Doctor Who

[Celestia]

Gonna make a bet here that this is gonna be straight up trolling and it's not actually important. Alternatively, it is a big spoiler, but it's something that makes literally no sense out of context and nobody will understand it until later.

Either way, uh.....okay, I guess. Curious to see how many people avoid watching the trailer, let alone the huge spoiler.

[Salamander]

I'm starting to get the impression that it's something Moffat genuinely didn't want to spoil, but marketing insisted, and the in-trailer spoiler warning was a compromise.  The BBC have form on this; I remember a time when Moffat teased, maybe a year in advance, a twist at the end of one of his episodes which nobody would guess, but we'll never know if that was the case or not because the episode was Heaven Sent and the BBC gave the twist away in the synopsis.

[Big Panda]

What was the twist in Heaven Sent meant to be?

[Salamander]

Spoiler

He ends up on Gallifrey.

To be honest, I think people would definitely have guessed it, but if you just put it right there in the synopsis then all suspense and possibility of ambiguity dissolves.

[Big Panda]

John Simm's returning as the Master!

...has a multi-Master story, or any story where a past version of the Master has come back, ever happened on TV before?

(I know the latter has happened in other media)

[PickleBrows]

2 minutes ago, Ernest-Panda said:

John Simm's returning as the Master!

...has a multi-Master story, or any story where a past version of the Master has come back, ever happened on TV before?

(I know the latter has happened in other media)

Was literally half way through typing the news on this! 

It hasn't happened in a televised story yet no.

It looks like we'll at the very least be getting a proper explanation for the latest regeneration but hopefully he'll actively be around as part of the plot too. I can't see Simm hanging around long-term so I expect he will indeed remain a previous incarnation who happens to be showing up for a while rather than there being some sort of sudden revelation about Missy that puts him back in the driving seat.

It'll be interesting to see how the chemistry between Simm's Master and Missy & 12 plays out.

[Big Panda]

Wasn't the whole point of his story in End of Time that he was dying? I'd have assumed that's exactly what happened after the story ended, causing his regeneration.

[PickleBrows]

29 minutes ago, Ernest-Panda said:

Wasn't the whole point of his story in End of Time that he was dying? I'd have assumed that's exactly what happened after the story ended, causing his regeneration.

I definitely think there'd have to be more to the story than that if they're going to bother bringing it up.

As far as I can tell / remember it wasn't exactly "dying" so much as his resurrection being botched so his body wasn't able to stabilise properly which...yeah that'd have killed him eventually anyway.

We don't really know where the master's at with regenerations. He clearly had at least one left in him to go from Yana to Harold Saxon but there's no evidence that he was capable of another following that. Even if he had regenerations still to use, the botched resurrection in EoT might have negated his ability to trigger the process on his own.

[Salamander]

Funnily enough, this is one of the rumours that was going around for what the big trailer spoiler could be.  If it's already been busted... well, that was silly.  (Edit: Apparently, yes, this was literally it.  Wow, that mattered!)

Fun news, though!  It feels really weird for a Tennant-era character to suddenly pop up in the Capaldi era (it's been six years!), but that I think is very much part of why this will be interesting; it almost feels like a crossover.  I assume this is going to be more or less his regeneration story, which, as noted above, is a knotty problem; in The End Of Time it does seem as if the Master cannot regenerate in the resurrected form he'd taken, but his weird skeletal lightning form was very much tailored to the Tenth Doctor's regeneration story and I don't see them revisiting it.  It's always possible for the Master to cheat the process somehow; he was last seen entering Gallifrey, after all.  Thinking about it, it's quite likely he forced Rassilon to regenerate into the form the latter was seen in in Hell Bent, so maybe he was able to threaten his way off Gallifrey in exchange for a new regeneration cycle or something.

It's sounding like a heck of a final season for Capaldi.

[The Tenth Doctor]

Very excited to see John Simm return. I'll admit, a lot of this series has turned me off but this news has literally roped me back in. We better hear the drums in the soundtrack again

[ZERO_ninja]

Well on the one had the worst Master is coming back (well okay there was Eric Roberts, but Simm is a close second). On the other hand it lets the show finally do multi-Master story so somewhat conflicted, but overall positive. I think I'll likely find Simm's Master more palatable when I'm not stuck with him as the incumbent Master. Plus a multi-Master story opens up a lot of opportunities that I'm excited for.

