Russell Two Davies

[Nick R]

Apparently, today there was some news about a change to Doctor Who’s production staff, in some obscure behind-the-scenes role. I don’t know if anyone else heard about it?

Topic

[Dave]

I wonder if the Doctor was always such a big Kylie fan, or only after Voyage Of The Damned.

[Ian Symes]

Oh yeah. It’s like how Blue Peter and Eastenders are both TV programmes within the Doctor Who universe, and yet are full of people with the same faces as former companions.

[Flap Jack]

The EastEnders clip we see in Army of Ghosts is actually from a docudrama. Dimensions in Time confirms that EastEnders and Doctor Who are in the same universe.

[Ben Saunders]

I wonder if the Doctor was always such a big Kylie fan, or only after Voyage Of The Damned.

“It’s never too late, as a wise person once said… Kylie, I think!” – The Idiot’s Lantern (2006, Series 2)

[Dave]

Maybe S Triad is going to be a regenerated Astrid. All the clues are there.

[Ben Saunders]

Fucking hell. (In a good way).

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Well I enjoyed that, but that was a hell of a lot of nothing. Very very part 1 of 2. Aside from “there’s this big classic monster” around now (which I only vaguely understand the importance of as like most viewers haven’t seen all of classic era), which is only the last couple of minutes, how much of that episode would need to be rewatched? Or would benefit from being rewatched?

Most of it was Doctor and Ruby stood on the spot in front of that big fancy new screen they have. 

I find Lenny Rush generally annoying.

Was cool to see Rose back and a little mention of “her uncle”.

Thats all I have

[Dave]

Yeah, I thought this episode did well in building tension to the final reveal, but that’s pretty much all it was. There wasn’t really much story, it all seemed more concerned with self-satisfied outmanoeuvring of fan theories and revelling in its own red herrings (and even then I know quite a few people had guessed the surprise villain).

It wasn’t a bad episode, but it also didn’t land quite as strongly as other finale-setup episodes have done in the past. Partly because this villain just doesn’t quite have the cachet of Daleks or Cybermen or the Master in terms of being an iconic Who villain.

[Ben Saunders]

Sure plotwise it’s mostly setup, but there was a lot of really great character stuff going on. Ruby putting herself through her trauma and getting so close to an answer but not close enough, the Doctor talking about Susan and how he abandoned her because his lifestyle is too dangerous for her, Mel snapping him out of his self-pity and into action. Ncuti and Millie both knocked it out the park this episode, Ncuti’s sells the terror of Sutekh’s return very well and they both manage to make me really feel their relationship despite its lack of development over a paltry number of episodes. I thought the glare that Kate gave the Doctor after her security guard died was interesting, and in fact I think this is the most I’ve liked Kate Stewart since Death in Heaven. I was actually starting to get tired of seeing her so often by 73 Yards but I’m back on her side now.

I also found Lenny Rush generally annoying, and it is a bit sudden and rushed that the Doctor is just like “yes, because of an anagram and shared nomenclature I believe this lady to be my granddaughter. Let me use all of your extremely expensive equipment and highly trained staff.”

Pyramids of Mars is widely regarded as one of the best Classic Who serials ever, not only by fans but by most lists and articles etc, so I would think if you’re a Classic guy at all you’re most likely aware of it. Of all the Classic Who pulls that haven’t been done yet they have left, this is probably the biggest they could do, and it ties in with the Toymaker et al and the salt at the edge of the universe shenanagins very well.

maybe the Monk or the Rani are more well-known but they aren’t really ancient evil gods

[Flap Jack]

Yeah, it was an enjoyable first part, but it’ll live or die on the merits of the second part.

– I don’t care if it would be “too obvious”, I will be so annoyed if they don’t actually bring back Carole Ann Ford as Susan. This is a character who was a critical part of the show’s foundations. It’s baffling that we’ve had to wait 14 series and nearly 20 years into the revival even to get to a tease of her return. They clearly regretted not bringing back the Brig while Nicholas Courtney was still alive – hence them including his spin off daughter in like 83 episodes since – so it would be nice if they didn’t repeat this mistake with Susan. Guess we’ll see.

