And that’s totally OK, because I don’t think every episode in a season has to have a big deal arc connection.
I made the connection when Clara asked how the Architect had gotten the briefcases/boxes into the bank before the heist.
The Doctor.
Sexy takes the Doctor where he needs to be. He needed to be there for the Tellers, for the others in the heist to get their rewards, and for Clara to get back to the starting point so this time around they get where and when they aim for.
That was the one regret she needed the Doctor’s help to fix - we have no idea what else she might have done on her own.
Right. The “twist” was not such a surprise (those who did not suspect it from the first had to know when the other team members were revealed to actually still be alive) … and it doesn’t make things suddenly click into place. And again, having things that don’t make sense is fine in many eps but “a caper” is supposed to play like a game with clues that you smack yourself afterwards for not picking up on. There should be puzzle to a caper, the how it gets pulled off, the doubled double cross, the unexpected motivation, something, but … this? Rescuing a creature that liquified the brains of untold numbers of people putatively to save its mate but also just because that is what it does, to relieve a villian’s regret - while letting everyone else on the bank planet die - fails.
I liked the episode, but the time travel element made no sense no matter how you think about it.
Self consistent timeline:
Since the villain knows the doctor was there, how else would she have gotten his number, she has no reason to think he did not save the teller.(I guess you could say she did not know for sure).
Different iterations timelines:
If there was an original timeline where the villain just left the bank and the Teller and his wife to die, how the hell did she get the doctors phone number?
Good point. There are time travel sci-fi’s where something happens, and then when traveling in time the person sets things up to make sure that things will happen the same way for their past selves, but in this case for her to get the number in the first place, he would have had to have thought up the bank heist/rescue mission first, before giving her his phone number.
In the Bells of Saint John Clara gets the TARDIS phone number from a woman in a shop, and in Deep Breath she’s apparently the one who put the messages in the news paper.
But being from the future and not a time traveler, how did she get the message back to the 1800’s, unless the Doctor helped her with that too?
I like Capaldi, but I’ve been feeling for a long time that Moffat has to go. He’s great in small doses, but I feel that he Smith’s run could have been a lot better with a different show runner, and Capaldi is doing well despite Moffat.
Like I said before, Moffat has really ambitious plot arcs, but when you closely examine them, they fall apart and make no sense. Also, his horror episodes are getting less and less creepy. Time for some new blood.
Well, for once I’m against the naysayers, because I liked it.
For all the people asking about how the Doctor got the briefcases there or the time loop of the Owner calling the Doctor about a heist she knows he pulled off… wibbley-wobbly, timey-wimey.
I agree with this 100%, but I loved the episode. Does it make total sense? no, but close enough to it for DW. It once again reminded me of the best of the Tennant era. I love seeing these weird alien and future worlds. Enough of Earth, I can get that at home.
Anyone catch the memories that the Doctor narrated as the Teller drained him? (“Big scarf… bowtie… A bit embarrassing. What do you think of the new look? I was hoping for minimalism, but I think I came out with magician.”) cute self-references there…
It wasn’t bad, but it has the typical Moffat can’t get the ending right.
I was immediately thinking the Architect was the Doctor - hidden face and identity and all that, plus the Doctor agreeing to the mind wipe.
Was caught by the teleporters.
But he gives her his number so she can regret it when she’s older and call him so he can give her his telephone number? That might make sense if she didn’t know why he was there, or he hadn’t been the one to send her bank gig crashing into oblivion. Somehow it just feels wrong. Forced.
And yes, the TARDIS has been incredibly responsive this season. Taking the Doctor and Clara where they want to go, not accidentally showing up other places. Set out for Tahiti, wind up in Kalamazoo, because that’s where they need to be.
I liked it. A fun little caper with some cool temporary companions. I assumed the Doctor was also the Architect, but it didn’t bother me that it was obvious to me. It was about them figuring out why.
Was the vault TARDIS-proof? I understood him as saying that, because of the storm, he could not fly the TARDIS accurately. And why has no-one noticed that nothing in this most-secure bank was deadlocked? The sonic got them through all but the most necessary plot devices. Thought it stuck out like a sore thumb, myself.
