Dr Who Series 5 - Page 3

It’s a different dynamic with Amy and The Doctor because you can see that he feels a certain level of responsibility for her. There’s a moment of recognition early on when he realizes how much damage he’s done to her by taking so long to get back. As such it’s like he’s taking her along as an apology rather than because he needs someone to chum around with.

I’d love it if the relationship was like the Ten/Donna relationship which was vaguely antagonistic and matey rather than romantic.

They do kiss, apparently. Which is pretty creepy.

Also check out this screencap

http://i44.tinypic.com/fw0oea.jpg%22...com/fw0oea.jpg

Rory's medical ID was apparently issued in 1990.

I've included it as an attachment below

Well I don’t think it was a production mistake given that it’s a prominent shot during the ‘rewind/slow mo’ sequence and it might tie into the cracks in space time stuff. Or it could be Prisoner Zero making an imperfect copy of Rory.

I don't think so, too many laptops and newish cell phones.

Is there Myth brand laptop over in the UK? Cable guy was sporting one and I was just curious if they just made up a brand name for it or not.

I was thinking about when the episode takes place after watching it again yesterday and either the Doctor met Amy as a little girl in 1998, the action happens now and she leaves with him in 2012; the alternative is he met her now and the main story happened in 2022. The latter seems more likely given the technology used.

Liked the episode, although I think Smith's accent is a bit thicker than I'd like, and I found myself having to scroll back to understand what he said. Also, I want to do many, many things to his Companion. Otherwise, I liked it.

One thing: at the end, when the Doctor flicked a switch on the TARDIS (which was screencapped upthread), there seems to be a one-frame-flash that, given I don't know what sort of program to use, I can't access. What was it?

New trailer for the next episode

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fpw7L7w0RVY

I don't remember any of the previous seasons being marketed quite this aggressively.

Whoa.

That was kind of great.

Smith might just turn out to be one of my favourite Doctors. He really pulls off the inherent oddness of the Doctor and he does it without going too far over the top. I love the relationship he has with Amy, it reminds of Seven and Ace where he was testing her all the time for greatness. That first bit on the starship UK where he's trying to get her to see as he sees was fantastic and his fury at the end was just fantastic. It's nice to see the Doctor be properly angry again, they sort of shyed away from that after Colin Baker made the whole world hate him and his sociopathic take on the Doctor.

Officially loving Smith. He has a sharper edge to him, more eccentric (the whole scene where he talks about being on an aliens tongue) but a less forgiving Doctor (I bought that he would happily dump Amy for pissing him off). He's far less impressed with humanity, he's very fond of them but they still find ways to annoy the hell out of him. I'm glad they're not aping that "gee golly, humans are great" trait of Tennant's, it worked for his Doctor but it got a little old sometimes.

Loved seeing Terrence Hardiman on TV again, brought back great memories of "The Demon Headmaster".

The Smilers were surprisingly creepy, but then Moffat's episodes on Who always had the best new monsters so I imagine now he is the showrunner he has a very strong hand in this type of thing.

Loved the joke about the Scottish wanting their own ship, this new iteration of the show is nailing the humour department, there's stuff adults can laugh at and kids can laugh at - which is also stuff that I can laugh at!

It was cool to see "the crack" return but I would've preferred they not draw so much attention to it, would've been a nice easter egg for observant viewers.

I think the reason Moffat drew attention to the crack is that he prefers to lay all the pieces of his puzzles out in plain sight and then solve them with stuff we already know about, whereas RTD preferred more sleight of hand hence subtler season arcs.

It's endemic of the more logical take Moffat usually has with episodes and their solutions and I'm hoping that it's going to enable him to build conclusions and finales which aren't twist based.

Also I loved the Doctor just sort of grinning manically and shouting 'and now...Scream' before they fell down below. Just such a great little moment, also him trying to calm Amy before he tells her that she's on a giant tongue.

That's a good point, it was a minor quibble to begin with, but when put that way it's far more preferable than RTD's "pull it all out of his arse at the last minute" method. For the first time since Who returned I'm going to be going into a finale with optimism, instead of just wincing nervously, waiting for the ball to get well and truly dropped.

RE: Next week. As tired as I should be of Daleks, I can't wait to see what they do with them in WW2. It can't be any worse than that god awful New York two-parter, at least.