– It seems pretty silly that UNIT would be closely monitoring anyone who just happens to have a name that is an anagram of a Doctor-related word (surely there are tons of completely innocent randos that applies to?), but it’s even sillier for them to act smug about spotting “S. Triad = TARDIS” and completely miss that they employed someone called “Harriet Arbinger”. Is there some cosmic law that the harbingers of these extra-dimensional beings have to disguise themselves using dumb and obvious puns?

– Morris says “we got the wrong anagram”, but “Sue Tech” isn’t an anagram, it’s a homophone. I guess he can’t have been a child prodigy in English.

– I hope they actually give Rose something to do in the next ep, but at least they gave Mel something to do after she didn’t really get much in The Giggle.

– It’s cool, don’t get me wrong, but there really was no reason for them to fly into UNIT instead of just materialising.

– I liked Mrs. Flood before, but she better fucking give Cherry her cup of tea. Having secret knowledge of a demon returning to bring about an age of darkness is no excuse for elder neglect.

– The Doctor saying that he has a granddaughter but he doesn’t have children “yet” is bizarre. At this point I think Russell just throws in these details to mess with us, but if true it means The Doctor has that whole Arthur Dent Agrajag thing where he knows it’s impossible for him to die (and not only that, but he’s known it for the whole show), which is pretty lame.

– Pretty funny just in concept for them to walk through VHS footage, but I especially enjoyed the way they visually conveyed it. Any chance we could get UNIT to upscale the US Red Dwarf pilot, when they’re not too busy looking through the phone book for weird names?

[cwickham]

I genuinely thought Gabriel Woolf had died a few years ago, I think I must have mixed him up with Stephen Thorne

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

> This is a character who was a critical part of the show’s foundations. It’s baffling that we’ve had to wait 14 series and nearly 20 years into the revival even to get to a tease of her return

There was a bit of a tease of Susan a couple of times in Moffat’s run, people speculated particularly around Capaldi’s run.  He had a photo of her and River on his desk in series 10 too.

Flapjack typing out all the anagrams and stuff has made me realise how batshit conspiracy theory the whole thing actually is. It’s the sort of nonsense you see where people are convinced there’s hidden meaning in everything.  And here we have Unit and The Doctor actively engaged in it, and turning out to be right.

[Dave]

It’s cool, don’t get me wrong, but there really was no reason for them to fly into UNIT instead of just materialising.

I think there have previously been indications that UNIT locations are Tardis-proof, they’ve had to fly there physically in earlier episodes too.

[Dave]

Flapjack typing out all the anagrams and stuff has made me realise how batshit conspiracy theory the whole thing actually is. It’s the sort of nonsense you see where people are convinced there’s hidden meaning in everything.  And here we have Unit and The Doctor actively engaged in it, and turning out to be right.

It’s become a game with the viewers, even since the early RTD days there have been cryptic teases and clues for the viewers as to events in the finale – stuff like Bad Wolf and Torchwood and even specific name/wordplay stuff like YANA (which was what this felt like it was trying to recreate with the Sue/Tech scene).

All the stuff about S Triad felt like a (more meta than ever) cheeky acknowledgement that of course it’s an anagram of Tardis but also an early reveal that it was a red herring all along and the twist was going to be something else.

[Ben Saunders]

I’m honestly giving them a little bit of a pass on the plot contrivances/conspiracies etc because this entire series is full of coincidences like that, salt at the edge of the universe and all that. How I never noticed Rose and Ruby are both shades of red is crazy to me.

I thought they were landing the TARDIS like that because it’s acting up, rumour seems to be there was a cut scene before what we got that would have made it make more sense.

[Flap Jack]

There was a bit of a tease of Susan a couple of times in Moffat’s run, people speculated particularly around Capaldi’s run.  He had a photo of her and River on his desk in series 10 too.

Right, but I would class that and other instances as Easter eggs rather than teases for the character’s return.

The very first mention of Susan by name in the whole revived series was in The Devil’s Chord, and the only time previous that The Doctor referenced having a granddaughter was in The Rings of Akhaten. Prior to this series, the most prominent Susan in the revival was a trans horse.

It was a cool horse though, I can’t deny.

