Doctor Who – Series 5 – Broadcast Discussion (NO SPOILERS)

[Jonathan Capps]

As the old thread is getting dangerously close to paginating and we’re now into the broadcast of series 5, let’s start afresh.

I think the best rules for this thread would be to ban all known spoilers for future episodes and keep it to discussion of episodes that have already aired in the UK, information released through official channels and good old fashioned speculation.

So, GO.

Topic

[Ben Paddon]

In episode four the Doctor gets eaten by a Grue oh shiiiiiiiiit

[Andrew]

Interesting Moffat interview:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00rlx6k/Front_Row_30_03_2010/

Totally agree on his take on a black and/or female Doctor. And fascinated by the talk of an episode that ‘had’ to be sent to RTD in advance.

[Plastic Percy]

In reply to the question what Prisoner Zero was originally arrested for, seeing as all he did for most of the episode was stand around snarling, he was probably arrested for loitering.

[TheLeen]

German blog about the English language explains custard by the means of Who:

http://49suns.de/2010-04-07/englisch-lernen-mit-tv-serien-28-custard

[Alex]

The official site has some clips from episode 2 up. Looks interesting, a few nice lines and the explanation of why Amy doesn?t explode like confidence when floating in space in the clip seen in the trailers. Also appears we will have an introduction to each episode from the Moff which is nice.

[Andrew]

> the explanation of why Amy doesn?t explode like confidence when floating in space

http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/970603.html

[pfm]

> And fascinated by the talk of an episode that ?had? to be sent to RTD in advance.

It’s got to be the one that features the Cybus Cybermen. Of course, RTD didn’t create the Cybermen (‘what???’ I hear you scream) but maybe the use of the Cybus model, presumably coming from the alt-universe that RTD created for series 2, was sent to be okayed by him, if only out of courtesy…? Either that or there’s some connection to Torchwood that RTD needed to look at to make sure everything’s kept in line for the U.S. series he’s working on.

Does anyone else love Moffat’s frankness in interviews? And his bordering on ‘fuck you’ attitude?? You get the feeling he could slag off the RTD era in a big way if he felt like it. Heck, he makes no bones about how shit he thinks a lot of the classic series is, though IMO that makes him much more of a true fan than if he was like ‘oh everything’s brilliant’. His gloves-off, rose-tinted-specs off way of thinking’s gonna bring us some excellent television, that’s for sure.

[Pete Part Three]

>Does anyone else love Moffat?s frankness in interviews? And his bordering on ?fuck you? attitude??

I wouldn’t say I love it, but it’s very noticeable. RTD seemed a lot more comfortable at the PR side of things.

[Alex]

http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/970603.html

It’s a fair cop.

[Ben Paddon]

Interesting Moffat interview:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00rlx6k/Front_Row_30_03_2010/

Totally agree on his take on a black and/or female Doctor. And fascinated by the talk of an episode that ?had? to be sent to RTD in advance.

Is there a transcription or a YouTube link of this vid somewhere? I can’t access it from here.

[Ben Paddon]

Wait, no. Got it working at work with some jiggery-pokery.

[Danny Stephenson]

I can’t hear the voice of the host of that radio clip without thinking of this Not the Nine O’Clock News Sketch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npEwra5344s

[Tarka Dal]

Re-watching 11th Hour for the 4th or 5th time it struck me that Amy’s wardrobe appears to be painted a Tardis-esque blue, maybe a shade or two lighter, but surely a deliberate touch.

It’s early days, but that really was five out of five stuff wasn’t it?

[Rad]

As well as the Front Row interview, there was a programme on Good Friday about Douglas Adams’ time as script editor, ‘The Doctor and Douglas’. I’m not sure about it. The justification for the programme’s assertion that Douglas Adams ‘changed Doctor Who forever’ is based on the fact that when RTD gave Julie Gardener some Doctor Who vids to watch she really enjoyed ‘City of Death’ and it is fast and funny like the new Who. Not that much new and probably not strong enough for a national radio slot but some of you might enjoy it – hurry, in 12 hours it’s gone.

[pfm]

> but that really was five out of five stuff wasn?t it?

Yep I would give it a 5/5, though it took three viewings to come to that conclusion (the last time in HD and not surrounded by people who are still wondering why Tennant’s not in it anymore (despite every one of them seeing him regenerate on New Year’s Day ffs…), which helped a lot).

