Doctor Who Thread III: Reverse the Polarity of the Neutron Flow

[Androgeus]

Guys, River has already gone to the Singing Tower's of Delirum, check out the minisode Last Night

[CoffeeIncluded]

Heh, this doesn't have much to do with the episode, but when this was being filmed I was talking with my brother on facebook, trying to track down where and when they were filming so he could go since I at college. I heard a rumor online that they were filming one scene a few blocks from where we used to live, but nothing turned up and so I assumed that it wasn't founded.

And then I saw the episode yesterday and they did film a scene a few blocks from where I used to live.

[Brother Oni]

Spoiler

Show

And yet in this episode we have one who is definitely wounded by cracking its face. I maintain that it might not kill them, but breaking off the angels head/arms/legs would probably do a hell of a lot toward making them useless.

Spoiler

Show

I thought the cracked Angel face was because it was starving and hence very weak (the Doctor's comment of it being too weak to send River back in the episode).
It's known that the Angels' quantum locked appearance degrades, the weaker they get (see Time of Angels), where they were not much more then roughly human shaped stone masses at first.

Cracking the head/arms/legs off is also related to the sledgehammer comment - it may not be possible to damage them through external force when they're being observed.

When they're not being observed is a different matter entirely, but one we have very little information on (I wonder if anybody's tried tripwires or the like, or simply a bomb with a spirit level on a stationary Angel, thus when it does move, the bomb will detonate).

In any case, all they need is a touch and that little cherub Angel which send Rory back in the first place indicates that mass isn't an indicator of effectiveness, although I concede that wholeness of the physical form will/should have an affect.

[Kato]

Oh god, where do I start I hate being late but my friend watching with me and I can only get together sunday evening

Spoiler

Show

Spoiler

Show

The fact that River doesn't seem to be going to the Library any time soon is starting to drive me crazy. Her story is over, it's time to let her go Moffat. I don't care ho much you obsessively love your DMPC, it's time for her to have an actual conclusion

Spoiler

Show

As Thufir said, River's story is far from over. Sorry, haters, but it has been said often enough that she has spent a lot of time with the Doctor, probably with multiple incarnations. (More than two, I assume) Unless something drastic happens we will have her around for quite a while.

Also, the statue-of-liberty angel was amusing, but you felt like they didn't really use it for anything.

Yeah, as many have said... The Liberty Angel was pretty dumb idea for many reasons... If she had caught the Ponds when they were falling... that would have been a decent twist.

I was depressingly correct; the first episode was the highlight of the half-season, and the second episode was the next best.

Still not liking the second episode. Ah, whatever.

The Doctor can cure people using regeneration powers now? Since when?

Yeah, even with the "River did it earlier" excuse it still doesn't really work that well... neither does River going crazy over it... so what, does it mean he loses an entire regeneration or what?

Worse - Amy and Rory didn't just go to live in the 60s. If they are caught by the angels, they are constantly going back in time to be used as fuel.
How does that count as "we had a happy life"?!

I think some said so already but... the angle's "farm" doesn't exist anymore. They are mostly dead. The just lived a different live and made billions by investing in Microsoft. (Or whatever)

Why the Doctor didn't go Angry Time Lord on that last angel I will never know.

Because episodes like "A Town called Mercy" taught him not to go angry time lord on people? ... Or he did and we just didn't see it.

Angels need to stop gaining new powers all willy-nilly. Whoever picks up the show after Moffat's run needs to retcon them hard. It's like everything has to be as cool as possible right now, when a little subtlety would pay off much better in the long run.

Yeah, the Blink angels really worked the best... But I feel there were just too many answers, like what happens if you record an angel and watch the tape. Thus the "what holds the image" explanation. Or maybe throwing people back in time wasn't a good killing method... So they ripped out people's vocal cords to talk.



Okay, my general opinion on the episode... Urgh, plot holes. Time paradoxes. A little bit over the top on the first death scene. Like, the slooooooooow motion fall. It felt a bit more than it had to. Oh, and time paradoxes and plot holes.
I'm not quite sure I got what they meant with the farm... Like do they only send them back a day and do that over and over? How is that better than what they did otherwise? Meh, whatever. It just feels unnecessarily cruel to make it a more horrible fate...
Anyway, my consensus on time paradoxes in Who is... I take whatever they say at face value. Or try my best to.

I liked River. I like River most of the time. Okay, not that much in Kill Hitler but even there she was okay...

And for the goodbye to the Ponds... it was good. I really was expecting there to be a hppy ending but... well. Kind of. The angel got them. But remember: Rory didn't get surprised by the angel. He merely decided he wanted to have some alone time with his wife

Yeah, the episode was not... super mega awesome but it was fine. It was above average but I'd still say below most other Moffat episodes. Fun to watch anyway.

I'm sure I forgot half the stuff I was going to say... Oh, is the Doctor going to keep the glasses?

[Dienekes]

Spoiler

Show

I thought the cracked Angel face was because it was starving and hence very weak (the Doctor's comment of it being too weak to send River back in the episode).
It's known that the Angels' quantum locked appearance degrades, the weaker they get (see Time of Angels), where they were not much more then roughly human shaped stone masses at first.

Cracking the head/arms/legs off is also related to the sledgehammer comment - it may not be possible to damage them through external force when they're being observed.

When they're not being observed is a different matter entirely, but one we have very little information on (I wonder if anybody's tried tripwires or the like, or simply a bomb with a spirit level on a stationary Angel, thus when it does move, the bomb will detonate).

In any case, all they need is a touch and that little cherub Angel which send Rory back in the first place indicates that mass isn't an indicator of effectiveness, although I concede that wholeness of the physical form will/should have an affect.

Spoiler

Show

The dialogue was
River: Badly damaged...
Evil Guy: I wanted to know if it could feel pain.
River: You realize it's screaming...

Which to me implies he physically damaged the statue.