—

All the stuff about S Triad felt like a (more meta than ever) cheeky
acknowledgement that of course it’s an anagram of Tardis but also an
early reveal that it was a red herring all along and the twist was going
to be something else.

Oh, definitely. It works on that more meta level. I’d just prefer RTD to focus on making stories that work on their own terms rather than burdening them with promotional gimmicks.

I actually think it would have been better if instead of calling the character “Susan Triad” they just went all out and called her “Susan Foreman”. In the episode as is, it seemed like way too much of a stretch for The Doctor to jump to the granddaughter conclusion (even as the other Susan Twists he’s encountered cement the idea that she must be to do with him somehow).

If UNIT hadn’t been actively investigating S Tech already, and The Doctor said to them “hey, can you help me find out who this woman is? I keep seeing her everywhere” and Kate responded “… isn’t that Susan Foreman?”, that’s an instant WTF moment. It would get them to the same place without the stupid anagram stuff, while still leaving enough doubt (because obviously the name is still common enough for it to be a coincidence).

Either way this kind of mind game seems beneath a god of death, but at least with “Foreman” it would be direct bait rather than something The Doctor was unlikely to even pick up on.

“Haha, did you think I was family?”

“Family? What are you… oh, you mean because your name is Susan, like my granddaughter? I thought that was just a coincidence. I met a horse called Susan once, no connection there either.”

—

By the way – light mode users might like to know that in dark mode, Quinn’s comment was irrefutable:

[Rudolph]

I wonder where the 14th Doctor is during all of this, given he’s supposed to be retired and living in West London now. You’d have thought an ancient god popping up to end all life on Earth would be worth dropping him a text.

In fact, where was he during 73 Yards? He’d have been pretty bloody useful to Ruby then.

[srmcd1]

I figure his TARDIS knows to whisk him and Donna away on a nice carefree misadventure whenever things get dicey on Earth. She always takes him where he needs to go, after all,

[Dave]

I wonder where the 14th Doctor is during all of this, given he’s supposed to be retired and living in West London now. You’d have thought an ancient god popping up to end all life on Earth would be worth dropping him a text.

The Doctor asks Rose “how’s your uncle” when he sees her, so they’re at least acknowledging that he’s still around.

[Flap Jack]

I took “How’s your mum? How’s your uncle?” to be a deliberate snub of her dad, grandma and great grandad.

For 73 Yards, I don’t think we got confirmation that Ruby knows about Fourteen? I know The Doctor alluded to the bigeneration in The Devil’s Chord but he didn’t exactly explain it.

[Ben Saunders]

Okay, so admittedly I’m hazy on some of the details of what just went down, but in terms of emotion, they knocked it out of the park. It hit hard, and it hit me in places I didn’t expect to get hit. This is what New Who is all about, really, to me. Echoes of Series 5/6 when I was previously most invested in the show. I love the character of the Doctor, and I love how it’s explored. Despite knowing her for such a short time, I like Ruby and I like Millie Gibson, both she and Gatwa absolutely sell their characters emotions, and the scene in the cafe was a delight.

Ultimately, New Who is a character drama, and that supercedes the science fantasy trappings of the format. We get to have such spectacle, but at the core is a story of loss and love.

[Ben Saunders]

Big spoiler warning…

I take issue with the Doctor’s stance of no murder under any circumstances for no reason whatsoever, and have done previously in episodes like Thin Ice etc. But Doctor… this is the as-close-as-can-be literal God of Death, who is destroying the universe with absolutely no remorse, and will do it again, gleefuly. You are nowhere NEAR “just as bad as him” if you kill one bastard of a deity to save the rest of the entirety of time and space. Get a grip, man. You’ve killed before. You’ve done genocides. What’s your fucking problem? /hj

[Ridley]

It snowed and Sutekh needed something to grit the universe with.

[Dave]

I thought it was a pretty terrible finale if I’m honest. All of RTD’s worst traits – a nonsense story with no real logic or meaning to it, flat resolutions that didn’t really resolve anything, and pretty much all of the teases and setups from earlier in the season came to nothing in the end (who are Ruby’s parents? Some randoms. Who is Mrs Flood? No clue. What was 73 Yards really all about? Fuck knows). A big disappointment. 