Beans are evil. Bad, bad beans!

[Ben Paddon]

I hate yoghurt. it’s just stuff with bits in.

[Tanya Jones]

I suppose soup can be described the same way…

[Ben Paddon]

Beans too, probably.

[Seb Patrick]

WELL THAT WAS A BIT GOOD WASN’T IT

[ori-STUDFARM]

I think Matt Smith has just become my new favourite Doctor…even more so than Tom Baker, my childhood Doctor!!

[hummingbird]

I think I already like him more than Tennant.

I’m still trying to figure out who it is that Smith’s Doctor reminds me of ….

[Carlito]

George McFly?

[Seb Patrick]

>I?m still trying to figure out who it is that Smith?s Doctor reminds me of ?.

The Doctor.

[Tarka Dal]

Smart-Arse.

I see elements of McCoy, Troughton and Davidson.

[ChrisM]

That was good, although I found ‘the Queen’s working classy jive shtick corny, but I suppose it was meant to be. The smilers were great creepy monsters.

My virgin box (oo-er) is a bit irritating at the moment though It keeps pausing and jumping and there’s a clicking sound and the volume will suddenly reduce. It’s not enough to ruin the plotting but it gets a bit irritating after a while… I hope it rectifies soon so I can watch a repeat without that nonsense.

[hummingbird]

> I see elements of McCoy, Troughton and Davidson.

Davidson, definitely. But there’s someone else (non-Who) that he strongly reminds me of.
It’ll come to me eventually.

[ChrisM]

Oh and I caught the crack at the end. I missed it last time. (Mainly because it appeared on a screen with another graph line on it, if I remember correctly.)

[Carlito]

> Davidson, definitely. But there?s someone else (non-Who) that he strongly reminds me of.
It?ll come to me eventually.

Saw someone online comparing him to Basil Fawlty :S

[Seb Patrick]

>Smart-Arse.

It wasn’t even that, really. Just that what Smith manages to do – astonishingly – is embody so many interpretations of the character. More than perhaps anyone before him, it’s not that he’s “the Eleventh Doctor” (as Moffat says, there aren’t eleven Doctors, there’s one Doctor with eleven faces) he’s just… the Doctor. Absolutely and entirely. It’s remarkable.

[pfm]

> It?s remarkable

This. ‘The Beast Below’ was essentially the 4th episode shot (I think…) and he has the character so solidly down it’s brilliant to watch. Surely stuff like the little jump over the bench is enough to endear him to everyone watching, and he really can get away with that amount of playfulness without it seeming off.

Matt’s casting is a stroke of genius only matched by Karen’s. Even when covered in sick (maybe especially so, which could be worrying…) I think I could happily watch her forever. Somehow she’s playing everything at just the right level, feisty and a little bit wacky without being remotely annoying. Moffat helps, obviously. I’m glad he hasn’t forced too much shock and awe reactions for Amy, it would feel so much like we were going through the motions. I found last week’s ‘any passing remarks? I’ve heard them all.’ line pretty interesting, it’s as though Moffat was making a point of not repeating the whole schtick, not insulting his viewers’ intelligence.

[Pete Part Three]

Last week was kind of a remake of Smith and Jones, this week we had Gridlock.

It didn’t really work for me. Seemed underwritten with lots of stuff unanswered. There were some genuinely interesting ideas, such as Amy’s message to herself…but the details just seemed a bit sketchy (why did they start torturing the whale if it was completely unnecessary? where are the other countries if they’re not on whale-powered ships?). The resolution to the moral dilemma was just…moving the goal-posts. And the Smilers (who looked very promising) did, um, not much.

Sophie Okonedo also annoyed the shit out of me.

[Ben Paddon]

Lose Pete. Thanks.

[ChrisM]

>why did they start torturing the whale if it was completely unnecessary?

They made an assumption. What’s that old addage about the word assume? (I think I read it is a Stephen King book once.)

Actually Amy explained this at the end of the episode. There they are in trouble, nothing to power their ship, and along comes a huge space-faring creature. They don’t speak the same language. They probably don’t even know the whale was sentient. They don’t know that it came to help them, they just see an opportunity and use it at the poor creature’s expense.