[Thufir]

Guys, River has already gone to the Singing Tower's of Delirium, check out the minisode Last Night

Hm. Those minisodes were extremely badly advertised. If I'd known they existed they would've been the first thing I watched when I got the DVDs, instead I just saw them for the first time just now.

And, no, she hasn't. You may be right that we won't see that particular date since it already came up; also the implication was that there wasn't any action, thrilling heroics, etc on that occasion.
However it will almost certainly get a mention, since neither River in any non-Library context we've thus far seen her, nor, more significantly, the Doctor, has reached that date yet. Not to mention the story has to be there for the people who don't have the DVDs. There will be an indication of when it's the last time we'll be seeing River, and one assumes it will be that time.

[dehro]

mmmmh..so.. the last episode..

Spoiler

Show

from an emotional point of view, I Think it's nicely handled.. tells us a few things we all know but bear reminding such as the Doctor's need for companions..and the fact that he's actively engaged in deleting himself from stuff (apart from Unit's records, apparently..)
and it was sort of closing a circle between Amy, Rory and the Doctor without going epic, which was a nice touch.
Plotwise this episode is so, so full of stupid that I'm choosing to erase the stupid and just write timey-wimey-wibly-wobbly over it.
The Statue of Liberty thing is just too dumb for words..reminds me of Legolas skating down a set of stairs on a shield.
I can just picture Moffat giggling away at the sheer absurdness of it and at getting away with it because he can.
that has got to be the first Angel that has people inside it (I do think there are people in and around the Statue at all times..) also..it's not made of stone, unlike every other Angel, and it's on a fracking ISLAND!!! there are bound to be people stationed there... There are always planes that fly over it, ships that sail past it, people that look at it etc etc.. hell.. the only reason it wouldn't appear on a radar when it started moving is that radars didn't exist back then...just not doable..yet they did it anyway.
The whole.. "they're going to go back in time in a place where you can't land a Tardis and it's fixed".. is so patently stupid that you can only wave it away by telling yourself "they've got to make the Ponds un-reachable somehow"..except this is not how...
The Doctor could just go anywhere on earth during those 50-ish years they spent in New York and send them a bloody postcard!.. and they could always travel outside New York and meet him somewhere else...or he could borrow his wife's vortex thing..
...and can someone please explain to me why New York should have all these time paradoxes/vortexes/fractures when the Doctor hardly ever goes there and the Pond's actions have deleted the Angels' from the place.. yet London is perfectly safe to travel to and from despite being the single place in the universe where the Doctor hangs out most and where any race of time-traveling aliens have at some point or another caused havoc???
Also..are we sure there haven't been episodes set in New York after 1938 but before 2012? that seems unlikely to me..but I know next to nothing about old-who.

So.. as a stand-alone episode it works, if you keep in mind that it focusses on emotions, on a farewell, on acting skills and on giving some kind of a new start to the Doctor.
as part of a series, in a somewhat well defined universe with certain rules and a canon to which it should be subjected.. it's a trainwreck which flies in the face of half of what we know about how the who-niverse works...because it just chooses to ignore the dozens of options the Doctor has or would have to circumvent this particular fixed moment in time and stay in touch with the Ponds or even bring them back..options given to him both in canon and by simple common sense.

I may choose to re-watch it sometimes in the future because I like the Ponds..certainly not for it's plot, episode-worthiness or drammatic impact..definitely not to use it as reference for anything Doctor-related.. I just don't know that this episode can be used as canon source for anything other than "where did the Ponds end up?.. oh, yeah..there"

[Brother Oni]

Spoiler

Show

I'm not quite sure I got what they meant with the farm... Like do they only send them back a day and do that over and over? How is that better than what they did otherwise? Meh, whatever. It just feels unnecessarily cruel to make it a more horrible fate...

Spoiler

Show

Take Rory - the Angel zapped him back from (ostensibly) 2012 back to the late 1930s, giving them their first meal. The mini-Angels zap him towards the hotel, where they trap him inside a closed time loop.
Depending on how peckish they feel, they then have all the time from when the Hotel was completed up to the late 1930s (the Doctor says 30 or 40 years) to repeatedly zap him back a few years at a time, so they all get a meal.

Since they appear to be able to do only space or time displacement (judging from Blink and this episode), because Rory is already in the hotel room, he just gets zapped back into the locked room again.

When they normally do it, they only get one shot before the victim escapes and gets to live their life. Here, they probably lock the victim up in the hotel, pushing meals under the door for the next 40 years. If they manage to escape their room, they'll just get zapped in space since the hotel is infested with Angels.

Edit: Oh, I see what you meant. Yes, the point of it was that that the Angel battery farm is a particularly nasty way of feeding.

Spoiler

Show

The dialogue was
River: Badly damaged...
Evil Guy: I wanted to know if it could feel pain.
River: You realize it's screaming...

Which to me implies he physically damaged the statue.

Spoiler

Show

Hmmm, true. I took it as a statement rather than a rhetorical question, but I can see your point.

That said, the second part of River's line indicated that all the other Angels could hear its screaming, so even if you managed to disable one, you'd literally need eyes in the back of your head else you're going to get jumped by a whole posse of them (hence the locks).

If you remember from Time of Angels, they could regenerate from shapeless stone masses with enough energy available, so taking the head and limbs off the locked form may possibly only inconvenience it temporarily, assuming you were capable of doing so without ever taking your eyes off it (it only needs a touch, remember).

[Calemyr]

mmmmh..so.. the last episode..

