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Well, another bleak episode. It’s getting pretty dark out there in the Whoverse. Some genuinely scary and enigmatic baddies this time.
I think that whatever is coming up in the Christmas specials will be caused by the Doctor meddling with one of those fixed points in history that mustn’t be meddled with.
That was a pretty grim ending.
I probably would’ve been more impressed if it would have been a regular episode, rather than the first televised Doctor Who adventure since Easter.
The “companion” was a bit hard to warm up to and the “gadget-gadget” business was annoying the first time. I was looking forward to the Doctor putting a stop to that, and he let me down.
I got pulled in at about the 39-minute mark though, and it held me to the end as it looked like the Doctor’s inherent grandiosity and burgeoning god-complex were finally going to push him over the edge, with devastating consequences for Time, the Universe, and Everything.
Except at the end we see the time-line re-establishing itself and future history apparently playing out as expected. Oh, sure, we see an omen of the Doctor’s mortality, but we’ve been seeing those for years (and we know that the Doctor will survive death anyway). What we don’t get (or at least I didn’t) is that there’s any real consequence for these particular actions of the Doctor, or that the events of this episode really amounted to much in the end. Kind of disappointing, after such a long wait.
Still a major step up from the last two specials and plenty of great individual moments. I’m looking forward to the Christmas special.
That episode should have ended three minutes earlier and it would have been a completely chilling way to lead into Tennant’s last episode. A real, “Oh my god he’s going Valeyard on us!” kind of thing. Instead it gets a reset button.
Oh well, it was an entertaining episode at least.
Wow, what an episode. It kept my attention. It was a little bit too dark for me. There’s something odd about knowing ahead of time that he dies. For us and for the character. Usually the Doctors death is unexpected. He’s helping someone and something goes wrong. He dies and regenerates. This time the Doctor knows his own future.
I did enjoy the episode. There was an obvious plot hole. The Doctor could have saved those people and took them to another time. They still would have been considered dead (on Earth) and the time line wouldn’t change. But, then we wouldn’t have a Christmas episode. LOL
My thought too - all he had to do was to take them to any time or place except Earth within a few hundred years or so of their own time.
I considered whether a companion might have prevented him from being so stupid, but then considering that Donna talked him into rescuing people at Pompeii I’m not so sure…
Totally agree with your proposed ending, though I only know of Valeyard via mentions on this board. (Any recommendations on what to watch/read?).
Though this was advertised all over the BBC as the scariest Doctor Who ever, it came nowhere near the likes of Blink, The Library episodes, those with the gas masks. I basically can’t wait for the next major series as Moffat is gonna be in charge.
Ironic that moving ahead in time would have given Adelaide Brooke the chance of living out her dream of exploring the stars.
I wasn’t convinced by The Doctor’s sudden character change at the end. It seemed weird hearing him proclaim I’m a Timelord and I can do whatever I bloody want. I answer to myself. Sheesh, I’m not into that side of him at all.
The Doctor’s humility and concern for others is what made him such an enduring character. I hope we get the humble and unassuming Doctor back after he regenerates.
I can’t think of another superhero that doesn’t run around kicking butt and calling attention to themselves. The Doctor is so powerful, and yet so sweet and low key. He’s unique.
I agree:
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it was a dark episode (and the Doctor really changed personality, which I found disconcerting)
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Gadget should have been a much better performing robot (it was 50 years in the future…)
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it wasn’t that scary (I could usually predict what would happen.) ‘Blink’ is still triumphant in that area (as in so many others)
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I liked Mia (the Geologist) much more than Captain Adelaide
The Doctor Who Confidential special has some fascinating comments from Russell T Davies and Julie Gardner. There’s too much to explain in detail. But, the best part is how much the Doctor needs a Companion to stay grounded. The Companion keeps him in check. They even showed a clip of Donna telling the Doctor that he needed a Companion. Without human interaction the Doctor could shift towards arrogance and darkness. Adelaide saw that when they returned to earth, and she took her own steps to correct the mistake.
I’m looking forward to the next special at Christmas. It’s going to be sad, but also very good.
I’d have quite liked it if the Doctor had just kept walking and not gone back for a rescue, but that would probably have edged things into Children of Earth level of bleak.
As to him going a bit darkside; well, it’s been foreshadowed throughout the series. This Doctor has always had a bit of a sinister edge about him.
I was ready to like it, but I thought it was a poorly thought out, poorly executed mess. Why did the virus mean that infected people suddenly had streams of water like leaky taps running from their sleeves? It wasn’t turning them into water, it wasn’t causing them to decompose, it wasn’t dessicating them… so what was it doing? It was never explained why water was able to break through seals and locks and chambers designed to be sufficiently strong and airtight to keep humans alive on Mars. And the ending… since when has the Tardis been able to teleport a remote group of people? It’s a Tardis, not a Transporter Room with a remote control.
The Flood Creatures looked good and were a nice new monster idea. But I think ‘design a monster that will look good in the pre-publicity’ was about as far as the creativity went on this episode.
ianzin, the TARDIS was landing in Bowie Base at the very last second and everyone still alive and unaffected was pulled aboard, I thought. And the Doctor said that the virus somehow makes water, so the script explained it even if there’s no decent reason for it to be so.
