Jump to content
Awoo.

Doctor Who


Patticus

Recommended Posts

What's worse is that because the next episode continues from this I'm not very sure that one will be good either.

Next week isn't really a second part and more a separate episode with a returning character. It even has a different writer, which is never the case for actual 2-parters. As for the writer Catherine Tregenna wrote really good episodes for Torchwood. Actually back in s1 of Torchwood when the show was almost completely awful she the only writer to do not only a good but amazing episode in s1, so she's got a solid track record at least.

 

All that said, I didn't hate this week. Thought it was a decent ep, enjoyable enough to watch but several steps short of amazing. Though there were scenes here and there that were better than the rest of the episode.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I can imagine last night's episode is going to be particularly divisive, but for what it's worth, I thought it was pretty enjoyable.

 

Let's deal with the elephant in the room right away - The Doctor's face, and why he chose it. Yes, it was a sudden resolution, and yes, it was ultimately a rather insignificant detail. But that's all it really needed to be. As good and memorable an episode as The Fires of Pompeii was, it was never really a "big" episode that had repercussions on the rest of the series, so if they had decided 7 years later to make it a huge part of some epic mystery, it would have been misjudged, I feel. Most viewers probably don't remember Peter Capaldi being in the show before (or at least who he played - a minor character in the grand scheme of things), nor do they probably care why he's been in it more than once. It's just a little nod to the fans to acknowledge that, yes the producers are aware of the connection, and here's a little in-universe explanation as to why. They could easily have just ignored it entirely - they never explained why The Sixth Doctor had Colin Baker's face, for starters. Had The Doctor's face been touted as some big story arc for the series and the conclusion being "oh it's a reminder that I'm a good man and I save people", then I agree it would have been terribly underwhelming. But for the amount of significance that had been placed on it, and certainly in the context of this story, it worked for me. It fits his character, it gives a reasonable yet non-intrusive explanation for the coincidence, and that's enough to serve its purpose.

Anyway, as for the episode itself - I thought it was a fun little romp. Admittedly I had to readjust a bit to the faster pace - after four weeks of two-parters, having a single story crammed into 45 minutes again felt a bit awkward. At the end of the day it was all just window dressing to introduce Ashildr and set up The Woman Who Lived but there were some good gags, some lovely Doctor/Clara moments, and the Mire looked pretty damn cool (although again, they didn't really do anything - a bit like with the Fisher King, this series the monsters are all fantastic in the design department but a little bit lacking in the threat department). I guess I'd say it's Jamie Mathieson's weakest episode so far, but when you consider his other two are Mummy on the Orient Express and Flatline - arguably a couple of the best from Series 8 - then that's hardly a criticism. It took me a second viewing to really appreciate Mummy the first time, so maybe a re-watch will up my opinion of this one too now that I know what to expect and can take note of all the little details and intricacies along the way.

So, as for the ending/cliffhanger... is Ashildr the hybrid that Davros was talking about in The Witch's Familiar? Instead of Time Lords and Daleks, is the hybrid of legend actually combined from the two warrior races of the Vikings and the Mire? Or is there another hybrid waiting in the shadows, ready to strike in the finale...?

This wouldn't be the first time The Doctor has created a hybrid though - think back to The DoctorDonna in Series 4 (good to see Tennant and Tate back ever so briefly in this episode too, by the way!). Whenever two races seem to mix, it doesn't end well. Doctor, by saving Ashildr, you may very well have dun goofed...

TV trailer for next week's episode:

 

Edited by Doctor MK
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Girl Who Died would have been considerably improved if they'd been able to use their first choice of actor for Odin: Brian Blessed.  He had to withdraw from the part, I presume owing to his recent health difficulties, and his replacement just isn't campy enough.

Yes, mixed feelings on the episode itself.  It felt too much like an episode of one of the BBC's other historical fantasy shows from over the years - Robin Hood, Merlin, Atlantis - which are not good shows to be evoking as they were at their best when being campy and self-aware of how terrible they were.  Odin's costume looked school-play cheap rather than campy-fantasy cheap, and the Mire's costumes I feel were equally misjudged, looking more like galactic garbage disposal officers rather than ruthless mercenaries, and while their appearance beneath the helmet was more original it also bore no resemblance to the design of the helmet itself.