>where are the other countries if they’re not on whale-powered ships

I’m assuming (this time rightly I think) they’re flying the space-ways with great big engines. There was plenty of tubing etc on the ship which indicated it was intended to be connected to such a thing, and I don’t think it’s a stretch to think that far in the future the engine systems had been developed. As to why the Britain ship didn’t… maybe they just ran out of resources at that point, or the original system was faulty. True, that part was never explained, but I don’t think it really matters for this current story. This is a generation ship and that happened centuries ago.

>The resolution to the moral dilemma was just…moving the goal-posts.

I quite liked that. It was all about making hard choices and although Amy’s turned out to be right… it was certainly a chance to take.

>And the Smilers (who looked very promising) did, um, not much.

I think they did enough. They were creepy and essentially the ship’s government enforcers.

>Sophie Okonedo also annoyed the shit out of me.

I found her quite sassy to start with… but she did irritate me a bit later on too. She should have left out the ‘Landon’ pantomime spiel I think.

[Pete Part Three]

>Actually Amy explained this at the end of the episode. There they are in trouble, nothing to power their ship, and along comes a huge space-faring creature. They don’t speak the same language. They probably don’t even know the whale was sentient. They don’t know that it came to help them, they just see an opportunity and use it at the poor creature’s expense.

Yeah, I got this from the episode. Just don’t think it holds up to much scrutiny. I’ll excuse the fact that they wouldn’t know once they got into a routine of torturing the whale over hundreds of years, but not when they first built the starship on it. They never thought to test the amount of pain they need to give the whale to ensure it keeps moving? (And they must have, otherwise they wouldn’t describe it as “torture’).

And is this truth REALLY that bad that it would cause most people to erase the fact from their memory? Considering what humans have done to numerous other species, torturing one whale to ensure the survival of the Brits is actually pretty minor.

One other thing, the final shot showed the whale clearly visible from under the starship. Wouldn’t this have been visible from the TARDIS where they were floating around it earlier?

>Lose Pete. Thanks.

Brilliant.

[pfm]

> One other thing, the final shot showed the whale clearly visible from under the starship. Wouldn’t this have been visible from the TARDIS where they were floating around it earlier?

They were floating way above the ship so couldn’t see it. Though come on this is just storytelling convenience. Surely the Tardis scanner could have shown the whale from the get go, it’s just the kind of thing you need to forget about if you want to be able to enjoy an episode of television.

[Tarka Dal]

Moffar’s comment somewhere about the show being fairytale > Sci-Fi probably explains this away (not just for his era). If you want a cold, hard fast based drama then you’re watching the wrong show.

[Alex]

Yeah, I got this from the episode. Just don’t think it holds up to much scrutiny.

And of course everything else in the show like ‘the magic box that can travel time and space and is bigger on the inside than on the outside’ is the stuff of impenetrable logic…

Of all the things one could take issue with in the story concept, the off screen events that led to the whale being tortured seem pretty low on the list.

[Pete Part Three]

>And of course everything else in the show like ‘the magic box that can travel time and space and is bigger on the inside than on the outside’ is the stuff of impenetrable logic…

Ah, that old argument which apparently prevents the logic of any Doctor Who story from being scrutinized. 5/5 it is, then.

>If you want a cold, hard fast based drama then you’re watching the wrong show.

No, I’m tuning in to watch a show written by the guy who wrote one of the best pieces of drama I’ve seen in the last ten years. If he produces an episode that seems rather uninspired, I’m going to say so. I’m not going to unconditionally love it just because he wrote it, rather than RTD. Eleventh Hour was good, this was average at best.

[pfm]

> No, I’m tuning in to watch a show written by the guy who wrote one of the best pieces of drama I’ve seen in the last ten years.

You don’t mean that ropey mess Blink, do you?

[Ben Paddon]

Lose performingmonkey. Thanks.

[Rad]

Agree with Pete. I assumed when the episode ended the way it did that I hadn’t understood something but no, the episode doesn’t make that sense. Matt Smith’s great though so it’s probably a 3/5 for me. I’ll never watch it again though.

[Ben Paddon]

It’s internally consistent. Everything that occurs in the episode makes sense. Granted, it could’ve used an extra 15 minutes or so to breathe, but it’s another one of those Doctor Who episodes where if you’re not paying attention it won’t feel complete.

[Tarka Dal]

> Ah, that old argument which apparently prevents the logic of any Doctor Who story from being scrutinized. 5/5 it is, then.

Well there’s little point in trying to have any kind of discussion if that’s the maturity of the response is there?