Spoiler

Show

from an emotional point of view, I Think it's nicely handled.. tells us a few things we all know but bear reminding such as the Doctor's need for companions..and the fact that he's actively engaged in deleting himself from stuff (apart from Unit's records, apparently..)
and it was sort of closing a circle between Amy, Rory and the Doctor without going epic, which was a nice touch.
Plotwise this episode is so, so full of stupid that I'm choosing to erase the stupid and just write timey-wimey-wibly-wobbly over it.
The Statue of Liberty thing is just too dumb for words..reminds me of Legolas skating down a set of stairs on a shield.
I can just picture Moffat giggling away at the sheer absurdness of it and at getting away with it because he can.
that has got to be the first Angel that has people inside it (I do think there are people in and around the Statue at all times..) also..it's not made of stone, unlike every other Angel, and it's on a fracking ISLAND!!! there are bound to be people stationed there... There are always planes that fly over it, ships that sail past it, people that look at it etc etc.. hell.. the only reason it wouldn't appear on a radar when it started moving is that radars didn't exist back then...just not doable..yet they did it anyway.
The whole.. "they're going to go back in time in a place where you can't land a Tardis and it's fixed".. is so patently stupid that you can only wave it away by telling yourself "they've got to make the Ponds un-reachable somehow"..except this is not how...
The Doctor could just go anywhere on earth during those 50-ish years they spent in New York and send them a bloody postcard!.. and they could always travel outside New York and meet him somewhere else...or he could borrow his wife's vortex thing..
...and can someone please explain to me why New York should have all these time paradoxes/vortexes/fractures when the Doctor hardly ever goes there and the Pond's actions have deleted the Angels' from the place.. yet London is perfectly safe to travel to and from despite being the single place in the universe where the Doctor hangs out most and where any race of time-traveling aliens have at some point or another caused havoc???
Also..are we sure there haven't been episodes set in New York after 1938 but before 2012? that seems unlikely to me..but I know next to nothing about old-who.

So.. as a stand-alone episode it works, if you keep in mind that it focusses on emotions, on a farewell, on acting skills and on giving some kind of a new start to the Doctor.
as part of a series, in a somewhat well defined universe with certain rules and a canon to which it should be subjected.. it's a trainwreck which flies in the face of half of what we know about how the who-niverse works...because it just chooses to ignore the dozens of options the Doctor has or would have to circumvent this particular fixed moment in time and stay in touch with the Ponds or even bring them back..options given to him both in canon and by simple common sense.

I may choose to re-watch it sometimes in the future because I like the Ponds..certainly not for it's plot, episode-worthiness or drammatic impact..definitely not to use it as reference for anything Doctor-related.. I just don't know that this episode can be used as canon source for anything other than "where did the Ponds end up?.. oh, yeah..there"

I mentioned this in detail in the last page, but:

Spoiler

Show

The whole deal with the Ponds is not that he can't visit them. He's the Doctor, he probably already has a dozen ways worked out to do that. The problem is that he can't afford to. Paradoxes are bad, and the Ponds just created a dozy of one with that stunt. If the Doctor does anything to screw with the fixed point, time bursts at the seams. It's holding right now and that's good. That means that anything and everything the Doctor may have already done in that time frame is okay, but any new additions and POP! Any extra-temporal meddling that could effect their life span, even a postcard without a meeting location, runs that risk. He can't screw with that fixed point at all, and that means ANYTHING before it.

As for why New York is a bad place, temporally, it's because of Winter Quay, not the Doctor. There is a constant stream of temporal distortions, because the Angels have evolved from hunters to farmers.

And how would you have removed them? The Doctor was always going to go back to them until they died, were placed out of his reach, or made to costly to reach, and they couldn't say no to him. Given that established dynamic, how do you cut them off?

I mean, they clearly didn't go back to Winter Quay. If they had, the paradox would have resolved and the Doctor would be free to spring 'em again. They lived long lives in New York, and lives happy enough that even at the end of it all they still wanted to be buried together. That's a good ending.

[Eakin]

Spoiler

Show

What new powers? The only thing they really did (Liberty not withstanding) was display a bit more control over their existing time-toss attack.

What they did here was simple: Throw the prey into the Quay, then herd them to see their own death locking them into a time-loop. Then they could keep throwing them back in time multiple times, milking each person for more and more time energy (is that the same Artron energy?) in a controlled environment. Where Angels could stop in for a snack whenever they liked.

The Doctor said it best: Winter Quay is a farm. An extremely clever way to accumulate and preserve food in a safe, accessible, and controlled manner. Seriously, all they did was use their abilities more cleverly than they have previously.

And what did they do in Flesh and Stone/Time of Angels? One of them killed a target in order to obtain a method of communication, and it took him three separate tries before he figured out how to get something usable. He didn't use his traditional attack because he needed the corpse more than he needed food. I'll grant that the "image of an Angel is an Angel" aspect was new, but it struck me as a logical conclusion: if "evolution" produced them, that must mean they can propagate in some way, and the classical method probably isn't going to work in their case. That new trick explains a lot and only serves to make them more dangerous, but it isn't out of left field. It's just a logical extension of their previously defined nature.

Re: Angel Power creep:

Spoiler

Show

I think the problem is how quickly they've picked up new powers. Blink was cool because it was smart about using the timey-wimeiness of the show's premise to create a neat solution to the problem it presented. The angels had a creepy and cool gimmick (what if statues moved when you weren't watching?) and an original way of killing which also happened to tie into the smart use of time travel thing. The angels were pretty low powered on the Who villain scale compared to cybermen, Daleks, etc. They were also portrayed as monsters who were trying to trick the humans into giving them the TARDIS as a food source, but not especially evil.

Sum up, they could:
-Move quickly if you weren't looking at them, invincible when you are
-Throw you through time to feed
-Turn off lights
-Camouflage

Unless I'm forgetting something that's all they do in Blink

Flash forward to S5 and everyone's super excited about the Angels returning because Blink was a great episode. I think the writers wanted to make sure they would still be scary even with the Doctor around but they went overboard. Take everything above and add:

-Pictures of them become them
-Look into their eyes and you're mind controlled
-Can kill you WITHOUT throwing you through time
-Can feed off of all sorts of other kinds of energy too. Maybe those 4 Angels from Blink should have just opened up a power line under London or something
-They can steal your brain/voice
-Can hibernate forever until the find new power sources
-They can choose to turn to stone if they think you MIGHT be watching them (Amy walking blindly through the forest)
-They're actively evil bastards instead of just being hungry monsters

All this in their second appearance ever. That's a BIG change

Now in Angels Take Manhattan add the ability to feed off of you by moving you in space, not time. Why don't they always do that? Or warp the random people they stalk to the bottom of the ocean instead of giving them the rest of their lives to retroactively plan revenge? Plus a bunch of the other powers from the two-parter didn't show up when they logically should have (the pictures of the statue of liberty = angels thing). And the statue of liberty angel was a cool visual the first time we saw it but then did nothing except be a backdrop.