Yeah I'm looking forward to the next episode. It's a Gatiss episode isn't it? I really loved the Dickens episode he did for Season 1, even if the illegal immigrant angle was a bit odd, and I love his League of Gentlemen work so I'm interested what he'll do. I know that his Dickens episode was kind of butchered under RTD for being too dark, will be interesting to see how Moffat treats his work.

Also love that the Doctor holds himself like an old man, sort of hunched over and his arms in front of him, at times/

As a History Student I'm programmed to be bored witless by the Second World War, but I gotta admit this image had me geeking out like nobodies business.

"NOBODY HUMAN HAS ANYTHING TO SAY TO ME TODAY!" will at some point get yelled in my production office by me. I might need to turn it into a poster for the wall where people walk in.

You'd be right. I'd only seen about twenty minutes of Doctor Who before in my life, but I just loved Matt Smith's opener.

Still loving it. Last shot was bliss before the crack was shown.

Jesus, that was dark. I mean, fucking dark.

All this "workin' the season theme in as early and as often as possible" is more RTD than RTD was, which is saying something.

I also would rather put the Daleks on a moratorium already.

All those quibbles aside, I am loving the new Who more than ever.

Over my dead body. The Daleks rule, and I'm practically giggling in anticipation for their season debut.

Incidentally, I only got into Who recently, having viewed Series 3 of the Davies run as well as the terrific "Dalek" from Series One. I plan to watch all of the Davies run as well as Series 5, but I was wondering where to start with Classic Who. I already know to watch "Tomb of the Cybermen", "The Five Doctors", "Genesis of the Daleks" and "Remembrance of the Daleks", but I was wondering what my fellow Chewers thought were the best episodes of each classic Doctor.

Any thoughts?

Wait, must not have been paying attention, but where was the crack in this episode?

On the hull of the Starship, right at the end.

Oh shoot. Somebody was calling me during the last shot, so no wonder I missed it.

Also interesting, the boyfriends ID badge said "Issued 1990" on it, and I swear when Amy was in the voting booth and computer said "Age: 1306" and the computer screen said "Age: 1308".

Spearhead from Space, City of Death, Pyramids of Mars and Earthshock are pretty safe additions to that list. Not sure I'd recommend the Five Doctors as a top priority, though.

Caves of Androzani, too. Five Doctors is notable because of what it is, but as a story it's just not that great. Though it does have a vomiting Cyberman in it, which is certainly something.

I’d add The Curse of Fenric, The Talons of Weng-Chiang, The Daemons, Genesis of the Daleks and (if you’re feeling brave) War Games to that list.

Whilst I love The Five Doctors conceptually it’s let down for me by one thing and that’s Anthony Ainley playing The Master.

Ainley has a few great episodes in him, but in general he plays the Master as such a mincing, ridiculous, fop that I’ve always suspected the people who loathed Simm in the role never saw his tenure.

What’s amazing is that thinking back I can pick out at least two favourite stories for each Doctor except for Hartnell (I’ve never seen a Hartnell episode) and Colin Baker (who just didn’t get a chance at all).

Poor Baker just seems to have completely got the short end of the stick in regards to not only his characterisation (he tries to play Alien, but in reality he just comes across as passive aggressive and abusive) but the actually stories he was involved in.

Smith is already a better Doctor than Tennant. There, I said it. What a FANTASTIC episode.

Tennant certainly had a ropey start (if we’re doing a like for like comparison between Tennant’s The Christmas Invasion and New Earth and Smith’s Eleventh House and Beast Below) but I think it’s going to take a lot of work for people to accept Smith as having moved out of his shadow.

I remember during Tennant’s first season the amount of people who loathed the man in the role and it always makes me smile how he’s now held up as a definitive Doctor. As such I’m not prepared to discount Tennant completely.

Tennant was able to make even the most ludicrous stuff work and was a stabilising force of quite a few episodes, Smith so far has had the benefit of two fantastic scripts.

I think he nails what I like about the Doctor as a character much more than Tennant. Which is admittedly due to RTD's characterisation more than anything. Smith is a genuine oddball, an alien in human skin. And what's more, he feels like he's lived every one of those previous ten lives. Tennant was like Errol Flynn in comparison.