Plus I thought Gatwa was unusually flat in this one – a lot of shouting of lines with no real depth or sincerity to any of it. It all felt a bit stage school.

It’s a shame as it retrospectively colours the first half of the story too – that was all waffley setup for the cliffhanger, this is all waffley treading-water until the resolution – and with only eight episodes this season it means a quarter of it has been wasted on a story that feels like a whole lot of nothing.

[Dave]

I like Ruby and I like Millie Gibson,

I will agree with this though. I think she’s been really good and I hope she has a meaningful role to play in the next season.

[Dave]

Also, I don’t think the resolution they give to the mystery of Ruby’s parents is particularly well thought-out or positive, especially for anyone watching who might be in a similar situation (raised by foster parents). It creates the impression that finding your birth parents and reconnecting with them is the be-all and end-all, and is something that will turn out as a fairytale happy ending, which I’m not sure is a thoughtful message to be sending.

[Dave]

The one thing I found genuinely interesting about it was the (intended? unintended?) allegory for covid, a wave of death sweeping the earth, guilt over being the one who inadvertently brought death to others, everyone isolated and separated, the eradication of truth etc. – but that was maybe me reading into it too much.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Okay, so admittedly I’m hazy on some of the details of what just went down, but in terms of emotion, they knocked it out of the park. It hit hard, and it hit me in places I didn’t expect to get hit. This is what New Who is all about, really, to me. Echoes of Series 5/6 when I was previously most invested in the show. I love the character of the Doctor, and I love how it’s explored. Despite knowing her for such a short time, I like Ruby and I like Millie Gibson, both she and Gatwa absolutely sell their characters emotions, and the scene in the cafe was a delight.

Ultimately, New Who is a character drama, and that supercedes the science fantasy trappings of the format. We get to have such spectacle, but at the core is a story of loss and love.

Agree with all this.

Flat resolutions that didn’t really resolve anything, and pretty much all of the teases and setups from earlier in the season came to nothing in the end (who are Ruby’s parents? Some randoms. Who is Mrs Flood? No clue. What was 73 Yards really all about? Fuck knows). A big disappointment. 

For those at the cinema we got a little intro from Millie thanking everyone for having followed the series and promising that nearly all our questions would be answered. Yeah like fuck were they. 

I’m getting a bit tired of universes being entirely destroyed and basically wished back into existence. 

At one point I thought they would tie it into the Flux as it really felt that’s what was happening here. 

I kinda liked that Ruby’s mum was really “ordinary”. Ruby (and then The Doctor) had built her up to be this huge unknown. And she’s just this unfortunate woman who had a kid at 15. That’s realistic. 

But this is Doctor Who. Everything g about the entire series has been magical and fantastical and they’ve been teasing that for Ruby. And she’s nothing more than an unwanted teen pregnancy. Boring!

The fact two episodes of 8 have been wasted “resolving” all this, especially as last week as we all said was nothing but set up for this is real con.

its a shame. I’ve really enjoyed this series. I’ve really enjoyed watching Ncuti and Millie. The Doctor is this big, brilliant, emotional thing and Ncuti is so perfect for bringing fun and life and heartache back to the character. 

If they’d dropped the Millie story and just made her an ordinary companion absolutely nothing would have changed for the other 6 episodes and we could have had at least one other fun adventure before Sutekh and the end of the Universe. Again!

[Dave]

I’m getting a bit tired of universes being entirely destroyed and basically wished back into existence. 

It is a regular thing for Doctor Who I guess, because each finale has to go so big that they have no choice now but to have big universe-ending threats all the time. But something more low-key would make a nice change.

It did make me laugh how very Thanos all this was, though. A big evil godlike figure who seeks universal death by turning everyone into dust definitely felt over-familiar, and we know RTD is no stranger to cribbing from comics and comicbook movies.

This was almost like the drab, dull first half of Avengers Endgame without any of the fun triumphant moments and satisfying payoffs of the second half.

[Stephen Abootman]

Also, I don’t think the resolution they give to the mystery of Ruby’s parents is particularly well thought-out or positive, especially for anyone watching who might be in a similar situation (raised by foster parents). It creates the impression that finding your birth parents and reconnecting with them is the be-all and end-all, and is something that will turn out as a fairytale happy ending, which I’m not sure is a thoughtful message to be sending.

