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[Folly]

Episode 5: Dot and Bubble
The community seems to have concluded that this episode is about racism. And anyone who fails to recognize the racism, is part of the problem.
I just don't see it. Lindy clearly explains that her issue is with social class, and I just don't see any reason to read further into it than that.

Episode 6: Rogue
...but how did the Cosplaying Owls in the past watch a TV show from centuries later?

Episode 7: The Legend of Ruby Sunday
Every time The Doctor shows up at UNIT, like half of their people die horribly. And yet the next time they are elated to see him again?
The Doctor never previously acknowledged Susan Twist in any way, and yet now suddenly she is a big problem that needs to be researched? That needed better buildup.
So the Toymaker is now part of a very generic pantheon, and we've immediately moved on to the biggest baddest and most boring God of them all. I find this development disappointing.
Other than that, loved all the mysteries in this episode. Though it did leave a lot of loose ends to be tied up in the finale.

[Starver]

I've been hoarding up my own thoughts on Dot And Bubble, and onwards (I don't know about elsewhere). In short, though:

Spoiler: Mild/obscure up to possibly fairly major spoilers for DAB, R, tLoRS, though prior to applying this Spoiler tag I tried to skirt around things... (click to show/hide)

Dot And Bubble: It's into "Doctor Lite/Companion Lite" territory. It's almost a "those other guys" episode, which I think you could occasionally do with (in one extreme there's Babylon 5's A View From The Gallery, and the whovian Love And Monsters or Blink are sort of precursors), although with a whole "Asshole Victims" society which the Doctor/companion don't appreciate (and never fully realise, as they never get to know about Ricky September/Coombes). Could be a commentary on the "You've got a problem. I'll solve your problem. Problem solved. Bye!" aspect of a Doctor's (non-arcline) stories.  Not that the "we don't have leaders but, if we did, I'd be them" guy (Brian Cavendish? ....something like that) must have had a similar 'rebellious' nature to Coombes but with the attitudinal 'suck' of Lindi Pepper-Bean (good job she was given/adopted a double-barreled surname?), or he wouldn't have been around by the end (possibly waiting[1]) to have found his way into the 'escape route'.

It's got shades of "You can't win them all", which is generally rare in a (resolved) Who story, but with the added nuance that we actually know something that the Doctor doesn't.

[1] Possibly even complicit? If we ever revisit this scenario, I could see that being important.


Rogue: It's not unknown for random whovian races (beyond the Time Lords, the Daleks, other major villain races... enough to get them gathered together for The Pandorica Opens) and agencies (Cpt Jack's lot) to have one or other degree of time-travel capabilities. I think (but can't be certain, without rewatching) that the Family Of Blood lot must have had the capability to chase Ten around the timelines. This 'family of cosplay' would just need a desirable destination, not a time-hopping pursuit capability.  And Rogue himself seemed to have an unspoken 'tardis console' aesthetic to his ship's controls (which he'd perhaps need, if he was futuretech human chasing aliens wherever they decided to go).

((I can't imagine I'm the only one to think that "Rogue is the new Captain Jack", with future plot-hooks left dangling... and this time the Doctor definitely does dance, possibly in every use of that term...))


The Legend Of Ruby Sunday: well, as it's a two-parter-arc-heavy episode, I'm not sure where to go with this yet. Considerably darker (more Lovecraftian) than just about any other threat. Puts the fundemental threats of The Greatest Show In The Galaxy in the shade, and makes the denizen of The Impossible Planet really not that much of a danger, in contrast. Too much telegraphing of the mancunian guard, IMO (also, why do they think they need one..? the whole point being that this is (supposedly) a one-way visualisation thing). Also clumsy with ?Harriet? 'H'. The "not quite introduced" part made it clear that she was more than mere crowd-candy, but wasn't being introduced properly, like the CSO and even the 'first victim', and flagged up that she was either going to be 'named-redshirt' or... perhaps something else.

As to why the Doctor suddenly snaps to the conclusion that he needs help here and lands (does not materialise... is that just as a courtesy-call matter... give them a bit of a heads up?) in Unit HQ... twice might be a coincidence (he's seen repeated faces before), thrice might be something to consider, but then Doctor and Runy have together racked up more than a handful. But... plot.

More to be said, but not just right now.

