Doctor Who Series Five: UK pace thread [edited title]

Cafe Society
201

The Doctor Who series deserves better than this. The episode felt very rushed. It would have been better as a two part. Maybe then they could have developed the characters better.

What happened to the preview scene(s)? I didn’t see the Doctor point a gun. Or that dialog he spoke about the Daleks setting a trap for him. Unless I fell asleep, that wasn’t in the show.

I lost interest when the robot scientist somehow modified the spitfires to fly in space. Yes, he had advanced knowledge, but how did he do it in only a few minutes? He would have needed several days to make modifications.

This show needs to get better soon.

202

Oh yeah, wasn’t the actor playing Churchill too fat? I’ve seen pictures of Churchill during WWII and he didn’t have three chins. He was overweight, but not that big.

203

That was really not very good. I HATED the Power Ranger Daleks. Looked ridiculous. And how do we go from “The Germans will be here in 10 minutes” to “Quick! How can we fight back?” “Well, theoretically, I have this vague idea about antigravity…” to “Spitfires in space!”?? 10 minutes, remember. 10 minutes. That was very badly done. Not to mention the physics of AIRplanes fighting in a vacuum, but whatever.

The only good part was listening to Daleks offering tea, and I have a sneaking suspicion that the whole episode was only an excuse to write those lines.

Also, what was the point of having the weepy girl in the war room? She mopes around the whole episode, until the very end, we get, “Oh, her boyfriend died.” OK. Well, thanks. That was neat.

204

Gosh, wow, that was one of the worst episodes I remember since the reboot. Not much to add to everyone else’s criticism so moving on: I think this was a bridging episode to set up a few things, the obvious ones being the return of the Daleks and Amy’s little memory lapse. I strongly suspect Professor Positron will turn up again somewhere – probably as a member of Unit or Torchwood.

On the Tardis tardiness (oh how I am resisting typing tardy Tardis tardiness but oops I’ve done it now. So far we’ve seen errors of 12 years, 2 years and one month. I’m betting the error will be bigger the closer it is to some critical date. Which is going to make it hard for the Doctor to get to whenever he needs to be and that sounds like fun.

205

The Doctor doesn’t seem too concerned the Tardis is malfunctioning. If I were Amy, I’d give up any plans about getting back in time to get married.

206

Huh. Weird, I didn’t like last week’s episode, but thought this one was kind of fun.

To each their own.

207

I understand that the phone call from Churchill isn’t that unusual. The tenth Doctor gave cell phones to his companions. They could call back to relatives on earth whenever they wanted. Somehow the phone made the necessary adjustments in time
I do wonder why the phone call was necessary. I’m pretty sure the Doctor monitors the time vortex. If a major change occurs, then he goes to investigate. My Doctor Who memory is fuzzy, but I seem to recall him saying “something in time changed” as he races off. Obviously, the Dalek’s would have shortened WWII, and there’s no telling what else they had planned. The Doctor should have seen the interference in time before the phone call. It would have been kind of cool if the Doctor answered the phone and said, “Ah, looks like there’s trouble in 1943” before Churchill said anything. It adds to the mystique of the Doctor.

208

I don’t think it’s ever worked like that.

I seem to recall, in discussion once with Whovian friends of mine, that the reason the Doctor always seems to turn up at locations that, despite the appearance of randomised choices, are in need of his help, is because the TARDIS takes him there.

For example, if he aims for “Edinburgh, January 15th 2003” and the TARDIS sees a potential problem occurring at Edinburgh Castle on January 19th 2002, it will take him to that specific date and location instead.

I think this was just idle fanboy speculation, but it was consistent with how the plots seemed to unfold.

209

Normally he might detect certain types of temporal changes, but with the whole crack in space time theme and Who not knowing about it, and Amy not remembering Daleks, and the Tardis wildly missing its time reentries, it’s probably safe to say not much is reliably normal right now.

210

That was a preview for the whole series, not just this episode.

211

Doctor Who Confidential had an extended interview with this episodes writer Mark Gatiss. He researched The Blitz and visited the Churchill Museum & Cabinet War Rooms. They put a lot of effort into getting the look and feel of the The Blitz correct. They filmed the war room in an old bases operations bunker. It almost makes me feel bad for not liking the episode. It seems like they set a great stage and forgot the plot. I’ll rewatch the episode and maybe I’ll appreciate it more.