So yeah, that's why I think a lot of people like the Blink Angels but think they've changed too much.

[Reluctance]

Re: Angel Power creep:

Spoiler

Show

*snip*

Spoiler

Show

On top of all this, their ability to affect more forms of statues (the mother/child pairing, not to mention the big dame, makes me wonder why every other angel goes for the same form), and their pack tactics in every non-Blink episode. Even if you assume that they're the most civicly-minded creatures in the universe, they still have to balance the benefits of cooperation with the risks of accidentally stunning your ally or permastunning each other. While the idea is that a large pack of angels should be scarier than a solo one (see: the catacombs, the hotel chase scenes), the real effect would be incapacitating everybody other than the rear ranks. The hotel scenes in particular had too many angels in obvious sight of other ones.

[Eakin]

Spoiler

Show

On top of all this, their ability to affect more forms of statues (the mother/child pairing, not to mention the big dame, makes me wonder why every other angel goes for the same form), and their pack tactics in every non-Blink episode. Even if you assume that they're the most civicly-minded creatures in the universe, they still have to balance the benefits of cooperation with the risks of accidentally stunning your ally or permastunning each other. While the idea is that a large pack of angels should be scarier than a solo one (see: the catacombs, the hotel chase scenes), the real effect would be incapacitating everybody other than the rear ranks. The hotel scenes in particular had too many angels in obvious sight of other ones.

Spoiler

Show

I always thought that they'd be best off in small packs. Or taking a form without eyes

Also, Gallifreian schoolyard bullies were probably really bad.

Spoiler

Show

B: Hey Jimmy, I have a note written from my future self here, wanna see what it says?
J: Aww, c'mon Billy! Just lay off me already.
B: Nope! It says 'At 12:27 Jimmy punched himself in the face.' Now it's a fixed point in time and, oh look, it's 12:27 right now
J: Why are you always picking on me?
B: Better do it if you don't wanna get paradox'd out of existence.
J: I hate you so much *punches self in face*
B: Ha ha! Stop hitting yourself! Oh, and the note says you give me your lunch money now.

[Xondoure]

Spoiler

Show

I always thought that they'd be best off in small packs. Or taking a form without eyes

Also, Gallifreian schoolyard bullies were probably really bad.

Spoiler

Show

B: Hey Jimmy, I have a note written from my future self here, wanna see what it says?
J: Aww, c'mon Billy! Just lay off me already.
B: Nope! It says 'At 12:27 Jimmy punched himself in the face.' Now it's a fixed point in time and, oh look, it's 12:27 right now
J: Why are you always picking on me?
B: Better do it if you don't wanna get paradox'd out of existence.
J: I hate you so much *punches self in face*
B: Ha ha! Stop hitting yourself! Oh, and the note says you give me your lunch money now.

Spoiler

Show

And then the nerd wisens up: Looks like you'll have to lie when you write that note otherwise the paradox is on you.

[Kato]

Spoiler

Show

-Pictures of them become them
-Look into their eyes and you're mind controlled
-Can kill you WITHOUT throwing you through time
-Can feed off of all sorts of other kinds of energy too. Maybe those 4 Angels from Blink should have just opened up a power line under London or something
-They can steal your brain/voice
-Can hibernate forever until the find new power sources
-They can choose to turn to stone if they think you MIGHT be watching them (Amy walking blindly through the forest)
-They're actively evil bastards instead of just being hungry monsters

Really, for about all of this but the first two point that's not really new powers or anything...
The second is kind of the first, but... admittedly more stupid.
Wow, they can kill you, really? That is an amazing power! I wish I was able to do that...
When did they feed of anything but time energy? It's been a while, so maybe I forgot something there but I don't think so.
Steal your brain? Didn't they "merely" take his vocal cords.
They are statues. Yeah, they never said they were able to stay still forever but I took it it fits with them being statues who stand still for like ever.
Being a bastard is not really a new power. And... how are they just evil bastards instead of merely hungry? (At least in the two parter. In Manhattan I'd agree what with their farm)


Overall, yes, they worked much better in Blink than any time later and few of the things they changed really makes much sense but I'm just saying some of your points don't make sense (to me)

[CelestialStick]

Yeah, my local PBS station normally only did the big fund-raising pledge drives a couple or so times a year, but sometime around 1980 apparantly they were getting good ratings with Doctor Who, so they decided that it would be a good program to use for fund-raising on a regular basis.

It probably wasn't quite as bad as I've made it sound. I may not have the details exactly right--after all, it's been 30 years--but I think what was happening was that they were showing an episode of Doctor Who in the afternoons after school, and that episode wasn't interrupted by fund-raising except during their big pledge drives. But they were showing a big block of episodes all day Saturday, and started interrupting those for fund-raising all the time. The thing was, that happened about the same time I went away to college. I didn't get to see the episoded shown on weekday afternoons, but I usually came home on the weekends, so I would get to see the episoded shown on Saturdays, which were the ones being butchered. I gradually lost interest in watching them that way. I can't even remember exactly when I stopped watching, but it was sometime during Davison's run. I do remember watching a few episodes that had Turlough in them, including The Five Doctors, but I don't remember watching any with Peri (and as a straight college-age male, I certainly would have remembered Peri) so it guess it was sometime in 1984 (by that time, the local PBS station had caught up with current episodes--instead of being a couple of years behind, I think we were getting stories just a couple of months or so after the UK).