[Folly]

Episode 8: Empire of Death

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

All of the supernatural things surrounding Ruby and her mother were entirely the result of everyone wanting them to be supernatural. What? Even if that is how it works(it isn't), when did anyone wish for them to be supernatural, ever?
A fully functional TARDIS can be summoned from nothing more than "Hopes and Dreams". Seriously?!
The real TARDIS can be controlled by a plastic whistle. Since when? Also, why does it have a death-laser that incinerates everyone inside?!
Death + More Death = Life. Again, utter nonsense. But even if we suspend disbelief to accept it working this way, how did they specifically revive the people killed by Sutekh without reviving every other dead person across time and space?
Sutekh defeated by dropping him in the Void. Isn't that exactly how this whole mess started?!

Yeah, I strongly disliked almost everything about this finale.

[Starver]

((...this reply has been sitting on a half-forgotten browser tab, for a week, due to the original message slightly too predating for any realistic reply by me/regular viewers. But I've also learnt a bit more, between the time my reply-proper was started and now that I actually remembered to finish what I'd then begun... ))

Episode 8: Empire of Death


Yeah, I strongly disliked almost everything about this finale.

I certainly felt it lacked a lot of narrative satisfaction
As a very minor aspect of this, even as a two-episode story (with the prior), there were leaps in plot that suggest additional screenplay elements cut for runtime reasons. But that's not a big thing, really.

Spoiler: First, direct response to the above points ((and slightly added to)) (click to show/hide)

There was already 'coincidence', such that attracted the infantophage skyship goblins, and the "don't revisit the moment" rule that the Doctor inexplicably found to be a deal-breaker (he could have gone back and landed around the next corner; after all, Nine freely did that (with impetuous Rose, but this time he had no worry about the Companion creating the paradox and sunmoning the chronovores). If there's no actual mystery left (and in this case it seems it might indeed be "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar"), it's not for want of misunderstandings all round.

(And Mrs Flood, chanelling a Scary Poppins[1], may yet be the instigator of some of this. Hard to tell where she lies on the Harbinger/Puppet to Big-Bad scale; with also possible outcomes including Anti-Villain With A Heart Of Jerk.)

We have supernatural (or 'supranatural') leakages all the way through this Giggle-onwards story-arc. So, yes, apparently expectation can do wonders.

The whistle was the incarnation of the mini-multi-Tardis's rather mixed up mechanics, I think. We've had vital portable bits of equipment disgorged from the Tardis console before (at least one Sonic!), though this was sort-of-behind-a-eort-of-Roundel, which also seems to be a call-back (and not just to post-Giggle duplication-mallet).... Or just as much a no-frills 'plain old signal' as Ten's door-opening finger-snap.

((Postscript: I've since learnt that the whistle was even more Timey-Wimey. It was cut from the script/filming, but at the end of the episode, I think at some point when the 'dog leashing' was largely accomplished, the Doctor then (was to have) opened a his-Tardis floor-hatch (something like where he got the duplicator-mallet) and dropped the whistle in... and through to the Memory-Tardis, at the point of time it dropped out of the ceiling-hatch... Paradoxen, eh? ))

Destroying the Destroyer (in the Time Vortex, moreover, which can't be good for the old dog's 'historic permanence', now that he isn't just hitching a ride like Captain Jack) seems almost the only way to undo Reality Changing damage.

And last time, wasn't he just injected into the vortex? Which is noted to not be Instant Death for Sufficiently Beyond-Mortal Beings, though certainly intended to 'not be nice', and easy to be lost in (if you're not a slecific creature lf the vortex). This time, he was dragged against its walls. At the very least, to cut into the 'wrong realities' of all the Dusted Eras that his cross-time influence had caused to be, but the transitioning between reality and vortex tends to be the most harmful bit, and certainly not something to be attempted without actual time-tech 'protections' (which doubtless were dialled up in order to take Sutekh there, then dialled back in order to do the damage once in it).



[1] Mary Poppins, but reversed in many ways... 'always' there rather seen to arrive out of nowhere, asked to take care of a parent rather than offering to take care of children, not exactly being helpful/doing-what's-needed when ledt to it, seems to have affinity to snow, not fine (if windy) weather, and doing so wearing a white fluffy outfit (holding a white brolly - that doesn't talk!) rather than mostly plain black (with largely 'audience avatar', if habituated with magic, umbrella)... Got to stop there, but there are plenty of other inverted characteristics...

Holes in the logic, maybe. Certainly thin places. Which can be patched up with a layer or two of carefully woven handwavium stuck on with your everyday narrative adhesive! 

My complaint is a bit different...