> No, I’m tuning in to watch a show written by the guy who wrote one of the best pieces of drama I’ve seen in the last ten years. If he produces an episode that seems rather uninspired, I’m going to say so.

Then you should expect those who enjoyed it to call you out.

> I’m not going to unconditionally love it just because he wrote it, rather than RTD.

For a minute there I thought you were being serious.

[Pete Part Three]

>Well there’s little point in trying to have any kind of discussion if that’s the maturity of the response is there?

There’s little point in having any kind of discussion if someone says “X hasn’t made sense for the last 40 years, so why should Y in this episode?”

>Then you should expect those who enjoyed it to call you out.

Still waiting for someone to. You know, other than saying “You’re wrong”, “You’re watching the wrong show if you didn’t like this”, “You didn’t pay attention” and “Doctor Who isn’t supposed to make sense”.

I’m in complete agreement that Matt Smith is fantastic, but I haven’t actually seen anyone compliment this episode beyond that.

[genericnerdyusername]

I enjoyed it and so did my Dad :) That’s all I’m looking for really, something to enjoy. I don’t need to scrutinize the science or logic if it’s going to affect my enjoyment of the episode. I’m just not that sort of person. I just like the episode rather a lot.

[Seb Patrick]

It’s much easier to express criticism – particularly if it’s nit-picking – than it is to go into detail about why you particularly liked something, though.

It’s a damning indictment of the negativity inherent in the internet that the burden of proof always lies with those who liked something, rather than those that find fault.

And people have replied to some of your specific complaints, it’s just that you don’t agree with them that the explanations/justifications are adequate. That’s your problem, not theirs. Don’t try and claim the high ground by saying “Oh, no-one’s given a proper response to the points I raised”, because some have.

I haven’t actually seen anyone compliment this episode beyond that.

Do you read the internet with your eyes closed?

[Pete Part Three]

>It’s much easier to express criticism – particularly if it’s nit-picking – than it is to go into detail about why you particularly liked something, though.

I would disagree that it’s nitpicking to say that a central character annoyed the shit out me, the smilers (who were promoted as being integral to this episode) were underused and the finale was flawed because it made little sense. I don’t think any of them are trivial complaints.

If I’d criticised the CGI, Smith’s bowtie or the size of the TARDIS windows, that would be nitpicking. But the scope of this episode was HUGE, and it just seemed underwritten with lots of holes.

>Do you read the internet with your eyes closed?

No, I just don’t spend my time scouring the web for Doctor Who reviews. This thread is as far as I’ve ventured so far with regards to The Beast Below. I take it from that that this has been greeted with the same boundless enthusiasm that prompted me to come on here and sing the praises of Blink or Midnight after their initial airings.

[steven87gill]

Looking forward to next weeks ep, Matt Smith’s ‘i am the Doctor, and you are the daleks!’ line sounds corny (i’m sure the audio of that line was leaked the other year and it got people worried) though i’m guessing it might be done for comedy effect, like the ‘who the man’ line in TEH. Out of context that line would’ve sounded worrying as well.

[Ben Paddon]

I would disagree that it’s nitpicking to say that a central character annoyed the shit out me, the smilers (who were promoted as being integral to this episode) were underused…

I don’t recall the Smilers ever being promoted as “integral”. They popped up in the 3D trailer, certainly, but I’d hardly consider that “integral”.

…and the finale was flawed because it made little sense. I don’t think any of them are trivial complaints.

It made tons of sense. If you don’t think it made sense then I argue, quite rightly I feel, that you weren’t paying any bloody attention.

[Pete Part Three]

It was precisely the fact that I was paying bloody attention that it didn’t make any sense. In fact, the more you think about it, the more questions it poses which will, likely, remain unanswered…much like RTD and The End of Time.

Stuff such as the age of Liz 10 (hundreds of years old) is dismissed very quickly but, when you consider it beyond face value, it poses a question; the public must know that she is hundreds of years old. She, however, can’t even know what year it is. Maybe I missed the bit where it was explained because I wasn’t paying attention.

The Smilers were, indeed, in the trailer. They were also in the synopsis. But, ignoring that, they were an important part of the setup and posed as a threat…and then we found out that they were actually working to protect the secret. That’s completely fine. But there’s no resolution to this and they aren’t seen beyond the big reveal.

[Author]

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