Peri showed up in Planet of Fire, the where the Master died (at least apparently) as the Peter Davison Doctor let him get burned up after the healing fire turned back into regular fire, and where Turlough and Kamelion departed. At the end of the next episode, the Caves of Androzani, the Peter Davison Doctor died and regenerated into the Colin Baker Doctor, so Peri didn't actually travel with the Peter Davison Doctor long.

Peri was one of the generation of Doctor companions who was basically may age: she was born in 1962, about two years after me. Sarah Sutton, who played Nyssa, and Matthew Waterhouse, who played Adric, were born in 1961. Technically, since the Baby Boom generation ran from 1946 through 1964, Janet Fielding, who played Tegan, is part of my generation too, about the same age as the older of my two brothers. Oddly enough, I always though of Tegan as being a bit younger than I was, and Nyssa and Adric quite a bit younger. Even Peter Davison, who was born in 1951, would qualify as a Baby Boomer if he'd been born in America. The same can be said of Louise Jamison, who played Leela, and Lalla Ward, the second Romana, both born in 1950, and Mary Tamm, the first Romana, born in 1950. Heck, even Katy Manning, who played Jo Grant, was born in 1946, but in America at least, the Baby Boom lasted so long that by the time it was done, some of the first Baby Boomers were having some of the last Baby Boomers. Oh, I see that Sophie Aldred, who played Ace, is roughly my age too, having been born in 1962, but even though she's two years younger than I am, I thought of her as being significantly younger.

I just went to look up Sylvester McCoy's birth year (1943--too old for the Baby Boom) and discovered that he's going to play Radagast the Brown in The Hobbit!! Awesome! Outstanding! Bravo!!

Ah, I see Paul McGann is almost exactly a year older than I am, making him the first Doctor to be basically my age. Eccleston is a bit more than 3 years younger. Tennant, at nearly 11 years younger, is farther from my age than Peter Davison, and Matt Smith, at 22 years younger, if the first Doctor young enough to be my son.

[Hopeless]

Yeah, as many have said... The Liberty Angel was pretty dumb idea for many reasons... If she had caught the Ponds when they were falling... that would have been a decent twist.

I assumed that was a trick intended to let the other angels catch up but with two of them upstairs and the doctor and river using the fire escape they couldn't do anything about it.
I wonder they would remember the doctor wouldn't they?

Yeah, even with the "River did it earlier" excuse it still doesn't really work that well... neither does River going crazy over it... so what, does it mean he loses an entire regeneration or what?

Actually like when Doc 10 used some of his energy to get his TARDIS functional after they made that first trip to Pete's world back in nu who season 2 i think he just sacrificed a few years to heal River and River didn't care for it at all!

Anybody remember that two parter where the Daleks were in Manhatten?

It was before the universe was reset but would that have been responsible for some of the problems in the area?

[Hopeless]

Oh, I see that Sophie Aldred, who played Ace, is roughly my age too, having been born in 1962, but even though she's two years younger than I am, I thought of her as being significantly younger.

NO! I thought she was younger than me and I was born a few months before the moon landing!!!

[CelestialStick]

NO! I thought she was younger than me and I was born a few months before the moon landing!!!

I remember the moon landing, and wondering what he meant by "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." Only decades later when they cleaned up his transmission did I realize that he'd actually said, "One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."

Sophie was very attractive in those days, so don't fret that she's a few years older than you.

Okay, here's my take on the last Who episode. I'll warn in advance that I didn't much care for it, so don't read if you thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Spoiler

Show

The idea of creatures that can stand motionless and disguise themselves as angel statues until they're ready to pounce on your is creepy fun. The idea of creatures that literally CANNOT move if someone merely looks at them is not only stupid, but arguably the single stupidest creature idea in the whole run of Doctor Who since 1963. [I say "arguably" because it's possible that someone could find an earlier creature, especially from the early years of the show before Jon Pertwee where my episode coverage is spotty, that has an even stupider idea behind it.

So take the stupidest creature idea in all of Who history, then add a plot with so many holes that there's more hole than plot, and you have one of the worst episodes in Who history. I mean they can't change something because they read it in a book? What errant nonsense. The Doctor routinely changes the events of history that he and others have read in books. [Only in a Patrick Troughton story line, where a character had the ability to make history by writing it could the Doctor get in trouble with written history, and I'm not sure that's one of the better Troughton-era ideas even in that limited form.] Then of course there's the fact that Amy DID change history by going back with Rory. And hello?! DOESN'T ANYONE REMEMBER THAT RORY IS AN AUTON?! He stood watch for two THOUSAND years without aging. He won't age from 1918 to 1938 or whatever it was. Heck, he's actually a MACHINE, not a living being, so lifelike or not, he shouldn't be able to feed the stupidest-concept in Who history creatures in the first place.

Were it not for the engaging way that Matt Smith, Karen Gillan, and Alex Kingston play the Dotor, Amy Pond, and River Song, the episode would have been a complete bust. I really liked Amy, but because of the stupidity of the creature concept and the glaring plot holes, I felt almost nothing when she ... didn't die but joined Rory in the past. They've got people who can write good characters--now they need to hire someone who can write good stories.

[Brother Oni]

The idea of creatures that can stand motionless and disguise themselves as angel statues until they're ready to pounce on your is creepy fun. The idea of creatures that literally CANNOT move if someone merely looks at them is not only stupid, but arguably the single stupidest creature idea in the whole run of Doctor Who since 1963.

Spoiler

Show

I disagree with you on their scariness and the reason is in the title of the first episode they appear in 'Blink'. It's not that they don't move when observed, it's that they stop existing when observed, making them very hard to injure when they're locked down.

Coupled with their speed and ability to 'kill' with a touch, makes them damn scary (the Church soldiers fending off the Angels using their weapons' muzzle flashes, rates as one of the best tense scenes I've ever seen).

If it doesn't scare you, then that's fine. I've got two children who were unable to finish the episode because they too scared, that disagree with you.