And even didn’t make sense - why lust after Earth’s water if you can create your own apparently ad infinitum? And electricity was a weapon against them but they could contact electricity themselves to short out the doors?
Ach. Don’t think too hard. It’s just Doctor Who. The walking away was the sad dark bit we were expecting - they had to throw a curve - and then then had to curve it back to make it not “all better” in the end - yeah, I was expecting him to take her to the future to meet her granddaughter in the stars, but a darker ending, even one that didn’t make a lot of sense, was a better twist.
Thing about those fixed points in time - he really can’t change the part of it that matters even if he tries. He was right - the details change but the major storyline stays the same. So he might as well try to do some good eh? He could try to change the death of his race - he just would be unable to.
Yeah, he needs a companion. What was the one on the ice planet where Donna stayed back and he went on the tour shuttle and it was attacked by the creature that took over another passenger and repeated everything until it was saying things first? Without a companion he was ineffective. Just some wise ass who thought he was oh so clever. It took someone else to step and save his ass (along with the others) by sacrificing herself. And when Donna “turned left” and wasn’t there for him in the alternate reality he died. It’s been established - without a companion he is in trouble.
Although my original comment was somewhat critical, now I find myself wanting to defend the episode. Gawd, I’m such a fanboy.
I agree that seeing the timeline reset itself robbed the ending of some of its impact. That’s probably still my chief complaint. But it wasn’t a complete reset in that the Doctor still broke his chief rule, really the only rule he has consistently respected throughout the new series. And although people have at times treated him like a god, this is the closest he has come to declaring himself one. When he says something to the effect that the laws of time are his to make and time itself is the enemy, I thought “Holy crap, he sounds like the Master.” That could make him too dangerous to live, and he realized that, even if he couldn’t fully accept it, at the end.
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Through most of the episode, the Doctor is being extremely conservative about not interfering with a fixed point in time, and not without reason. Maybe the survivors would be miserable separated from their homes and loved ones forever and wish they had died. Or maybe they would attempt to contact their families (in the Whoniverse, it is possible to communicate with the past), thereby altering the future. The conservative, rule-following Doctor did not want to take those chances. Once he decided he didn’t have to follow the rules, he wasn’t going to settle for half measures. The past and the future were his to reshape how he wanted. That’s where a human influence could have swayed him to a more moderate solution.
In the Pompeii episode, Donna actually enabled him to set history right. (Maybe he would have pushed the lever anyway, but Donna’s decision to help him do it was one of her finest moments.) Saving one family was an act of compassion. The eruption was a “fixed point,” their deaths were not.
It was his concern for others that led him to that moment. The scene in which he walks away from the base listening to the screams of the people he’s living behind and the innocent voices of the children was another great Doctor Who moment. There was no good option at that moment. If I may draw from another realm of geekdom, it reminds me of when Frodo offers Galadriel the Ring. If she takes it, she believes she could overthrow the Dark Lord forever, but she rejects it because she knows its power would corrupt her. But rejecting it means that she and her people will fade and pass away. She is able to resist the temptation, but if Valinor had been destroyed in fire and there had never been a Gandalf to share his counsel with her, would she still?
I don’t think we’re supposed to be into this megalomaniacal side of him at all. I think we’re supposed to think this is a Very Bad Thing.
As for the Doctor having been meek and humble before, I have to disagree. He has consistently (in the last four years anyway) shown a streak of arrogance and pomposity. Of course, he really is pretty amazing, but it has been what I would call a character flaw and it’s kind of satisfying in a way to see it come out as such.
The Doctor said the creatures “create water” through some sort of “fission.” That passes for a scientific explanation in this series.
High pressure jets. If you have to ask how they create high-pressure streams, it’s surprising you’ve made it this far in the series.
From the sound effect, the lighting, and the expression on the humans’ faces just before the base blew, I assumed that the Doctor (via Gadget) piloted the Tardis back to the dome and the survivors got on board and took off. Admittedly that was alot to squeeze into the final few seconds of the countdown, but that’s the way I interpreted it.
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One scene no one’s mentioned yet: when the Doctor is in the airlock or elevator or whatever and trying to explain to Adelaide why he can’t help them and he’s speaking barely above a whisper. From someone who often gets a bit screamy-shouty, it was beautifully delivered. When he finally does go completely manic, it’s darker and more threatening in the past. Later, something as mundane (in context) as using the sonic screwdriver to open an ordinary door comes across as dark and menacing. A truly masterful performance by Tennant.
Any way for us Statesy people to see this yet?
None that I can recommend within the rules of this board. I’m sure it’s been uploaded on popular video sites though.
Actually, there’s a theater in San Antonio, TX that will be showing this episode on Wednesday night @ 7:30. If you’re interested (and in SA), PM me for details.
Overall it was a decent episode, but I find myself way more interested in the trailer for the next one.
When the Master showed up, I said aloud, “Ohhhh… sweeeeeeeeeet.”
Other than that, I didn’t find it especially frightening. The scary-entity-taking-over-people-in-space thing has been done quite a few times. Remember the episode where those creatures from a sun were taking people over? Pretty much the exact same episode.
I did enjoy the last five or so minutes, though.