Doctor Who

[Kobold King he/him]

The ability to shoot lightning bolts is almost certainly not a natural Zygon ability. If it was, then they wouldn't have resorted to strangling people or beating them to death like they did in the classic series. I watched the episode under the assumption that it was pure technological augmentation.

 

Of course, I'm pretty sure I'm also the only person who watched the episode while pointedly not thinking about the ISIS metaphor, which is how I like it.

 

 

Can we talk instead about the epic War speech Twelve gave over the two boxes? This was an "Everybody lives" level moment of beauty to me.

[ThirdGen]

 

Can we talk instead about the epic War speech Twelve gave over the two boxes? This was an "Everybody lives" level moment of beauty to me.

 

Absolutely.  Capaldi is a champ!  Twelve rocks!

[+Slowswift]

I didn't see part 1, so I missed a fair bit.

But yes, I now have a scene that I can show Twelve haters and just be like "See? See?"

[Young Bard he/him]

Although, I have a friend who's a twelve hater (though too be fair, he does distinguish - "it's not Capaldi - it's the scripts written for him" - true enough for some episodes in Series 8), and he enjoyed the episode, but it hasn't done a lot so far as I can see to improve his mood for 12 as a whole.

 

And for the record, aforementioned 12-hater said that he read that Maisie Williams would be returning in Episode 10, Face the Raven. After research, I can confirm this to be true.

Edited November 9, 2015 by TheYoungBard

[Bort he/him]

Muslims, of course, can't shoot electricity out of their hands to vaporize you even when they're kids.

 

They can't???    damnation propaganda machine, lying to us...

 

Can we talk instead about the epic War speech Twelve gave over the two boxes? This was an "Everybody lives" level moment of beauty to me.

 

That was five minutes of pure awesomeness on a scale that would make even Lift proud.

 

I do hope we get the Osgoods in again. I think they were great.

[Haradion Drogon]

I enjoyed the episode.

But although I loved the subtext (Okay. Not subtle enough to be Subtext. Supertext perhapes) of ZYSIS. It worked brilliantly.

But I felt that the Rebel Zygons had a point.

I mean, think about it.

The Doctor basically says, that in the face of persecution, rather than fight back, you should conform and hide your identity.
The Paranoia the UNIT soldiers were feeling was entirely metaphorical of the paranoia that is felt by every Zygon. We saw what became of an innocent Zygon Child after all.

For an example of why this is a terrible message, lets forget that the Zygons were being used as a metaphor for ISIS, and pretend that they are a metaphor for the LGBT movement.

Yeah.
I know.

Not so great a message is it?

Same Paranoia.
Same "Minority under threat"
Same murderous beatings in Southern USA.

Yet the message of "Conform or face extinction" is not a pretty one.


That said, I absolutely adored the episode. It was great to see Osgood back.

[Mestiv he/him]

This whole season, for me, brings back the quality I've missed since season 5! That speach at the end, the Osgoods... that was all just fantastic! And I really liked that there was a helmet from previous adventure behind the Doctor in the Black Archive Now, if they'd only bring Captain Jack back, I'd screem of joy

[Kobold King he/him]

This whole season, for me, brings back the quality I've missed since season 5! That speach at the end, the Osgoods... that was all just fantastic! And I really liked that there was a helmet from previous adventure behind the Doctor in the Black Archive Now, if they'd only bring Captain Jack back, I'd screem of joy

 

 

I saw a proposal for a spin-off series on Reddit that goes something like such:

 

Ashildr, Captain Jack, the Doctor's daughter Jenny and River Song are all immortal, and need each other for emotional stability in their long lives. The one problem is, they all hate each other's guts. Hijinks ensue.

 

I would watch the heck out of that.

[Mestiv he/him]

Yeah, I wish they'd reintroduce Jenny. She's almost a Time Lady after all, she should appear in the show from time to time, played by different actresses if necessary.

 

Jack would totally flirt with all three of them... at once   Also, TBH, he doesn't seem to need that much help with dealing with his immortality, even after being buried alive for hundreds or thousands of years apparently. Anyway, I wish they reuse more of the old characters, like Stormageddon, Dark Lord of All!

[Meandbooks she/her]

I'm pretty sure this two-parter is now one of my all-time favorites.

 

One thing I absolutely loved were all the scenes between the real Clara and the rebel leader. Jenna Coleman did such a fantastic job. They seemed like such different people that I hardly noticed they had the same face. 