The episode I also felt suffered from a similar storytelling problem to Before The Flood, which is that it felt like not much was happening for a forty-five minute episode; they hang around an abandoned village, they hang around a Viking village - it didn't exactly take me on a journey.  It felt short and unambitious.  Actually, now that I think about it, The Magician's Apprentice and The Witch's Familiar were very similar; they also felt to me like they were basically set in two rooms with not much going on.  There's been no sense of space to the stories this series so far, and I think I am seriously missing that in comparison to previous series and even in comparison to Merlin et al.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Bob Baker pls, yes K-9 is a fun gimmick in small doses and appeals well to kids, this does not mean he's actually a good character. Stop trying to constantly spin him off, there's a reason it keeps failing.

  • Thumbs Up 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

So The Woman Who Lived. Much better than last weeks. Sure, not my favourite but still pretty good. It's strange, I felt Ashildr had no character last week but throw some her a new backstory and bam, I actually like her a lot more. I found it hard to hear though, 

Was Sam immortal or did the Eye of Hades make it not work? I just couldn't hear it right.

 

 

We are really driving the nail in though about Clara though sadly. Just as a warning, NEVER read the comments on anything Doctor Who related, whether it be Facebook or Youtube. They all maliciously want Clara's blood, just because she's Clara. Poor Jenna :-(

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So The Woman Who Lived. Much better than last weeks. Sure, not my favourite but still pretty good. It's strange, I felt Ashildr had no character last week but throw some her a new backstory and bam, I actually like her a lot more. I found it hard to hear though, 

 

Hidden Content

 

 

We are really driving the nail in though about Clara though sadly. Just as a warning, NEVER read the comments on anything Doctor Who related, whether it be Facebook or Youtube. They all maliciously want Clara's blood, just because she's Clara. Poor Jenna :-(

 

The Doctor said the eye probably had enough energy left to bring him back but not enough to provide him with the self-healing properties. Although I think Ashildr then asks if he's just made it up and I think he admits he has.

He tells her to keep an eye on Sam so maybe he did get something extra out of the eye after all. I'll need to go back and check that.

  • Thumbs Up 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

This week sees the splendid return of scope to Doctor Who with an episode which does not just take place in two rooms.  I do have some issues with the costuming, though; the vast majority of the costumes are fine, but Maisie Williams's Knightmare outfit mostly just makes her look a lot younger than she really is, and Leandro's Leonian costume comes awfully close to looking like rubber at times.  More worryingly, I feel like much of the episode was just off, somehow; there was a bit too much comedy in the middle, while the opening feels like it was directed as a comedy without being written that way.  The ending was an improvement, but... I also got the feeling that they were trying too hard to push Ashildr as a big deal in the DW universe.  For instance, I believe there's a spin-off novel for her coming along as well?  It's a bit much.

Next week looks like a return to form and much more up my street.  Mind you, this episode is doing a lot to push the theory that:

The Doctor had already experienced Clara's death before The Magician's Apprentice, and knows just how limited his time with her is.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In my opinion, I thought The Woman Who Lived was a better episode than The Girl Who Died - it had many of the same ingredients and ideas (trying to mix comedy with darker tones) but I think this week's script managed to better pull those disparate elements together into a cohesive whole.

Let's not beat around the bush, the highlight of the episode was the relationship between Peter Capaldi and Maisie Williams. Two immortal creatures - one with a fast track ticket, the other taking the long way round - discussing and debating the notion of living forever was a really interesting exercise I thought. I especially liked the comparisons made between The Doctor and Ashildr's perspective on their hundreds of years of history - after all, we're comparing a Time Lord and a human, and I never even stopped to consider that she wouldn't possibly be able to contain all of those memories into her brain at any one given moment. The shelves upon shelves of diaries she'd written of her life was a great concept, and a neat nod to her storytelling prowess in last week's episode.

Everything else, honestly, was window dressing. It didn't need to be about highwaymen, it didn't need to have a bi-pedal fire-breathing lion as the villain - it could have been set anywhere and about anything. But what was chosen worked well enough, and it's an era we don't often get to visit in Doctor Who so it made a welcome change of pace. Rufus Hound as Sam Swift was surprisingly good - sure, he had some terrible one-liners, but as far as comedians in guest roles go, he did a pretty swell job.

Most of all, this week just felt like it was moving at a better rate and took more time to explore its characters and themes, not unlike The Doctor and Davros in The Witch's Familiar. Last week felt too hectic, this felt much more balanced.

If I have any real niggles with the episode, it's that the threat basically amounted to nothing and, because the setting was essentially interchangeable, they didn't necessarily make as most of the time period as they could have done. But it was still a solid story for me, and left plenty of things unanswered for the remainder of the series.

