We watch the BTS shows and in that they said the reason for this. That’s the distance where you can visually identify someone but can’t see details.
I don’t know that anything the woman said to terrify them of Ruby would work well, so I’m mostly fine not knowing. This goes to my rant above where if they had it planned, and they usually do, maybe they could have had what was said mean something.
Lost Chord did explain that the Maestro was someone the Toymaker was keeping away from his toys and with him gone, they can all come and play.
It will be interesting to see how they add the new companion. One of the things that I thought was not great about Jodie’s tenure was all of the companions. I think it’s best with one, two at most. Hopefully no more are added.
My family just watched The Church on Ruby Road a couple of nights ago, first time my kids have seen Dr. Who ever. I’ve never been able to get into Dr. Who, despite trying several times over the years, so I skipped the episode.
They came upstairs afterwards, raving about it, and convinced me to watch it. Later they showed me the goblin song as a highlight of the episode.
Cringe.
Please tell me that low-energy, poorly-rhymed, unimaginative dreck is not emblematic for the season. I was expecting David Bowie and got Nickelback. Does it get better?
Get it right - this is a British show, so it should have read
Disney is resetting the season numbering and calling this series 1.
Or, maybe with the disnification, it switches from Series 14 to Season 1.
I’m gonna agree with most that Space Babies was meh.
My wife is a big fan of Jinkx Monsoon, so she was really really REALLY looking forward to The Devil’s Chord. I liked it a lot. We know Jinkx from her work in drag. I like her in drag, but let’s face it - most of the “acting” she does in drag is very one note. I thought she did an OUTSTANDING acting job in the episode. We’re pretty sure she’ll be showing up in (a) later episode(s).
Liked Boom, but they came perilously close to being preachy about religion and the military industrial complex.
73 yards. They landed in Wales; the faery ring note mentioned “Mad Jack”, and I’m thinking we might see a John Barrowman appearance. sigh. Nope. Still, a good Doctor Who episode, especially considering that The Doctor barely shows up in it!
It’s “The Devil’s Chord,” a very important point in the narrative.
Didn’t anyone else spot what the Doctor was playing on the piano? The single note repeated? It might have meant nothing except for the fact that a snippet from the rest of the piece (Danse Macabre) played while the Maestro was dancing.
There also seems to be little recognition of what the Beatles played to finally banish her.
I loved the episode (The devil’s chord is an actual thing in music), though I agree “73 yards” was even better.
They are on a roll of good episodes IMHO at least.
Dot and Bubble much better than previews led me to expect. And definitely had me hitting myself upside the head for not recognizing the meaning of certain things and lines earlier.
It seems like they got the silly out of the way early.
It is a Dark Mirror episode guest-starring The Doctor and Ruby and starring the passengers of Ark Ship B. Stand-alone except for confirming that the Susan Twist twist is a twist in-universe.
So the monsters ate all of the homeworld, did they do that in alphabetical order? Did they eat Zack Zwicker before moving on?
By sacrificing Ricky September Lindy may have saved herself short term, but IMHO he was the best chance for surviving long term.
I think of it not as racism, but as classism - kinda like the Hindu caste system. “You people are beneath us. We will allow you to save us from the immediate danger, but we couldn’t actually travel with you. Plus, how hard could starting a new civilization be?”
It was my initial hot take, followed by the declaration to myself that I am an idiot and the aforementioned slapping myself upside the head. And the intended message to those of us viewing who are white about how we don’t see or notice things that I suspect more viewers of color got right off.
First, NuWho is generally cast with great diversity. Huh. Not this time. Weird.
The willingness to talk to Ruby but The Doctor only with great hesitation.
The already mentioned allusion to thinking just looking the same.
The horror at Ruby and him being in the same room. He’ll be disciplined for that.
You are not as stupid as you look.
More but … that’s voodoo magic? Went way past any realm of “micro” aggressions.
Anyway a great balance in this ep. The heavy handed metaphor of being inside your social bubble, clueless about that which otherwise is right in front of your face. With the one who stepped out of his bubble getting some useful knowledge. The humor of the initial reveal that after listening to these annoying twerps prattle on all the time the Dots really began to hate them and decided to kill them all.
The lack of the expected growth arc for the main protagonist of the ep, instead increasingly revealing how horrible she is.