 

And the metaphors were awesome, 12's speech was amazing...yeah, I loved it. I especially love that 12 is using the pain he feels because of Time War, not just angsting over it or using it to justify being Time Lord Victorious but instead letting drive him to help other people be better. Which is really what being the Doctor is all about.

 

 

I enjoyed the episode.

But although I loved the subtext (Okay. Not subtle enough to be Subtext. Supertext perhapes) of ZYSIS. It worked brilliantly.

But I felt that the Rebel Zygons had a point.

I mean, think about it.

The Doctor basically says, that in the face of persecution, rather than fight back, you should conform and hide your identity.
The Paranoia the UNIT soldiers were feeling was entirely metaphorical of the paranoia that is felt by every Zygon. We saw what became of an innocent Zygon Child after all.

For an example of why this is a terrible message, lets forget that the Zygons were being used as a metaphor for ISIS, and pretend that they are a metaphor for the LGBT movement.

 

I would agree with you here, except that I don't think that metaphor is valid. The whole point was that most of the Zygons were happy conforming - that's what the one Zygon who the rebels "revealed" was for, to show that was the case.

 

Also, there's also a line where Osgood says that the Zygon shapeshifting ability isn't a weapon, it's how they survive - by infiltrating cultures and living among them. So they are, by nature, an adaptive race. Most of them don't need or want society to change so they can live happily, which is why using it as a metaphor for the LGBT movement doesn't work. The situation is different.

[Kobold King he/him]

So. Sleep No More.

 

Are we all in agreement that this was a thing that happened?

[Quiver he/him]

So. Sleep No More.

Are we all in agreement that this was a thing that happened?

No.

I refuse to acknowledge this waste of possibility as a thing that happened.

...Though, on that note.

Did anyone else get a vague Battlestar vibe from this? Superficially, at least- the militarism, the slave-soldier, the "gods look favourably" thing...

Edited November 15, 2015 by Quiver

[ThirdGen]

I was so happy when this turned out not to be a two-parter.

[Dunkum he/him]

I was so happy when this turned out not to be a two-parter.

this. I think if they had avoided cutting between perspectives so much, it could have been a lot better, but as it was, there were scenes where it was next to impossible to see what was happening because they were rapidly cutting between 4 or 5 people's perspectives

[ThirdGen]

It lost me from the moment the doctor explained the monster as

rapidly-evolved dead skin cells from your eyes.

[Young Bard he/him]

Yeahhh...

 

The disappointing thing is, it had a few good premises.

 

The concept of taking a fundamental society, completely scrapping it, and watching the effects? Interesting.

 

Tinkering with the 4th wall? Also interesting. (They've been doing that the whole series. 'Who wrote Beethoven's 5th?' is one example.)

 

But, they weren't able to pull it off. They took the most cliche route. What happens if you scrap a fundamental society? A monster appears. And, can I just say, what dreadful monsters they were. I think a monster which you never see, except out of the corner of the camera, could have worked a lot better for the mass creep effect.

 

And the 4th wall wasn't used to effectiveness. You randomly flick between 4th wall and no 4th wall for no apparent reason. At least, with the 'Who wrote Beethoven's 5th' speech, it served to intrigue the audience, and explain part of the plot line. With that man (I've forgotten his name), it just seemed like a needless interruption, that wasn't needed.

[Quiver he/him]

It lost me from the moment the doctor explained the monster as

rapidly-evolved dead skin cells from your eyes.

 

I wasn't sure if me not being able to follow that was because it was poorly explained, or just because I was dumb. I still have no diea what exactly caused the monsters... how do they elate to being able to sleep normally? What?

 

And I have no idea what the point of the plan was, sicne Morpheus apparently works normally anyway...? So the "final twist" of the episode fell completely flat.

 

 

Yeahhh...

 

The disappointing thing is, it had a few good premises.

 

The concept of taking a fundamental society, completely scrapping it, and watching the effects? Interesting.

 

Tinkering with the 4th wall? Also interesting. (They've been doing that the whole series. 'Who wrote Beethoven's 5th?' is one example.)

 

But, they weren't able to pull it off. They took the most cliche route. What happens if you scrap a fundamental society? A monster appears. And, can I just say, what dreadful monsters they were. I think a monster which you never see, except out of the corner of the camera, could have worked a lot better for the mass creep effect.

 

And the 4th wall wasn't used to effectiveness. You randomly flick between 4th wall and no 4th wall for no apparent reason. At least, with the 'Who wrote Beethoven's 5th' speech, it served to intrigue the audience, and explain part of the plot line. With that man (I've forgotten his name), it just seemed like a needless interruption, that wasn't needed.