Yeah, I was at least expecting a “I/you already have a mum” sort of line at some point. Left a little bit of a bad taste in the mouth tbh.

[Dave]

I’m sure it wasn’t intentional, but it felt like Ruby’s foster mother was pretty peeved with the whole thing in general really.

[Ben Saunders]

All valid criticisms tbh, I think it absolutely makes sense for Ruby’s character to be happy finding her birth mother, and Carla really genuinely loves Ruby and supports her and wants her to be happy (and has dealt with ~18 years of her obsession with it). I can see the message of it all being a bit iffy. The Doctor does say they cheated by using a time machine and wonders if that’s fair, but Ruby continuing to use the phrase “real mum” instead of “birth mother” does feel a bit dismissive. Like I get it, but a better message would probably be that she had a “real mum” all along, and it was Carla.

Pointing at a sign to name your baby is really stupid, what the hell was that all about.

This finale was basically Sutekh doing Flux again, but this time the show actually managed to mine emotions and performances out of it, instead of just droll exposition dumping and lore fuckery, ignoring important elements and just locking away the answers you don’t have in a little watch you’ll never see again.

Ncuti does cry a lot doesn’t he. Like I know it’s fine and good to cry etc but man.

[Flap Jack]

lol, I feel so conflicted about this finale. I was swept up in the emotions and the spectacle of it, but I can’t deny the actual plotting and mystery resolution was a confusing and often unsatisfactory mess. It’s like I experienced both Ben and Dave’s reactions simultaneously.

Up front though, I want to make a formal apology to Morris. I rewatched the last episode first (because I saw it in the cinema) and realised it was The Doctor who made the moronic “wrong anagram” comment, not him. Sorry, dude.

– As others have said, The Doctor crying about killing Sutekh – a being who only exists to murder everyone in the universe – felt very forced. It was silly enough for him to get so emotional about the Bogeyman, but this is like if he reacted the same way after getting confirmation the Bogeyman had already killed and eaten literally all of the Space Babies.

– A bit frustrating to have the Mrs. Flood mystery can kicked down the road, but I knew it would be that way as soon as she got dusted. I was amused to learn that one of the Flood theories is that she’s Clara, which is apparently just because her outfit is very similar to one that Clara wore, and I was obviously dismissive of it, but then she called The Doctor a “clever boy” and I was like “NO FUCKING WAY”.

– The idea of Ruby’s bio mum not being anyone notable or special is a good enough idea for a subversion, but if you’re going to make that the conclusion to a whole series of build up, you’ve got to tread carefully. RTD did not tread carefully. Sutekh becoming randomly obsessed with a woman just because he couldn’t see her face or learn her name (which I guess is the only time that’s ever happened to him, somehow?) is stupid. Bio mum dramatically pointing at a sign to name her child (when she wasn’t even really being captured on camera) instead of just leaving a name tag is stupid, especially when The Doctor and the TARDIS get in the way and she acts like she doesn’t even see them. Also, hints that time was changing around the event and altering The Doctor’s memory turned out to be meaningless. What good is a mystery if some of the clues aren’t just red herrings but outright lies?

– I really am tired of this story arc approach to series. At least in the RTD1 era the story arcs were mostly just memetic words or phrases cropping up, but RTD2 seems to have adopted the Moffat approach of setting it up so that if the finale is a let down it retrospectively tarnishes many of the stories before it, when they were meant to be standalone. Doctor Who is at its strongest with stories that stand on their own, and the strongest standalone stories are often multi-parters, yet it seems like modern showrunners are allergic to both.

– It’s interesting how once you make the stakes high enough, they effectively become low again. When Kate died, I was like “oh shit, they’re going there!”, but when everyone else died it became “oh. OK, so this is all definitely getting undone and none of it matters. Great.”

– I don’t think it makes any sense plot wise, but I did enjoy the Memory TARDIS and the implicit canonising of the Tales of the TARDIS series. I wasn’t expecting it, and it was neat.