For the same reason that US shows that come to the UK are set in London, rather than Carlisle.
Though I will point out that in The Impossible Astronaut/Day Of The Moon, the Doctor and his chums went to Utah, Washington DC, Florida, Nevada and Arizona.
Like in the previous episode where the Doctor wanted to go back to Clara’s childhood on the night she first had the dream about something under the bed, and instead they showed up in Danny (Rupert) Pink’s childhood at the orphanage? Yeah, the TARDIS is completely 100% reliable now.
I thought that was Clara’s fault—the TARDIS was telepathically linked to her, and she thought of Pink, causing it to lock onto his, rather than her, timestream.
And just as some sideline-griping, the whole Clara/Pink thing still strikes me as the most forced relationship in recent memory, almost to the point that I half expect it to be due to some sinister machinations—there seems to be absolutely no reason for either of them to have any interest in the other (well, nothing going beyond looks, nothing that makes the relationship feel organic in any way), yet here they are, basically head over heels. It feels so much like relationship-by-plot-needs that I wonder whether it’s intentional.
Other than that, and against the apparent majority, I happened to enjoy this episode—it was another one where the writers remembered that the TARDIS is not just some convenient tool to get the Doctor and Clara into whatever situation they’ll have to dig themselves out of afterwards, but actually, a goddamn time machine. Of course, there were weak points—the most secure bank in the universe, and all its rooms are connected by spacious air ducts for easy break-in?—, and the actual heist part was a bit thin, but I’m liking the new, grumpy Doctor more and more, and I thought watching the group figuring out their own plan was a really interesting gimmick.
Also, continuing the theme of call-backs to earlier episodes, this one again touches on the Doctor’s self-loathing, as in the episode with the Dream Lord, where he also only figures out that the latter is actually a version of himself due to there being only one person in the universe he could loathe that much.
Cloning of course has also played a role before, for instance with the, uh, flesh or whatever it was called, but it’s a fairly generic sci-fi staple; one could maybe also draw a connection between the Ood and the Teller, both enslaved races of prodigious telepathic powers… Anything else?
My comment wasn’t meant as a snipe at the current season. Just pointing out that the TARDIS still takes The Doctor where he needs to go, which isn’t always where he wants to be.
I really like this season. I like that Clara has become a more developed character, one that is different in tone and substance from previous Companions. I like how Calpaldi has grabbed on to the role and mad it his own, and also seems to be having fun with it (unlike my previous favorite Doctor, Eggleston, who always seemed to be working hard to play the role). I like how this season’s adventures are ranging in style and feeling instead of sticking with just one theme.
But most of all, I like how, when I’m at home watching a new episode of Doctor Who, I don’t have an Internet’s worth of thread-shitters telling me how stupid this episode is week after week, and that Stephen Moffat is The Worst Thing To Ever Happen To Television. I save that particualr fun for Monday mornings.
I didn’t take it as such. And I think the TARDIS landing where the Doctor wants to go is perfectly consistent with it taking him where he needs to be—just shows that on occasion, he gets his priorities straight.
Yes, this seems to be a particularly bad case of fanboy fatigue. Moffat impressed everyone when he arrived on Doctor Who, and he did deliver some top material, and then he maybe delivered some material that wasn’t quite up to that, and for some reason, the ‘the Mof can do no wrong’ crowd morphed into a boo-ing and hissing mob. Fact is, some of the stuff he does is good, some is great, some not so much, and some of it sucks. As it is with almost everything, no reason for all the theatrics. Me, I think most of the season so far has been pretty good, and I think it would’ve been a lot better received if nobody’d ever heard of Moffat before.
I’m sorry - I didn’t realize these threads were only for those who do not wish to be exposed to criticism of their beloved show. Perhaps that should be made clear in the thread title, for I assumed that this was a place for people with all opinions to come and discuss what they did or did not like about the most recent episodes.
If you’d like a “happy fuzzy compliments only” thread, perhaps you should try starting one.