How disturbing the final twists were.
And the very wrenching defining this Doctor moment as he fails, desperately wanting to save these horrible racist idiots from the consequences of their own racist stupidity.
Skipping the last ten posts, because I haven’t seen the latest episode yet.
But I just rewatched “73 Yards”, as Mrs. SMV missed it last week, and I think I figured out the gestures that The Woman was making.
She is, of course, Ruby at the end of her life, and she’s recreating the gestures Ruby made then; not all of which we see.
First she lifted her arms up, to embrace The Woman, and she was transported back to the beginning on the Welsh cliffs. She sees herself and says, " I was so young"; that’s when she touches her heart. She then warns the Doctor not to step on the circle; that’s her putting her hand out to one side.
The Woman keeps repeating the gestures because she keeps reliving that moment of death.
I also think Ruby’s mom’s comment “She looks like what she looks like” means that she looks the same from close up as she does from 73 yards away; that accords with UNIT being unable to get a clear picture of her.
Still don’t know what she says to people to make them hate Ruby, though.
ETA: Mrs. SMV, who’s cleverer than me, thinks what she tells people is that Ruby lost the Doctor, that she’s the reason he’s gone.
I didn’t see it so much as racism, as ignorance. I am white, and I noticed the colour imbalance right from the start. Also that all the kids in the bubbles WERE young. Presumably they just hadn’t been exposed to anyone who wasn’t? But I saw a clear allusion being drawn to our own young people in our society, the way in which they all inhabit their social bubbles on their smart phones to the extent that they know next to nothing about other cultures or societies. And the instant horror at hearing or seeing anything that is outside their comfort zone and wanting to “cancel” it - “he’ll be disciplined for that”.
I need to watch it again. I found it highly disturbing and depressing.
Of course ignorance is often the mother of racism but let’s be clear: there is no question that the intent was the racism and to have us as viewers realize that it was likely very obvious to those among us who experience small bits of racism everyday, and that those among us who are more privileged aren’t seeing that monster even when it is right in front of our faces about to gobble us up.
Talk about “show don’t tell!” This demonstrated to me and convinced me of my own blinders better than any lecture about implicit racism ever has. Oof.
I found Space Babies and The Devil’s Chord to be far too silly, frankly, although Jinkx Monsoon was a lot of fun. Also, was that Anita Dobson (a.k.a. Mrs Flood) as one of the tea ladies at Abbey Road? And was the advertising sign the Doctor was standing next to on the rooftop significant (given RTD’s previous Bad Wolf graffiti)?
Boom - the Macguffin Mine was just a little too contrived to help with suspension of disbelief, but the set-up of the military-industrial complex as a potential Big Bad was promising, and the fact that the day isn’t saved by the Doctor in the end was a nice twist. Good character writing all around, I will admit.
73 Yards - a clever story and I’m happy with Doctor-lite plots, but count me among those feeling a little let down by the ending - not so much the mysterious words the figure said (there’s nothing that would improve on not knowing) but the whole reveal of who the figure was felt forced, and I’m not convinced the fairy ring thing made sense. Really good apart from the last five minutes.
Dot and Bubble - At last a proper DW episode. The betrayal twist really caught me off-guard (I mean, who didn’t end up liking Ricky September?) and the sheer sense of entitlement and moral vacuum among the rich kids was a bigger horror than the Giant Doodlebug Monsters were. And the Doctor is right - a bunch of pampered-from-birth brats who can barely walk without assistance and whine about how two hours of work a day “chaps their fingers” ain’t gonna make it in the wild.
This is one of the best social commentary episodes from RTD since Planet of the Ood gave us an extended metaphor for Wifi access. And dammit, I wanted more Ricky September. Which is another sign it was a good episode. But I didn’t quite get where the monsters came from or why they were adhering to The List. In a lot of the cases the monsters came to the people rather than them being walked into the monsters.
On the last good episodes with other Doctors: Whittaker peaked in her second episode with Ghost Monument (and Bradley Walsh elevated a lot of weaker material throughout). And Capaldi’s Doctor had a couple of excellent ones, although sadly they were both twinned with very weak episodes. Heaven Sent was brilliantly written and presented; Hell Bent was a chaotic mess. The Zygon Invasion was clumsy and dumb, but redeemed by The Zygon Inversion.