Spoiler: ...my complaint (click to show/hide)

In a bit of an inversion to Murder, Arson And Jaywalking, we had the Toymaster, all-powerful diety-level of 'fun and games', and Maestro, all-powerful diety/whatever of 'musicality'. Who were heralds/subordinates/spearheads/children of... the God Of Death? Yes, the former were entirely deadly, but 'fun deadly'. Escalation to 'plain old just deadly' was a narrative leap, to me. Better to have reached Deadly Death from Deadly Vices (a being who exploits Pride, another who exploits Greed, etc) than Deadly Muses. Or at least subverted (and Deadly) Virtues, like Prudence, Hope, Charity... (...Bissonomy, Tubso).

Arguably, the edge-of-universe copy-Donna and copy-Doctor (Wide Blue Yonder) were more fitting Minor Level Bosses for how it turned out, but they seem to have been just incidental villainry that were at 'best' a side-effect reality-leakage and precursor to the arrival of the Giggle and onwards.

This dissonance is what I've yet to quite understand/appreciate.

(Meanwhile, Mrs Flood is a Different Scope Villain, which we'll only discover for sure (it seems) this Christmas. Her utility of Fourth Wall interaction seems unrelated to the Deity-level interference. Not that I'm totally happy with that even happening, for any of them, but true judgement will have to await the reveal. With a couple of really obvious ideas already in mind, of course.)

[Starver]

Double post!

Just thought I'd mark the new season (first episode broadcast Saturday).


Having also seen the "making of" companion episode, interested to note that (apart from maybe some exploding elements) those robots were pretty much entirely practical "man in a suit" effects. Which I think worked quite well.

Of course we've got a Companion that... frankly... takes the rather realistic approach that (despite everything that happened to her) she'd rather just go back home. The usual 'glamour' of The Doctor didn't seem to persuade her, like it usually does[1]. She quite rightly calls him out on any such assumptions that it might. (Not the first 'initial refusal', of course. Rose might have not, without Mickey saying the wrong thing and reducing her will to stay away. Donna was headstrong enough to have to take time to come back)

But, given she already has had problems with the way that was heading, I feel it was a bit too readily accepted by her that what could easily have been a space-time equivalent of "oh no, the car has broken down... I can't take you home at the moment, and you'll have to stay with me for a little while longer while I sort that out" was genuine. I'm sure it could have done with just a little bit more plot development (or at least inter-character dialogue) to have made that work better for me. But, for all I know, the script originally did but got cut down for time and lost that original hint of what only I might seek.


I know it's not the first instance of this cropping up, but the Timecop-like matter-exclusion principle seemed a little 'deus ex'ish. And I'm sure there are times when this should have happened, but didn't. I probably have more of a problem with this than the (acknowledged, possibly core to the whole-series story arc, yet to be revealed) issue of obviously crossed-time causalities and bootstrapping issues that this particular tale showed as in play. It seems like, ever since Silence In The Library, there's been a lot more timey-wimey acknowledgement of asynchronous interactions (ignoring the multi-doctor stories in general, only rarely were there any hint that "Spoilers!" might play a key part in how the episode unfolds).


Didn't mean to write so much as this, actually.


[1] OTOH, other companion-material individuals have been shown to have had an unsatisfying life, pre-TARDIS, or at least various long-standing questions about the universe which might or might not be part of the reason why they got mixed up with their introductory adventure in the first place. Belinda, however, is shown to be pretty much fulfilled in her job as a nurse. Martha Jones was also partly like this, but was still only a medical student so had a fairly short initial stint before 'going home', taking her experiences back with her and through into being not only qualified medically but also within the whole ephemera of Doctor-adjacent experiences that gave her the 'in' on UNIT. Contrast with Yasmin, who was obviously very unfulfilled as trainee/junior police officer, much more in line with most of the waifs'n'strays that have (at least partly consciously[2]) joined the Doctor on their various travels, being underappreciated/taken for granted.

[2] Unlike accidental/reluctant ones like Barbara and Ian right at the beginning

[Folly]

Holy Carp! This season premiere somehow managed to be even worse than the previous season finale!

There were broad stretches in this episode where every single line of dialogue and every plot device had me saying, "wait a second, that makes absolutely no sense at all!". I don't even want to try making a list, it would take all night. It's like they fired all the people in charge of Quality Assurance, and now all the people behind-the-scenes of this show are just doing their own thing without anyone trying to keep them coordinated or even ensure that they are comprehensible!

My expectations for Doctor Who are pretty low. It's supposed to be campy and fun, not hyper-realistic. I can appreciate it on that level. But still, in the past they've usually managed to maintain at least some degree of consistency and reason behind it all. Now that just seems to be gone. I'm very disappointed with the direction this is going.