– Rose was such a letdown. I thought surely if she did nothing in the last episode, she would have a big role to play in this one? NOPE, she was immediately put into the “temporarily dead” zone along with everyone else. Brilliant. Why even bother having her here. (Also, in the TLoRS rewatch, I caught how silly it was for Rose to be “essential staff” when she’s effectively an apprentice they have doing busywork like investigating shoplifting. They may have said “essential staff” but what they meant was “staff who have names and lines in the script”.)

– I feel vindicated by the fact that the many Susan Twists and the naming of them was totally pointless in the end, just 100% a false tease for the audience and nothing else. Sure, Sutekh wanted “agents” to spread his death plague throughout time (though I’m not sure how an ambulance and a portrait do that), that’s fine, but there was no reason for them all to be copies of the same woman, no reason to tie anything in to the Triad software announcement event thing, and no benefit to leaving The Doctor clues or making him think Susan Triad is his granddaughter. Sutekh was just randomly jerking around I guess. Ironically it was actually self-defeating for him to do this, because Sutekh’s secondary goal was finding out who Ruby’s mum is, and he wanted The Doctor to find it out for him, yet he actively undermined the investigation by making this Susan Triad red herring. Idiot.

– The bigeneration is feeling more and more short sighted all the time. Not only is Fourteen completely ignored when an apocalyptic crisis is happening in London (including a bit where The Doctor actively wants to be in 2 places at once), but Sutekh possessing the TARDIS has serious implications for Fourteen’s duplicate TARDIS that aren’t even mentioned.

– When The Doctor was listing off planets that had been restored back to life at the end, for a second I was thinking he would say “Gallifrey” as a convenient and low-key way to bring the Time Lords back. Kind of a shame he didn’t.

– Genuinely unexpected that Sutekh has been possessing the TARDIS since Pyramids of Mars. So why have Susan Twists only started appearing since Wild Blue Yonder? Because shut up, that’s why. It is funny to think about Sutekh just chilling in the background of all these stories though.

– It was so bizarre for Ruby to leave the TARDIS permanently just because she wanted to meet her bio dad. It’s a time machine??? Just come back later!

– The cinema screening included a “special message”, but it was so nothing they probably shouldn’t have bothered. The person I was with was hoping for Tom Baker, but in the end it was just Millie saying “hey thanks for coming. Hope you enjoy!”. The Strax cinema introductions to Day of the Doctor and Deep Breath set a high bar that this didn’t even seem to know it was in competition with.

– Biggest disappointment: after all the teasing, there’s no Susan Foreman and no Carole Ann Ford, and I’m genuinely irritated by this; any other complaints I have about the episode are nothing in comparison. I kept up hope throughout that maybe she would appear at the end – why mention her so many times and even show a clip of her if she has no actual relevance to the plot whatsoever?, I thought, like an imbecile – but then The Doctor just says “ooh, you’ve changed me, Ruby. So maybe I will go looking for Susan, eventually”. Fuck all the way off, Russell. If Susan is going to be in Season 2 or 3, wait until then to bring her up. If she isn’t going to appear at all, don’t waste my time and raise my hopes by talking about her at all. Fuck.

[Ben Saunders]

It did seem like the episode was trying to imply that Susan Twist was turning up all over the place ever since Sutekh clung onto the TARDIS in 1911, which is stupid, really. It feels big and epic sure but like… that didn’t happen. It only started in Wild Blue Yonder. I initially accepted the ancient Gods in New Who thing because it was all being carried by the salt at the edge of the universe thing, and I felt like Sutekh’s return was an amazing thing to tie into that… but it’s completely separate? And what of all the insane amount of coincidences regarding names etc, I thought that was the salt too.

Ruby is in the next series so I’m sure/hopeful some things will be cleared up then. But if they end up doing something like having it turn out Ruby’s “real” mum is a trick or something then you risk making this episode retroactively worse. But again that’s complaining about a hypothetical that might never happen.

Rose really did nothing, and the shot of her just nonchalantly tapping away on her iPad while everybody unloads on the giant space dog is incredibly silly (I know she’s controlling the ceiling lasers).