 

As for Ashildr being a big part of the Doctor Who universe... (read on at your own peril!)

She's back in Episode 10, Face The Raven

 

Anyway, trailers for next week's Halloween episode... The Zygon Invasion!

There's no actual reviews out there yet but a few people who have seen the episode already have said it's a good one. A very good one.

Seeing as we're halfway through Series 9 now too (blimey, hasn't that gone quickly!) I thought I'd rank the episodes so far. Let's see how we go...

  1. The Magician's Apprentice
  2. The Witch's Familiar
  3. Before The Flood
  4. The Woman Who Lived
  5. The Girl Who Died
  6. Under The Lake

On the whole, I still think the first two-parter was the best, and then the second and third were about on par, for different reasons. Nothing this year has truly left me underwhelmed yet though, it's been the strongest series in a long while - fingers crossed the second half keeps up the quality!

Edited by Doctor MK
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Now that was more like it!

Scale, contemporary relevance, high stakes, the story being founded on the logical implications of a science-fiction scenario, a proper edge-of-your-seat "how are they going to get out of this?" cliffhanger - this was everything I'd been missing for much of the first half of the series.  And there was just so much in it, so much happened, unlike some of the blink-and-you'll-miss-it episodes we've had recently.  For me, this was a great improvement; I only hope the second half lives up to it.

I'm pretty sure I've guessed what the Osgood Box is, or something not far off the truth, by the way; I'll just list my guess here, but it seems like the obvious solution to the problem:

Some emphasis was placed on the Osgoods having a "live link," making them each both human and Zygon.  I speculate that a similar arrangement was established between each Zygon and its duplicate.  What the Osgood Box does is switch them over - all the humans become Zygons, and all the Zygons become humans.  (This may already have happened.)

By the climax of next week's episode, the Zygons will have won, and they, unsuspecting of the Osgood Box's true purpose, activate it in the belief that it will wipe out humanity.  Instead, it flips them around so all the triumphant Zygon rebels become their captive human counterparts (and vice-versa), who thus take control of the situation and end the rebellion.  Hence the title, "The Zygon Inversion"...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Agreed, that was a very good episode. A fittingly fantastic first half to the sequel for The Day of The Doctor!

As it stands I think I still ever so slightly prefer The Magician's Apprentice/The Witch's Familiar in terms of Series 9 favourites, but The Zygon Invasion is coming up as a very close second - and who knows, once we've seen the two-parter in all its glory next week, it might even jump up to my number one spot. Either way, it's much much better than Peter Harness' episode last year, Kill the Moon. It may still be controversial, but at least that'll be because of the themes this time, not the quality. This series is producing some very strong stories, and I hope it can keep the momentum going right through to the finale.

This week properly established the Zygons as a legitimate threat on a global scale, and has helped to cement them as a truly classic Doctor Who monster alongside the Daleks and the Cybermen - which isn't bad considering this is only their third appearance in 52 years!

The scene outside the church with the UNIT soldiers torn over whether to shoot what appeared to be their own family members... man, that was powerful. I mean, obviously they were Zygons and leading the soldiers into the trap, but if you were in that situation, could you possibly take that chance?

Also, I'd kind of predicted that Clara would turn out to be a Zygon duplicate after there was no real "resolution" to the earlier scene in the flat, and her tying her hair back in a ponytail somehow signified that something was different. But I was still pleasantly surprised by the time the reveal came along at the end - it's one of those twists where you can see the clues early on (or if you missed them, go back and piece it together) and yet it's still not entirely clear until it actually happens. And that cliffhanger! I never thought I'd see Clara firing a bazooka at The Doctor in a plane, but... damn! The presidential plane sure does take a beating doesn't it, getting ripped to shreds by flying Cybermen last series and now about to get blown up by a missile!

And may I just say... evil Clara in a black leather jacket and thick red lipstick is hot! They're definitely doing all they can this year to make sure we miss Jenna Coleman when she's gone!

So yeah, one very pleased Whovian right here!

Anyway, there was no next time trailer for The Zygon Inversion at the end of the episode, but there is a TV trailer to whet your appetite for next week...

EDIT: Preview clips... it's Clara versus Clara!

 

Reviews are also looking extremely positive for the next episodes, get hype!