And hello?! DOESN'T ANYONE REMEMBER THAT RORY IS AN AUTON?! He stood watch for two THOUSAND years without aging. He won't age from 1918 to 1938 or whatever it was. Heck, he's actually a MACHINE, not a living being, so lifelike or not, he shouldn't be able to feed the stupidest-concept in Who history creatures in the first place.

Rory hasn't been an Auton since 'The Big Bang' universe reset, although he still retains his Auton memories (timey-wimey). He's been human since the 'A Christmas Carol' special. If he was still an Auton, I'd like to see how you think Amy got pregnant.

[CelestialStick]

Spoiler

Show

I disagree with you on their scariness and the reason is in the title of the first episode they appear in 'Blink'. It's not that they don't move when observed, it's that they stop existing when observed, making them very hard to injure when they're locked down.

Coupled with their speed and ability to 'kill' with a touch, makes them damn scary (the Church soldiers fending off the Angels using their weapons' muzzle flashes, rates as one of the best tense scenes I've ever seen).

If it doesn't scare you, then that's fine. I've got two children who were unable to finish the episode because they too scared, that disagree with you.

Rory hasn't been an Auton since 'The Big Bang' universe reset, although he still retains his Auton memories (timey-wimey). He's been human since the 'A Christmas Carol' special. If he was still an Auton, I'd like to see how you think Amy got pregnant.

Yes, Rory shouldn't have been able to father River Song either, which occurred to me as I was watching the episode but didn't seem relevant here, but if you insist, that's another point of stupidity in the episode.

Creatures ceasing to exist when you look at them is even more stupid than creatures not being able to move. As for children being scared, that makes no comment whatsoever on the plausibility of what scares them. Monster under the bed anyone?

[Thufir]

Yes, Rory shouldn't have been able to father River Song either, which occurred to me as I was watching the episode but didn't seem relevant here, but if you insist, that's another point of stupidity in the episode.

Even if you insist on classing that as stupidity despite there being an explanation which is perfectly reasonable within the setting of Doctor Who, that one is on a completely different episode.

[Brother Oni]

Yes, Rory shouldn't have been able to father River Song either, which occurred to me as I was watching the episode but didn't seem relevant here, but if you insist, that's another point of stupidity in the episode.

Hang on, how is that a point of stupidity?

Rory became human after 'The Big Bang', he's been human for the last season and a half and River was probably conceived on his and Amy's honeymoon night (which they spent in the TARDIS).

Just to reiterate, Rory is no longer an Auton.

Creatures ceasing to exist when you look at them is even more stupid than creatures not being able to move.

All right, how do you kill something that doesn't exist when you're looking at it?

Fear of sudden violent death is one of the biggest affectors of morale (see the effect of snipers and artillery in warfare) and now you have something which is virtually unkillable right in front of you, which will kill you as soon as you take your eyes off it, or even blink.

If you still think that's not potentially scary at all, then there's very little point in carrying on this discussion.

[Calemyr]

I reiterate: Dominic Deegan fandom.

What I fail to understand is how we are suddenly expecting Doctor Who to have some sort of super-human consistency, logic, and science fact. Where would you get such an outlandish idea?

This is a show that includes living plastic, omnicidal pepper pots, a robot dog from the far future who uses a suction cup for data transfer, midget potato clone soldiers, grey-goo humanoid robots who are allergic to gold, and centers around a nameless, shapeshifting trouble maker traveling through time and space in a wooden box.

Just keep reminding yourself "It's just a show, I should really just relax..."

[dehro]

I don't think that it is too much to ask for a character to be coherent to itself, at least within the same season, if not within the same incarnation.

[Hopeless]

I don't think that it is too much to ask for a character to be coherent to itself, at least within the same season, if not within the same incarnation.

Rule 1: The doctor lies I believe they forgot to add "ALOT!"

[random11]

I don't think that it is too much to ask for a character to be coherent to itself, at least within the same season, if not within the same incarnation.

Don't forget that in this series, episodes are written by different writers.
Each with a different view of the Doctor, as well as different views on the world and on morality.

Keeping it consistent between episodes is nearly impossible, I'll settle for a good story in each episode separately.

I think the last one wasn't so bad, but the last few minutes ruined it for me.
They felt rushed, broke the consistency within the same episode, and the Doctor's reaction just felt wrong.

[Tergon]

Well. I am deeply disappointed.

Spoiler

Show

The Angels, pretty much my favourite villians from the new series, reduced to generic schlock horror and wildly improbable techniques of hunting. Apparently this episode's plot hinged on the idea that only the individual an Angel is hunting has to look away for it to move? The baby that chased Rory down in the park, c'mon, there were dozens of people around that fountain. The Angel that zapped Rory and Amy back at the end, by sneaking up behind Rory while Amy was looking at him and while the Doctor was looking at Amy. Do they have hypnotic eyes that blot out peripheral vision or something? Also, they turn to stone under the gaze of any living thing. There were no birds or insects in that cemetery? Do only humans and Time Lords count? As for the Statue of Liberty, well, I'll restrain myself, because what is there to say that hasn't already been said? It was idiotic from every angle.

As for Rory and Amy... just no. The Boy who Waited and the Girl who Waited, the Lone Centurion and the Universe's Memory Bank, blinked out of existence because an Angel poked them and a timey-wimey paradox stopped the Doctor from going back to fetch them. After surviving two universe-wide temporal implosions, the battle of Demon's Run to save their daughter, and the war against the Silence, they get poked to death by an Angel that shouldn't have been there for about a dozen different reasons, the main one being what the hell was it doing in the cemetery anyway. They deserved better, so much better.

I'm not saying the episode was all bad. The Angels' time farm was actually a brilliantly clever concept, and I thought the way Matt Smith played it was beautiful. We got to see that anger I've talked about before that I think defines his version of the Doctor so well. Rory and Amy did sell the swan dive from the roof of the building, regardless of how ridiculous the circumstances were, and made you feel for them. Even River Song was tolerable in this one, perhaps because for once it wasn't The River Song Show Starring River Song where the entire plot revolves around her and how utterly amazing she is.