The reveal of Sutekh and his invocation was so powerful, but it wasn’t really cool, calculating, manipulative Sutekh, was it? It was a big angry space dog going rawr. We didn’t really get a “battle of wits”. His return was given the reverance it deserved in the cliffhanger but then they off him in about ten minutes. At least the anti-gravity rope/gloves made it feel a bit less of an arsepull.

Mrs. Flood not being resolved in her first series is fine to me, that’s a separate mystery. Susan has to turn up in series 2 or 3. Wait any longer and you’ll have to recast her and it won’t have the same impact.

73 Yards is just a manifestation of Ruby’s fear of abandonment/unwantedness/never finding out who her “real” mother is. Breaking the magic fairy circle invokes some sort of curse that physically manifests her deepest fear.

Why did it snow everywhere? What is the deal with the song in Ruby’s heart? Why exactly couldn’t we see Ruby’s mother’s face again? What did it have to do with the TARDIS perception filter coincidentally being a 73 foot radius?

[Jenuall]

Well, what a load of bollocks that was. 

Again and again RTD demonstrates that he fundamentally lacks the ability to pay off a setup.

Just an incredibly frustrating thing to watch. 

There has been lots to enjoy in this latest series, Gatwa and Gibson have been excellent in their roles, most of the standalone stories were highly enjoyable, the whole thing looked gorgeous etc. I just long for the day that RTD can give us something that actually hangs together as a coherent whole …

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

I just long for the day that RTD can give us something that actually hangs together as a coherent whole …

RTD already is one coherent hole.

… Sorry, I had to.

[Jenuall]

Very good!

Speaking of things that are good, have some memes:

[Flap Jack]

Doctor Who Fans: “I can’t believe they retconned it so that a villain secretly came on board the ship off screen during a fan favourite story from decades ago before the show was cancelled and revived, and that villain has only just now gathered enough strength to try to kill everyone.”

Red Dwarf Fans:

[Ben Saunders]

It’s finally time to admit it. Turning Sutekh into a big CGI dog is incredibly lame.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Between K9 and Sutekh, Doctor Who just can’t do dogs well can it 

[Ben Saunders]

hey now… leave my boy K9 out of this….

[Flap Jack]

I’m with Ben on this one. K-9 is innocent and a certified good boy.

Given there were 2 dogs on the TARDIS at the same time, maybe Sutekh got sick of K-9 muscling in on his turf, so he used his powers to manipulate K-9 into the water in The Leisure Hive.

[Flap Jack]

If they do end up using this cover, people will owe the Red Dwarf I-VIII Blu ray art an apology.

Why did they dislocate his shoulder?

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

Oh no! That was his polarity reversing arm!

[Ben Saunders]

Posting here because I don’t want to start a new thread and this one is arguably relevant.

I finally watched the first two episodes of Sherlock — pretty good. Episode 2 is a massive improvement over the pilot.

Episode 1 uttely reeks of Moffat, for better and worse. The fundamental flaw with it is that Sherlock really is just an arsehole who gets off on being clever while being really callous and horrible to the people around him. He doesn’t have the charisma, energy, history or charm to make up for being a prick, like Matt Smith or Peter Capaldi’s Doctors do. I do not feel endeared towards him for any reason, and the whole thing feels like a pale imitation of Doctor Who, with Moffat on autopilot.

However, for the most part, everything around Sherlock is really great. Especially Martin Freeman, who I really, really like. And he does good in this show. All the stuff with the old man serial killer at the end was pretty excellent, too. Just all the setting up of Holmes as this scatterbrained genius is cringeworthy and unbelievable, especially the way everybody around him puts up with him and even glazes him. In real life he would absoutely be told to fuck off, and probably get knocked out cold multiple times.

This is just my opinion, but: Mark Gatiss is not an actor. He does not play parts. He is a sycophantic fan who inserts himself into IPs he loved as a boy for narcissistic wish fulfillment, and his pal Moffat enables him. I do not believe him as any of his characters, and I was very happy when he was revealed NOT to be Moriarty, as that would make the show nigh unwatchable going forward.

Episode two was great, and really rounded the edges of the premise, the characters are inifinitely more likeable and believable and I’m very glad I watched episode two because otherwise I might not come back to the show for more. I’m sure I would have appreciated the first episode more had I seen it going out, whereas now it feels like a bit of a time capsule to an era when one of my favourite writers was kind of letting me down.