[Big Panda]

The new series is off to a pretty decent start. I've warmed to Bill already, and they weren't kidding when they said she "asks questions nobody else asks".

[ZERO_ninja]

A very disjointed and messy episode, that's more keen to snapshot what the series is about than it is to do anything cohesive. That said the episode still manages to be overall engaging and fun, Bill is much better than she came across in trailers (though not without her awful moments here and there), Nardole continues to be great and a lot of the small touches throughout the episode were very nice.

I think it would have been a much stronger episode if they'd put more time into making you feel a connection between Bill and Heather but hey ho it was overall enjoyable and as long as the series hits its usual highs in later episodes I'll be happy with it as an opener, and it definitely teased some interesting mysteries for the series going forward.
7/10

[ZERO_ninja]

Well this is the episode of the season I had least anticipation for so I'm glad to get it out of the way early. Turns out to be better than In the Forest of the Night, but that's about as low a bar as can be set IMO. The Doctor and Bill have a good dynamic and I liked the episodes sparse visual nature. Unfortunately it's kinda uninterestingly slow in a lot of places. Part of me would like to believe it was to match the tone to the episode being so visually sparse and empty, but ItFotN had the exact same feel to it without any justification so I find it hard to put faith in that.

The whole mood badges were an idea that held a lot of potential and wasn't even attempted to be used interestingly. I liked the sci-fi of it and in places the mood worked for me, but it just didn't really maintain interest or have much to it. The mystery of how this all happened was easily guessable from the start and the resolution is really weak. I'm not wholly negative about it and it was much better than I was expecting but it's definitely a weaker ep, hopefully it's the weakest of s10.
5/10 (Would have been a 6 with a better ending.)

[Salamander]

For various reasons, I've only just seen the first two episodes.  The Pilot I thought was rather good; there was something very fresh about it, that felt very different from a lot of past stories and companion introductions.  I think it's probably the fact that the Doctor is more or less retired at the start of the episode, and he and Bill actually meet before there's a threat and an adventure to be had - but the general trappings of the episode, too, felt unusual.  Ditto Smile, actually, which really benefited from such fantastic location filming; as for the plot itself, I liked the world-building, but the trade-off was that it took longer for the plot to get going.  The design of the Emojibots, too, I thought was visually very successful.

[Big Panda]

Can we all agree the racist punch was the single greatest moment in this series?

[Salamander]

Interesting to see a balance between not shying away from the representation of historical racism and not letting it define the story; there was quite a bit going on beneath the surface for what could have been just an episode about a monster under the Thames that eats people.

[ZERO_ninja]

Good episode made great by really strong character work and great dialogue. I love the dynamic Bill and the Doctor have throughout the episode and while it's not raising new moral questions about the Doctor the ones it does raise it handles very well and gives Bill a very convincing reaction to a lot of what he does.

The main plot was also nothing new but fun and engaging. 8/10

[Patticus]

I am genuinely surprised by how utterly not shit Bill is turning out to be. Far and away a better companion than Clara ever was.

The plot wasn't too complicated at all, hell this series in general has a simpler feeling to it. I'm finding it more enjoyable as a result.

Quick question though: When did the Doctor vow to stick around the vault?

[Salamander]

7 minutes ago, Patticus said:

I am genuinely surprised by how utterly not shit Bill is turning out to be. Far and away a better companion than Clara ever was.

I look back on Clara now and feel that, somehow, every single Clara splinter or doppelganger was played as a more interesting character than the core Clara herself.  Oh well!

7 minutes ago, Patticus said:

Quick question though: When did the Doctor vow to stick around the vault?

Off-screen.  Which is another way of saying that it's all a big mystery.

[Big Panda]

This bit made me laugh too

 

[Big Panda]

I have no idea how THIS slipped under the radar (if it's true).

[Tylinos]

46 minutes ago, Ernest-Panda said:

I have no idea how THIS slipped under the radar (if it's true).

While I'd love it if this turns out to be true, since David Bradley did a fantastic job as Hartnell in the documentary, it really has to be taken with a huge grain of salt, considering this is coming from The Sun.

If it is true, though, how the heck did they learn the bit about the eyes?  I can understand finding out Bradley's in it, but learning a random detail about the regeneration scene is...weird.  Not impossible, just weird.

[Big Panda]

It was also reported by Yahoo, for what it's worth.

[ZERO_ninja]

It was a rumour on Gallifrey Base a couple months ago, and it's worth noting that the Sun have been known to rumour lift from there before.