning. So far we've got the Doctor testing Missy's ability to fight on the side of good on a space station which turns out to be home to the Mondasian Cybermen. There's already enough there for a two-part finale so the Simm Master seems to have nothing to contribute to the story on the surface level.

On a side-note I'm looking forward to the Master interacting with 12, it'll be interesting to see how the dynamic will change with the 10th Doctor long gone. Actually I'd love for him to have a throwaway line on the 11th doctor, having not taken the 'kiddy" Doctor seriously enough to even bother turning up to take that incarnation on.

 

[ZERO_ninja]

HOLY FUCKING SHIT 20/10 EPISODE OF THE CENTURY!!!!!!!!!!!

Loved absolutely everything about about. Those cybermen with horror slant, Cyberman body horror, Master hiding in plain sight under a mask, the sci-fi concept, that pre-titles scene, Simm actually feeling like The Master. Everything about it was amazing.

[The Tenth Doctor]

Dude, that episode was CHILLING. Also, I knew he was coming but he took me by surprise when he showed up. Still love him. Best episode of this series.

[Salamander]

It's a real shame that this episode's two amazing twists were things which everybody already knew about going in, but I'm not sure what they could feasibly have done about that.  Publicity and promotion don't sit easily with secret-keeping.

Edit: With that said, while I recall previously exhibiting doubt as to whether the villains of this episode would stand up to modern-day scrutiny whilst still using their old-school visuals... they really did!  The transitional forms were all fantastically creepy, which helped to set up the real thing.

[The Tenth Doctor]

Wow that was a finale.

Spoiler

Missy and the Master were fantastic together, had some great laughs and was sad to see their ending. Capaldi shone bright in this episode, flying gloriously into battle and making me really upset to see him on his last legs. Bill... I didn't like her ending. It was such a cop out happy ending thing. Again, why can't we just have a companion flat out die? Nardol was shoved to the side which is sad as I was getting to like him too. I did enjoy the Cybermen again, epecially as it was many generations.

Then there's the biggie. Capaldi is fighting his regeneration. He doesn't want to change. Makes me wonder why Tennant didn't try that. Oh, I gave a cry when he started saying other Doctors last lines and we see past companions in his memories (He remembered Clara!!!) but this is an interesting spin. The First Doctor showing up is a genuine pleasure, Bradley was amazing as Hartnell last time. I do hope this Christmas special is good.

 

[Big Panda]

 

I thought 10 did hold off his regeneration, which was how he was able to wonder around and see all his old companions.

If you meant permanently, I'm pretty sure that's impossible. In fact I believe it's been demonstrated before that a time lord would eventually die outright if they didn't.