I hope next week is a lot better.

212

Oh come on, that was great!

I loved Amy’s knowing what being human is really about. I loved the professor’s performance, and, although it was rather rushed and the script a bit forced in places, I thought we got a great performance from Matt Smith, whose Doctor continues to fill out his personality very well. His frustration with the Dalek “soldiers,” his curtness with Amy when she didn’t believe him, the sudden aloneness of no one else - even his companion - understanding what was going on, his rapport with Churchill and his encouragement of the war against the Nazis: I thought it all worked to show off the Doctor’s new personality very well.

And on top of that, there was so much cleverness. Daleks with little black-out hoods on their lights. “HE DOES NOT REQUIRE TEA!” The Progenitor device needing the Doctor’s testimony to recognize RTD’s human-bastardized Daleks, in fact the whole Dalek plot with Bracewell. “All right, it was a Jammie Dodger, but I was promised tea!”

Yes, it could easily have been a two-parter, but that’s a bad thing? I like my Doctor Who bursting with ideas. And how can we have people complaining that it was too rushed and that it was boring at the same time? I thought it was very well paced for all that they crammed into the episode. You could feel the tension of the war effort, the claustrophobia of the secret bunker, the threat of the Nazis, all very palpably after just a few short scenes.

The rainbow Daleks do look a bit daft. I really liked RTD’s redesign. But I think I understand that the Troughton-era Daleks looked like that, even though we couldn’t tell in B&W, and I understand that this is a whole new era for Who and everything has to be given a new look. I’m happy with the new Doctor, new Tardis, and new companion. I can deal with a crappy new theme, crappy new titles, and even crappy looking Daleks. They’ve always been big pepper pots anyway.

Spitfires in space? Yes it stretched credulity and was basically silly. Still . . . Spitfires in space! . . . fighting Daleks! Lightsabers in Star Wars are also silly, as are TIE fighters and Imperial Walkers, but they come covered in so much awesome sauce, who cares!

I won’t defend the defusing of Bracewell by covering him in schmaltz, except to note again that the performances really were good given the script. It was a lame idea and the chestplate looked really stupid and unconvincing (especially the way they kept his shirt buttoned at the top to avoid showing the seam at his neck).

It wasn’t a perfect episode, and it shows all the marks of the new team still getting settled into the show, but overall I give it very good marks. And I can’t wait to see the next one!

213

I don’t understand the question. Why do you think “boring” and “rushed” are mutually exclusive? An episode that is well-paced with a certain rhythm to the narrative is far more engaging than one that seems sort of randomly slapped together. There should be a steady, logical build to the climax, and the climax should be meaningful and exciting. Instead, the episode felt like it was trying to get as much pesky exposition and character stuff out of the way as soon as possible so that the Doctor could chase the Daleks into space and…um…wave a cookie at them until something quite stupid happens. Then he’s faced with a dilemma that would never be a dilemma at all for the Doctor, and then we get apparently the big climatic scene where…some robot dude convinces himself he’s a human. A scene and a character that actually should have worked. We’ve seen things like that before in the RTD-era, but this time, it didn’t work at all and I’m really not sure why.

I think what it comes down to is that there was barely any mystery. The Doctor shows up somewhere, is shocked to discover things are different from what he expects, then sets about solving the mystery in a variety of clever or dangerous ways, until he finds the culprit and either defeats it using his brilliance (or somebody sacrifices themselves or something). Here, we have the Doctor showing up, noticing the Daleks, knowing something is wrong, and then shouting and raving like a mad men until all of his shouting triggers something. Then the big scary Daleks decide “Oh, we won’t attack Earth we’ll just let Hitler do it.” What? No. No. That’s not how Daleks roll. I’m not saying every episode should be entirely formulaic, but solving they mystery and defeating the villain is the pleasure of Doctor Who. The good episodes all follow the same basic pattern. It’s fine to have bridge or filler episodes in the season, but the trick is to disguise them so nobody think “Oh, this ep is mostly filler.”

