Post for mouseover non-spoilation
Well, that was a mad episode. Jumping straight into it with our heroes back on Earth (what’s happening with the last humans on the rocket ship to Utopia?) and quickly realising the Master is none other than Mr. Harold Saxon, the new Prime Minister. And what a P.M. he is - an utter, utter nutter.
The Good -
The three leads give good solid performances although Jack is a little underused, being little more than a taxi-service for the other two.
“You too, huh?”
Martha the stunt-driver! Girl is going to kick serious ass next week.
Simm relishing a chance to chew scenery (if perhaps a little too much for my taste)
Teletubbies - the new Clangers
Jelly Babies!
Gallifrey!
The Bad -
The music when the Toclafane came pouring in seemed very out of place - they should have used double-hard Dutch speedcore if they wanted to use something modern.
The Doctor’s old-age makeup made him look like Zelda from Terrahawks
Questions -
Who are the Toclafane?
Why did Martha not take Jack with her at the end?
Speculation -
The Toclafane are the disembodied remains of all the 8-year-old Timelords who went mad and disappeared into the vortex. This is why the reveal of their nature will “break both the Doctor’s hearts” - some of his people have survived, but only the insane ones.
sigh I don’t know why I torture myself like this…I’m stuck at work for at least another six hours, my connection for viewing these Season 3 eps went tits up in the last week and I have no idea if I’ll be able to find another one, and yet here I sit frantically reading every comment/recap/whathaveyou I can find.
Glutton for punishment, that’s me.
So, let’s have it: was it good? So far, I’ve heard it was amazing and fantastic and brilliant, but I’m also hearing that there’s some dissent on OG.
Edited to add: the above post appeared magically whilst I was typing! Off to read…
Heh, my phone rang in between my two posts.
I notice I didn’t say if I liked it - yes, it was very good, but only a 4/5 given the standards set by the past few episodes.
There’s always a lot of dissent on OG when it’s a Russell T Davies script. I think some people resent the fact that it is he and not them who have the Who-universe as a personal plaything.
Hey, quick question about your spoiler, specifically
crazy TimeLords who looked into the vortex: is that something that’s introduced in this episode, or is it something from the old series
It’s introduced here. I’ll spoil it - but it’s more background than central to the plot.
There’s a flashback to Gallifrey, with the Doctor describing what happens to young Gallifreyans (in response to Martha asking how come there’s an evil Timelord). At age 8 they are taken to a portal to gaze into the Vortex. Some of them go mad and disappear into it, and some run away (The Doctor says that he ran away, and has never stopped since. Which I liked). We see the Master as a child gazing into it, and it’s clear that something bad happens to him
I have another question: why did The Master need to be Prime Minister at all to release his hordes on the planet? Why not do it from a secret location? Why go through all the charade with the Archangel Network and the subtle brainwashing of the people of the Earth?
My friends loved it, I wanted to like it but ended up hating it. It tried to be lighthearted and tense at the same time and the plot was all over the place. On top of that I hated the way it tried oh so hard to be Epic with a capital E. A major disappointment after the last four episodes.
I’m guessing that’s purely for story reasons. The Doctor brought down the previous Prime Minister, forcing this General Election, and I’m assuming they are going to lay some angst on him about that.
Time Tots?!?!?
Timelords have got to start training at some stage!
I liked it; I enjoy the big season ending episodes. The new Master was a mixed bag for me, though. When he was screwing with the Doctor he was entertaining, when he was just being “zany” he was annoying.
I liked the Master. He seems very much like the anti-Doctor; him being a general idiot is annoying and unpleasant in the same way that the Doctor being a general idiot is fun. It’s sort of like the Doctor but twisted, which I suppose is the idea.The bit at the end, when he’s revealing things and basically setting up the ending, seemed very much like how the Doctor handles the foiling of a plot - with the oddness, fast talking and so on, with of course that it was foiling the foiling.
This episode does deserve nerd points for using the word decimate correctly.
I’m surprised this has been as well-received as it has been (generally). I thought it was rather a disappointment after the highs of episodes such as ‘Blink’.
It didn’t have any internal consistency. What happened to the room full of dead cabinet ministers? How does the Master’s vaguely-defined mass hypnosis / false memory trick actually work, on everyone in the world? How does getting himself elected PM actually help his plot - he could have brought on the invasion just as easily without drawing such attention to himself. How did the Doctor find the Tardis, unless it was just another deus-ex-machina lucky guess? Why did the Master leave it somewhere where the Doctor could just happen to find it? And so on.
I thought it was sloppy, patchy, generally dissatisfying, with far too many creaky moments when things happened just because they needed to happen for the script to get from A to B, rather than being driven either by character, motive or logical extension of what had gone before.
I too thought the episode was a mess. It was a return to the chaotic, confusing style of previous years, with all the flaws that made me stop watching the show last year. Disappointed in John Simm’s character. Too much silly, not enough sinister.
Anyone else roll their eyes at the ludicrously stereotyped American teenagers watching TV? So that we would get that they were American, they were all dressed in baseball and football jerseys, while they ate pizza and fried chicken, in a Friends-type apartment festooned with Americana.
Not certain, but I think he needed access to
the flying platform. Flying platform + Tardis = paradox machine, whatever that is.
Payback?
I think it only had to work on people in the UK, since it was just to get them to vote for him.
The Doctor seems to *hear * the Tardis, when they’re running through the bowels of the ship. That it had been used to make the paradox machine/uberspeakers I would guess mean he couldn’t make it from anything else, so it had to be there (and possibly on the aircraft carrier).