This has all been extremely negative, but I did enjoy it, honest! The parts I criticised don’t ruin the whole, they’re just difficult to ignore. Episode one was overall decent, and episode two was great if: 

[Warbodog]

It impressed with style over substance mainly. Stuff like the taxi chase bit with the overlays looked cool in 2010, like the duck pond bit in The Eleventh Hour. All the canon references are fun for people who know them, like when Doctor Who references something from the 70s, but much more so, since every story’s a remake to an extent.

[Renegade Rob]

Sherlock has its moments to be sure, but they get fewer and farther between as the show goes on, and the finale is honestly one of the worst finales I’ve ever seen, this side of Dexter. Unless you’re a completionist, I’d say you’re better off watching two more episodes, the Series 1 finale “The Great Game” and the Series 2 premiere with Irene Adler “A Scandal in Belgravia,” which is often held up as the best ever episode. The show never is as good after that fourth episode, with continually diminishing returns, but those first four episodes are legitimately worth watching to be sure. 

Speaking of crap finales, while I overall liked Series 14 of Doctor Who, that 2-part finale was just lousy. It was messy and sloppy and scatterbrained, and I adore RTD but this makes Journey’s End look like Heaven Sent. He can do better. (I guess for me it’s the opposite of Series 10, which I didn’t really like overall even though its 2-part finale kicked all kinds of ass.) For all of the flaws to his writing style, which I overall don’t mind, even his worst episodes usually have a sense of, if not coherence, at least a level of polish to them, but this just felt like a shambles, like they ran out of time or something. It wasn’t just lame, it was off, like how after Orphan 55 I was thinking, “Are you guys okay?”

The 60th Anniversary specials were all quite good, and even those had a Susan Twist cameo, and I’d been assuming that if he’d planted seed as far back as that, he must’ve had a really good payoff in mind, but I guess I was wrong. Ah, well. 

Also, spoiler alert, but after Ruby leaves to be with her normal family and the Doctor lets her go, I was sort of hoping he’d double back like the 11th Doctor to the Teselecta and be like wait a second, that pointing thing with the mom is STILL weird, since time was changing, and also you can make it snow, which is definitely NOT normal and wasn’t resolved in the finale whatsoever, no matter how normal your parents appear to be, so something is still up. 

[Ben Saunders]

Yeah, the scene with Ruby in the cafe was excellent and really well-played, but most of the stuff with Sutekh and the universe being Flux’d again was pretty lame. The reveal was utterly insane and had me popping off, but part two was a let down. I liked Series 14 but it definitely has its flaws, and people have talked about them at length. I hope Series 15 will be better, and I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt on some stuff with Ruby still not really making satisfying sense, given that she is back next year. I like Ncuti, but he really, genuinely does cry in EVERY episode. Men crying is fine and good, yes, but if my friend cried every single time I saw him I’d be calling up a mental health clinic.

[Rudolph]

Ncuti is possibly a contender for my favourite Doctor of the revival. But I’m just really struggling with the lack of a consistent outfit.
The Doctor having a set look is a handy visual shorthand to tell you what they’re like, but most of what he’s worn doesn’t exactly stand out out as ‘Doctorish’. He just looks like he’s walked off of the ASOS website.

[Renegade Rob]

His lack of outfit “IS” his outfit, I’d say. Like the Cat, there’s a consistent personality in the fashion, so it’s not like he’s alternating between Colin Baker and Christopher Eccleston (although there’s definite overlap with both, so maybe bad example). There’s lots of orange and a retro 60’s flair to several of his outfits. Also, I imagine that after having spent a lifetime with Donna Noble as the 14th Doctor, she probably finally instilled into him that it’s weird to have only one set of clothes, like she called him out on in Partners in Crime. 

His variety of outfits is fine. The sonic screwdriver is weird though. It’s cool that it has the Rwandan saying engraved into it, but that’s a remote control shape, not a screwdriver shape. Even Capaldi’s ridiculous latter-era blue penis screwdriver was at least screwdriver shaped. 

[Author]

Replies