214

I’ve enjoyed the new series up until this latest episode. I can honestly say it’s one of the worst in recent memory (IMO). I agree that it was both rushed and boring. The only interesting parts were the bits that might develop throughout the series; The Doctor always being late and Amy not remembering the Daleks.

From the completely stereotypical pilots to the ham-fisted ‘human’ bomb, the buffoon that was Churchill and the over-the-top ‘angry’ Doctor there wasn’t a single character that interested me.

I’m glad it was a single-parter. It’ll make it easier to forget.

215

Have not seen it yet; here in the American Colony we are about two weeks behind.

How does this compare to the transcendental beauty and eloquent storytelling of “Daleks Take Manhatten”??? It sounds like they have a lot in common.

216

I didn’t think it was as bad as that. No terrible attempts at New York accents, for one thing.

217

Ok, I was a bit stupid there. Of course something can be both rushed and boring. The comments seemed to be using “boring” as meaning nothing happened and the pace was too slow, but it could just mean there was nothing engaging.

I’ll try watching it again later with a more critical eye. I’ll admit I’m an unabashed fanboy when it comes to Doctor Who, and since almost every episode is mixed bag for me, I’ve learned to focus on the positive and ignore a lot of what doesn’t work. Some of the worst episodes IMO contain some of my favorite scenes, and some of the best episodes have absolute groaners that would be unforgivable in a different show.

But I do wonder if we just have different tastes. I tend not to like the formula of the Doctor finding something “wrong” and trying to fix it and really appreciate episodes that vary from that.

I loved all the usual favorites - The Family of Blood 2-parter, The Doctor Dances 2-parter, Blink. I also really liked Love and Monsters, the one with the girl (Moaning Myrtle) who turned into a paving stone (but still had a sex life!) I think a lot of people hated that. The Waters of Mars blew me away, and I don’t remember what folks here thought of it.

I didn’t care for the one with the Face of Boe dying and the guy from Father Ted in a cat suit, the one with the Racnoss (though I loved Donna), the Titanic Christmas episode, or the second part of the 2-parter where the Master took over the Earth (The Sound of Drums - It had a great set up though!). Oh, and the one on the bus in the desert. And The Next Doctor. Most of the Christmas specials were pretty bad IMO.

218

I am neither, and this was my favourite ep of the series so far. Spitfires! In Space! I don’t care that it’s completelely illogical, I’ve never felt so patriotic! And I’m stealing KBO (Keep Buggering On) for my new catchphrase.

Although when the first three colour-coded-for-your-convenience Daleks came out and lined up next to each other, it did rather remind me of the debate the other night…

219

Nope, sorry, watched it again, and you’re all wrong. Except Jennyrocity. This really is a great episode. Might be my favorite of the three as well.

Usually I can see what people liked or didn’t like in an episode even if I disagree, but having watched it again with an eye to critique, I’m even more flummoxed by the reaction here. It seemed to me that it got almost everything right. Top tier.

220

Did nobody but me admire the fabulous set dressing going along with the absolutely note perfect “Let’s beat those Jerries, chaps!” contemporaneous propaganda film acting? Perfect, just perfect. Also, SPITFIRES IN SPACE, what is wrong with you people that you don’t get a huge giggle out of SPITFIRES IN SPACE, with all the equally note perfect WWII flying ace radio chatter? Spot on, it was great.

I hate Daleks. I have always hated Daleks, I will always hate Daleks and I don’t hate them any less when they’re apparently manufactured by Ikea. Daleks suck. That being said, WWII cammy-and-flag-stickers Daleks serving tea is about as good as it’s possible to get with the fucking things.

And who didn’t slide off their seat juuuuuust a little bit at Amy Pond insinuating “Haven’t ye ever fancied someone ye know ye shouldn’t?” RAWR. Voof.

Still not crazy about the fact that the Doctor appears to be wearing a latex facial appliance all the time, one that looks very fake in natural light even though it’s actually just his face, and they really, REALLY need to take care about getting too close up on his rubbery, slobbery liver lips as he’s waxing annoyed, it’s a little stomach churning. Other than that he’s okay, I’m sure he’ll grow on me.