I always had the impression that because Tennant was such a big Doctor Who fan before he took on the role he sort of projected a lot of adoration onto the role. There’s a real childlike energy to Tennant and it makes me think that when Tennant watched Davidson as a child who took certain things from the performance, as a child would, and took them on as conscious choices.

I do think that stuff like Human Nature and Midnight showcased a more layered side to Tennant, but it seems that Smith doesn’t adore the character as much as Tennant and is more willing to take risks with the role.

Ainley was good in Survival, when JNT actually let him play the role a little more the way he wanted to instead of forcing the camp. That was always a production decision, not the actor himself.
Colin Baker did at least get Vengeance on Varos. It's as uneven as anything, but managed to predict the reality TV culture quite nicely.
I'd unrecommend Curse of Fenric, if possible, which is a story where the execution falls far short of the fantastic ideas.

I rate The Five Doctors simply because it's solely responsible for Kylie Minogue's reinvention as the Y2K disco queen (I'm serious - saw a doco about her and she mentioned them watching a Doctor Who episode while trying to think up new ideas for dancing troupe appearance and movement, etc - turns out they were watching the teleporting security robot from Five Doctors).

"Oh, I'm so much worse than Scottish." Great, great line. As was the "No one human gets to say anything to me today." You really felt his fury at that moment, knowing that no matter what choice he made, he was dooming an entire race. And I liked how his anger at the end balanced between being mad at Amy for making that decision and being mad that she was right where he missed it. I like that there's a bit of rashness to this Doctor, and that it seems he's going to need someone around to keep him in check.

I also appreciated how the acknowledged what happened to the other Time Lords, but didn't make him suddenly become all about it. It's like he used the Tenth Doctor to work through the guilt and the grief, and now he's ready to move on.

The new season finally kicks off for us in the US this saturday on BBC America. I think there's a "Definitive Guide to The Doctor" beforehand. Yep, just checked. We get The End of Time (again), the documentary & then the season opener. Sounds like a good night to me!

And as for the Daleks, I'm with Chris Spider. I LOVE the Daleks. Always a fave of mine when I was a kid & nothings changed there. Speaking of which, "Journey's End" is on again at 7pm, more Daleks!!

I do love how Moffat is intent on scaring the fuck out of children. The gas mask zombie kids are freaky enough but Moffat seems to take particular pleasure in making childhood fears palpable. So far he's turned ticking clocks into walking Revolutionary death bots, Statues into life energy absorbing vampires from hell, Shadows into dens of microscopic zombifying Piranhas, cracks into portals to alien prisons and school teachers into walking death bots who punish failure with horrific death.

I assume that to maintain this style at some point in the season Moffat is just going to appear on screen and bellow.

"ONE DAY YOUR MOTHER WILL DIE"

Aren't they still legally obligated to use the Daleks once per season?

I thought that was only through Series 4, but maybe it was just that they were getting around the requirement by having Tennant's last 'Series' just be a handful of specials instead of a full series.

I like all the 1990 id badge and crack in time theories, and i would say that given the rather overt mention of "myth" computers, it all makes perfect sense... a timeline and technology's evolution shifted by a company that's secretly evil, alien, or whatnot.

wouldnt be surprised at all if "myth" comes up again when the crack's story arc reaches its climax.

That line was insanely powerful.

As Richard Dickson has said, the Family And Or Estate That Owns The Daleks required a Dalek Episode every season. Maybe they extended it beyond S4?

I'm of two minds with the Daleks. Half of my brain thinks they are played out, and they need to go away for a while. On the other hand, the Daleks are the iconic enemy of the Doctor. You can't have Batman without the Joker.*

* Actually, DC tried a "Batman without the Joker" storyline. It didn't sell too well, owing to the unchanging ending of "Batman being turned into a slime the consistency of thick-and-chunky sauce by a proper supervillain". My favorite one was Batman VS Sinestro, in which Batman discovered that being a Unpowered But Crazy Prepared Superhero doesn't mean much when a Yellow Ring Construct has removed your kidneys, feet, both arms, one nasal passage, and the portion of the brain that is responsible for keeping you from wetting yourself. This entire footnote may, or may not be, a fabrication.

I'm fine with Daleks showing up in an episode or two, I'd just rather they stop being the big bad of the series for a bit.