Edited by Doctor MK
  • Thumbs Up 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I didn't call it, but I'm not mad; the solution was better than mine.  No gimmicks, no frills, just one of the best scenes in New Who and one of the best for the Twelfth Doctor.

I'm irked by the fact that both episodes, though, had flashbacks which proved that previously shown events had not actually happened; cutting away at suggestive moments is fine, but those extra couple of seconds in each case created a lie.  Other than that, all good stuff; it felt like a proper sci-fi epic rather than just a lot of larking about, which is all well and good now and then but I think hasn't been balanced well enough this series.  Maybe the series is finally hitting its stride, for me.  I'm certainly looking forward to next week's formal experiment.

Oh, also, that "longest month" reference near the end would seem to pretty much confirm the theory that...

Clara died for the Doctor before the start of the series, and he's living out her last days knowing that the end is near.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Absolutely loved this week's episode, even better than last week. It took things in a different, yet by no means inferior direction and - much like The Witch's Familiar - swapped out globe-trotting action for more character development and longer scenes with time to breathe. Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman were both the best they've been all series here - especially in that climactic scene - and with plenty of gags and thrills going on around them throughout the 45 minutes, I think I can safely say this was one of Series 9's best outings so far. I'd have to watch The Zygon Inversion and The Witch's Familiar back to back to decide which one I truly think is my favourite, but for this week at least, I'll ride on the wave of its success and place it in top spot in my "two-thirds of the way through the series" rankings:

  1. The Zygon Inversion
  2. The Witch's Familiar
  3. The Magician's Apprentice
  4. The Zygon Invasion
  5. Before The Flood
  6. The Woman Who Lived
  7. The Girl Who Died
  8. Under The Lake

And in terms of the two-parters, here's how I rate them so far:

  1. The Magician's Apprentice/The Witch's Familiar
  2. The Zygon Invasion/The Zygon Inversion
  3. Under The Lake/Before The Flood
  4. The Girl Who Died/The Woman Who Lived

All in all, despite some episodes not quite hitting the mark, I'd still say Series 9 has been of consistently higher quality than last year, and several of the previous years in fact. For me, this has been one of my favourite series since Series 4, and I hope the last few episodes bring it to a satisfying and triumphant conclusion.

Next week though we're back to the one-part format in Mark Gatiss' Sleep No More... here's a couple of trailers!

Surely telling people not to watch the footage is a bad thing to say in a promotional trailer...? :lol: 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I just to comment on how amazing Peter Capaldi's acting was toward the end of this week's episode was because he absolutely nailed it during The Doctor's rant and it's one of his if not his best moment as The Doctor so far!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So, um, massive spoilers ahead - but if anyone's interested, the official synopsis for Episode 11 Heaven Sent (aka "the one where it's only Peter Capaldi) has been released and it's very interesting indeed...

Trapped in a world unlike any other he has seen, the Doctor faces the greatest challenge of his many lives. One final test. And he must face it alone.

Pursued by the fearsome creature known only as the Veil, he must attempt the impossible. If he makes it through, Gallifrey is waiting…

http://blogtorwho.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/doctor-who-series-9-heaven-sent-synopsis.html

And a possible look at the Veil: http://blogtorwho.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/doctor-who-series-9-ep-11-monster.html

Boy oh boy, Series 9 is potentially going to go out with one hell of a bang...!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm pretty sure that synopsis could apply to any one of several New Who episodes, and frankly it's getting a bit tired.

Things would be a lot more exciting if the thing under threat were a newly spacefaring alien race's homeworld, menaced by the Skovox or the Sontarans, or both! We know that the Doctor will live, but when you put a sympathetic race in the crosshairs, things can get a bit more tense.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

To be honest, most of the episode synopses kinda just blend together in general these days, at least with the big episodes. Blah blah, the Doctor must face A Really Bad Thing or Make a Decision, blah blah, [usually only if it's the finale] it's THE DOCTOR'S DARKEST HOUR!!!, etc. I guess it avoids spoiling specific details, but I don't think it's too hard to do that and not give really generic descriptions.

I guess I can forgive it in this case since it seems like the whole premise of the episode works well with that kind of summary, but yeah.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I would tend to agree that that synopsis doesn't emphasise the most exciting thing about the episode, which is that this is the one which is supposed to have literally only Peter Capaldi in it and no other actors.  (I guess the monster might undermine that, though.)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Some spoilers for Face the RavenHeaven Sent and Hell Bent from this month's Doctor Who Magazine...