But the stupidity outweighed the brilliance. Captain Oblivious who captures an Angel and tortures it because... why, exactly? He knows how dangerous the damn thing is, he says as much, so why the hell would he try to hurt it? At leas Van Statten had a reason for torturing his pet Dalek, even if it was a stupid one. The baby Angels... since when do Angels giggle? After we've learned that Angels very specifically do not have voices unless they murder someone to steal theirs? And how do they move in the dark without bumping into each other? If they can see in the dark, surely they'd freeze each other, and if they can't, all Rory has to do to dodge them is stand in the corner and let them run around like idiots. The pointless setting in New York which, near as I can tell, was only done in that city so we could have the Angel of Liberty, and oh my God that was so idiotic and pointless, seriously screw you. It didn't even do anything for God's sake! It just stood there and glared a couple of times! Why was this necessary, why?

All told, a hideously disappointing episode of what has so far been a goddamn disappointing season. I hope things start picking up soon, I really do, because this has just been... lame.

[Reverent-One]

Spoiler

Show

I mean they can't change something because they read it in a book? What errant nonsense. The Doctor routinely changes the events of history that he and others have read in books. [Only in a Patrick Troughton story line, where a character had the ability to make history by writing it could the Doctor get in trouble with written history, and I'm not sure that's one of the better Troughton-era ideas even in that limited form.] Then of course there's the fact that Amy DID change history by going back with Rory.

Spoiler

Show

This. While I thought the angel's were slow to move around when not being seen and the statue of liberty was poorly used, those were minor errors I could mostly overlook. But this point is significant because it's counter to basically all of Doctor Who's use of time travel. Fixed points aren't fixed because you read them in a book or get a peek at what's coming ahead, they come from some other, unknown circumstances being right (Pompeii, the Mars expedition). Back in "The Girl Who Waited", the problem wasn't that saving Amy would create a paradox (which if this episode's logic holds, it should), but that older Amy didn't want to help. See also the Christmas Carol episode. Seriously, what the heck. The arbitrariness of this idea, just so they can kill off the Ponds, was rather annoying.

That said, I did like the angel's use more in general than I did in the season 5 two-parter. It felt more like Blink and the farm idea was a solid one. Still, a weak episode, which is shame because I thought this season has been a rather solid one thus far.

[Reluctance]

The idea of creatures that can stand motionless and disguise themselves as angel statues until they're ready to pounce on your is creepy fun. The idea of creatures that literally CANNOT move if someone merely looks at them is not only stupid, but arguably the single stupidest creature idea in the whole run of Doctor Who since 1963. [I say "arguably" because it's possible that someone could find an earlier creature, especially from the early years of the show before Jon Pertwee where my episode coverage is spotty, that has an even stupider idea behind it.

Seriously, man. Vampires. They can't chase you across a river. You're perfectly safe in your home unless you do something monumentally foolish, you can ward them off just by remembering to have a cross handy, and they're helpless for half the day. How can anybody be scared of them?

Personally, I like my monsters with flaws that can be used against them. They allow for intelligent mundane solutions as opposed to always needing some handy technobabble at the last minute.

I reiterate: Dominic Deegan fandom.

What I fail to understand is how we are suddenly expecting Doctor Who to have some sort of super-human consistency, logic, and science fact. Where would you get such an outlandish idea?

This is a show that includes living plastic, omnicidal pepper pots, a robot dog from the far future who uses a suction cup for data transfer, midget potato clone soldiers, grey-goo humanoid robots who are allergic to gold, and centers around a nameless, shapeshifting trouble maker traveling through time and space in a wooden box.

Before I start on this, I want to put something out there. Rather than pay for a cable package that includes BBC, I get my Who streaming off of Amazon. I pay per episode, and I'm not in the habit of paying for things I don't like.

Having said that, there are two major things I disliked about the episode. First, it was a very weak sendoff for characters with a strong fan following. Either gracefully let them retire back to their normal lives (I can think of several ways to allow for this while making them unsuitable as companions), or make their leaving appropriately epic. Rory getting zapped back felt hollow, and Amy's farewell speech lacked any real punch. Many of the flaws in the episode could be overlooked if it weren't such a big deal, but episodes like this are Important and deserve that much more attention.

Second, much like how River criticisms last season boiled down to how they were trying too hard to make her cool, you get the same feeling with angels. (River, BTW, was excellent in this episode. When she's part of the ensemble rather than the Chosen One, Kingston plays her very well.) It's a general weakness of Moffat's - he'd rather pack every moment with as much awesome as possible rather than pacing himself - but meshes rather poorly with villains better designed for suspense stories. Too much whiz-bang action is the antithesis of suspense.

[Friv]

Well, it's that time again. Mysterious aliens have landed on Earth, and they're disguising themselves as innocuous inanimate objects in order to infiltrate major cities. It must be time for the final part of...

Spearhead! From! Spaaaaaace!

(I'm actually going to miss trying to reference the current Doctor Who episode with my old ones. Looking forwards to Christmas.)

Previous Episodes:

Spoiler

Show

Spearhead From Space:
Part One
Part Two
Part Three

Previously, on Doctor Who!

Alien mannequins! Evil plots! The doctor trapped on Earth! And another guy we've only seen twice about to be killed!
And now, the conclusion.

Spoiler

Show

As our credits fade, we see the general staring once more at fake-general, who I think is just wearing cool makeup to look fakey. It's actually a cool comparison between the two. Very understated but also obvious what's going on., and then the scene cuts to the Doctor talking with the Brig and Liz. Their attempts to study the alien machine, which the Doctor says is part of a brain, isn't working well. But since all the globes are part of one “collective intelligence”, it's not sentient by itself. Also, it has no physical form, but can create a shell of some kind. Liz suggests the plastics factory, and the Doctor agrees.

(Side note: I really appreciate how Liz is actually smart and able to make decisions, despite her early scoffing at the idea of aliens, without being pushy to the point of caricature about her intellect; it feels like a natural trait, and not an informed ability. She adapts quickly, and behaves like a scientist, and also she and the Brig work really well together. She's climbing my favorite companion list.)