 

Very true, far too many camera cuttings. Not only does it sort of undermine the point of the found footage concept - why bother with it if you're going to follow all the action anyway?- it ruined any suspense or twists the episode might have had. If "Clara has a sand camera!" was supposed to be a twist... well, it wasn't. I clued in on that early on, and spent most of the episode wondering if them still filming without their helmet's on was a mistake.

 

(Also, they don't have helmet cams... but Deep Ando had a camera fixed onto his gun? What? Why? The footage clearly had his gun on the left side of the scren for the whole shot, so ti was affixed to the gun, rather than just being free floating, so...)

 

And yes, anytime the episode started to build up momentum, cutting back to Mr Exposition was... jarring. And, again, killed any momentum or intrigue the episode had going for it.

 

Honestly, I was so excited for this episode. I thought the found footage concept could be sued pretty well, and that it would be really interesting. Instead, we got the worst episode of Twelve's tenure.

Edited November 16, 2015 by Quiver

[RippleGylf she/her]

Keep in mind, the last found footage episode we had was Love and Monsters... 

 

Apparently Doctor Who should not use found footage.

[Haelbarde he/him]

So today's episode. I... was not expecting that. Quite not at all. I must say I'm divided about it, but I in someways hope that it's left that way. I don't think you could get much better than that.

[Young Bard he/him]

MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR FACE THE RAVEN!!!

I agree. The entire thing had been previously labelled as an individual episode - not part of the finale. So, the expectation is that if something big is going to happen, it will happen in the 2 part finale. And then... boom.

 

It completely took me by surprise. I think they did it deliberately that way just so people would no longer be able to dismiss an episode as 'unimportant'.

 

I have to admit, though. I had 2 and a half hours of sleep the previous night, and accidentally fell a sleep through 5-10 of the most important 'set-up/ foreshadowing' minutes, so I missed a lot of the foreshadowing. I had it recorded, so I watched that part again afterwards, and it really explained a lot of what was going on. I enjoyed it, and if I'd watched it the way it was meant to be watched, I can honestly say that I think I would have enjoyed it even more.

[Haelbarde he/him]

MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR FACE THE RAVEN!!!

I agree. The entire thing had been previously labelled as an individual episode - not part of the finale. So, the expectation is that if something big is going to happen, it will happen in the 2 part finale. And then... boom.

 

It completely took me by surprise. I think they did it deliberately that way just so people would no longer be able to dismiss an episode as 'unimportant'.

 

I have to admit, though. I had 2 and a half hours of sleep the previous night, and accidentally fell a sleep through 5-10 of the most important 'set-up/ foreshadowing' minutes, so I missed a lot of the foreshadowing. I had it recorded, so I watched that part again afterwards, and it really explained a lot of what was going on. I enjoyed it, and if I'd watched it the way it was meant to be watched, I can honestly say that I think I would have enjoyed it even more.

See, this time, I hadn't kept track of how far through the season we were, and while I knew she had plans of leaving, I was sorta vague on the details. Also, Moffat was mean. He threw in a red herring (at least to my mind). When the raven killed that man, there was the comment of 'Don't run. Stay with her.' And then 'why do they always run'. To me, that suggested that maybe there was a way of avoiding death by not running. And so when she walks up to the raven and accepts it, I'm like 'oh, so this is where they pay of that foreshadowing and all's good. And the way they did the slowmoes and replays made it look like they were artificially making it take longer than it actually was, so I'm like 'Oh, she's screaming because it was unexpected, maybe actually hurts a bit, but it's not killing her. She'll just stop, and then exhale the smoke and be alright'. But then she fell... 

 

I was also certain that the Doctor was about to give her some regeneration energy a few times in that final speech...

 

Also, I really think Me should have taken the shadow. Because they didn't outright say that she couldn't.... :/ 

[+Slowswift]

So Sleep No More. Brain bleach, please. I think we have another one of those episodes.

[Dunkum he/him]

So Sleep No More. Brain bleach, please. I think we have another one of those episodes.

just got to that one did you? the next one (this past weekend's) is much much much better.

[+Slowswift]

I certainly hope so. And I hope I can watch it soon.

[Charononus]

"I was lost a long time ago.  She was saving you."  may have replaced "Good men don’t need rules. Today is not the day to find out why I have so many." as my favorite quote.