FACE THE RAVEN

"The Doctor and Clara's campaign to exonerate Rigsy leads them to a secret London street where alien refugees hide in plain sight."
 
Features the return of Flatline's Rigsy, The Girl Who Died's Ashildr and the Judoon. DWM also warns of a "huge shock" during the episode.
 
HEAVEN SENT/HELL BENT
"I confess: I know the Hybrid is real," the Doctor proclaims. "I know where it is, and what it is. I confess: I am afraid."
 
Features The Doctor, Clara, Ohila and the Sisterhood of Karn, and "many more"...

Steven Moffat told DWM: "Episode 11 pushes the Doctor to the brink of madness, and Episode 12 is what happens next. If the Doctor has lost his moral compass, if he's being selfish, if you really, really hacked him off, if you really got him angry and gave him nothing to fight for.. what would you end up with?

That's the 'hellbent' of the title. An angry, off-the-rails Doctor."

Steven Moffat also revealed to Blogtor last week that the finale will feature "cameos" of returning monsters but "not in a major way."

http://blogtorwho.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/doctor-who-series-9-finale-angry-doctor.html

 

  • Thumbs Up 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've been having a think about how they might be going about Clara's fate and thought of something the other day.

What if The Doctor and Clara get their way and Clara manages to continue travelling with him for years and years until she is literally and old woman that the Doctor is now caring for rather than adventuring with.

We've never had a companion in the show that hasn't left for one reason or another. I think it could be interesting to see them have to slowly deal with the fact that Clara is either going to die prematurely or live long enough to simply be unable to dart around anymore.

She could me on her final days and the Doctor is left with the choice of having to watch her die or save her by making her deal with the consequences of the immortality chip as we've seen with Ashildr.

  • Thumbs Up 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

While I feel like in some ways your theory would recap elements of Last Christmas, it's obviously very differently-executed, and we may well get something like it.  We have been warned that her departure is not necessarily what we would expect.  The Doctor having to deal with her like that would also tie in with some speculation I've seen on Face The Raven, that Clara might:

Become a murderer.

On which note, the official synopsis for the last episode in the series is out in the wild.  Although it is official, I wouldn't necessarily recommend looking for it as it seems hecka spoilery for the previous episode.  I do just have one thought, and one theory, on it, though:

"Who is the Hybrid?"

...Who, huh.  Alright, putting this out there: It's Clara.  Specifically because of her part-Dalek fate in several of her lives (her debut Oswin Oswald appearance, and a brief turn in The Witch's Familiar), and the reason the Doctor was mixed up in this before he escaped Gallifrey was because, as established in The Name Of The Doctor, one of Clara's splinters was right there on Gallifrey too and involved in his original flight from the planet.

  • Thumbs Up 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

That just about hit the spot for me as my image of an average-to-good Doctor Who episode.  It looked properly sci-fi; I liked both how well they pulled off the found-footage look and some of the twists on the genre, like what the footage was for and especially where it was being taken from (great twist, that, genuinely perfect), and the special effects, especially at the episode's close, were suitably horrifying.  The one downside that undermines the whole thing is that I fundamentally do not buy the explanation for what the monsters are.  As such, I'm kind of quietly ignoring that aspect of the whole thing...

  • Thumbs Up 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just caught up on last night's episode (I missed it going out live due to being at the Doctor Who Festival all day, which was an absolutely excellent time!). I agree that Sleep No More fell into the "average to good" category, which I must admit is something I have come to expect of all Mark Gatiss' scripts now - they're never terrible, but they never quite hit any particularly memorable highs either. This was definitely one of his darkest and creepiest contributions to the show though, and the found-footage POV approach was a novelty that worked well, although I feel had it just been filmed normally it would have been a largely forgettable episode which suggests that a lot of it might depend on style over substance for its future longevity. In a season that's largely (in my opinion) been filled with strong stories, this probably falls towards the weaker end and it won't be one of the stand-out entries when I think of Series 9, but it was still serviceable enough and helped to plug the gap nicely between the grand scale of The Zygon Invasion/The Zygon Inversion and the no-doubt epic events that await us in these final three weeks... seriously, how is the series nearly over already?!

But yeah, kudos to the special effects team for their work in this episode - that ending was disturbing, man!

Anyway, as ever, trailers for next week's episode - the finale is all but kicking off in Face the Raven and there are dark times ahead indeed...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dI2d3J2VZWQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5W4ePv6HBdk

  • Thumbs Up 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

You must read and accept our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy to continue using this website. We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.