The Brig is called by “the General”, who calls off the UNIT attack. The Brig wants to go over his head, but that will take time. The Brig mentions that a facsimile of the General was made, and the Doctor figures everything out. We cut to the wax museum, where the Doctor and Liz are studying the figures. There's a surprising number of government types in the museum, but no astronauts or sports figures. And they're all made of plastic, and more arrive every day. There's even one of the General, who the Doctor examines suspiciously. The plastic general's watch is wound and correct, which the Doctor thinks is very suspicious, but the Brig is busy trying to go over the General's head, so the Doctor has to wait.

Meanwhile, the Bosses are discussing the Energy Units, which are currently creating the perfect life form. Boss gets suspicious again, and gets mentally slapped down again. To absolutely no one's surprise, the General is a plastic copy under the bad guys' control. Tonight, they plan to activate more of them.

Back at the UNIT base, the General is trying to take the globe, and Captain Munroe tries to stop him. After being threatened with arrest for mutiny, though, he backs down.

Back at the museum, it's closing time, and the Doctor and Liz are breaking in to look around. Liz can't see well in the dark, and is jumpy. Someone arrives, and they hide – it's the Bosses, acting suspicious, and even more wide-eyed crazy than usual. Big Boss knows that there's an alien nearby, but Boss doesn't believe him, and convinces him it's just the General, so they march all of the copies out the door - It's time to replace all of the government people with plastic drones. The Doctor comes out, and gets surprised by the Boss. The Doctor tries to reason with the Boss, to break the mind control over him. But Big Boss arrives, and while Boss doesn't give the Doctor away, he also leaves.

Back at UNIT, the Doctor and Liz warn the Brig about the facsimiles. Back at the factory, the Plastic General and the Big Boss discuss what's happening, and PlastiGeneral gives the last orb to Big Boss, who adds it to the life form, which responds well. At dawn, the Autons will be activated, and in a few hours they'll be ready.

Back at the lab, Liz is exhausted, but the Doctor doesn't even notice. And then a cut to a deserted street, slowly panning over a lot of mannequins, all of which suddenly come to life and deploy guns. A police officer arrives, just in time to get shot to death by a load of mannequins. So I guess he probably should have held back? Now the Autons are attacking and killing random passersby (six onscreen, and more implied), setting off a nationwide panic.

Back at the lab, the radios are dead, but the Doctor's finished his anti-Auton weapon. The Brig only has his HQ staff, but they'll attack the factory with what they've got.

And speaking of... that's right! It's time for a scene cut! The Boss has overcome his mind control, and tried to break the alien's case. The Big Boss arrives, and they have a confrontation, in which the Big Boss identifies himself as the Nestene, who have been colonizing worlds for thousands of years. Mankind will be destroyed to make room for them, but the Boss will be spared for helping them. The Boss chooses to try and destroy the new Nestene instead, and Big Boss has him killed by Autons.

Outside, UNIT is attacking! The Big Boss sends the General, who arrives with the army. The Brig tries to talk down the armed forces, and the Doctor settles things with his new device, which instantly takes down the General, de-powering his plastics. In the museum, the real General wakes up. Back at the factory, the Brig quickly takes control of the army's soldiers, while the Doctor and Liz slip away to try and fix everything alone. The Autons deploy to fight UNIT and the army, and bullets do nothing against them. Inside, the Doctor and Liz reach the Nestene's main room, and the Doctor confronts the Big Boss. The Nestene have been building a lifeform perfectly adapted for survival on Earth – which honestly I just realized looks like a giant butt-brain, and now I cannot unsee it.

(Despite that, the shtick is actually pretty cool. The Nestene don't have natural forms or bodies; they build bodies that will adapt to whatever world they want to colonize, so they can colonize any world. It's a cool gimmick, and one that I feel wasn't taken full advantage of in the one episode that they appeared in in the new series. )

The Doctor is intrigued, and chats with Big Boss for a while, before delivering an ultimatum. The Nestene believe themselves to be indestructable, though. While the battle rages outside, the Doctor threatens the Big Boss, who responds by activating the perfect Nestene – and the Doctor's machine isn't working. As Liz tries to fix the machine, the Doctor is attacked by an evil tentacle reaching out of the butt-brain. A lot of fog gets sprayed around to make the thing more threatening, and the result is...

It's...

Look, just see for yourself.

But before the Doctor can finish becoming a participant in a Japanese pornography, Liz figures out what went wrong with his machine and fixes things up. The butt-brain explodes, all of the Autons die, and the tentacles collapse. The Doctor recovers his composure. Big Boss is also dead.

Back at the lab, Liz and the Doctor roughly explain how the Nestenes were killed. The Doctor says that their race definitely knows what happened, and that they might or might not try to attack Earth again. The Brig asks for help, and the Doctor demands terms. The Brig offers a good salary, but the Doctor doesn't want money. He wants a lab to fix the TARDIS, help from Liz, and suddenly realizes that he's wearing stolen clothes and driving a stolen car. He's gotten attached to it, but reluctantly admits he needs to return it. But he wants another car just like it.

The Brig goes to arrange for fake citizenship papers for the Doctor, and suddenly realizes that he doesn't know the Doctor's name. With a smile, the Doctor says, “Smith. Doctor John Smith.”

And credits!

Next time: Doctor Who and the Silurians! Whatever could this one be about? (No peeking!)

Best Moment: Plastic General, probably. Or Liz more-or-less calmly fixing a device the Doctor built out of scrap in order to save his life.

Worst Moment: I'll give you a hint.

Number of Scene Cuts: I don't even know. I wonder if the next serial has this many. I honestly can't recall.

So that's that for my first serial review.

Now, I want some feedback! Are these fun? Worthwhile? Do you want to see more or less of something that I do? This is the best chance for me to change the format a bit around people's feedback, so I'm open to suggestions.