The Doctor Who Opinion Topic (by popular demand)



  • @blakeyrat said:

    I haven't seen the new season, but I liked Mickey.

    He started out pretty lame. He got a lot better once he started standing up for himself. He was a much better character when he came back from the alternate universe.



  • Oh yes, and they've done quite a good job of such things where possible. Not unwatchable at all.

    I still find it hilarious that the BBC shop in Brighton once advertised the new release of one of these as coming out on '31st September' (and it was intentional, not a typo)


  • :belt_onion:

    yes, ass-kicking mickey was pretty cool



  • Then he married Martha Jones. Not sure what that says about him.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Which, BTW, also doubled as the World's Worst Movie Title until Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo came out.

    I would like to nominate Sharknado 2: The Second One for that award.



  • @redwizard said:

    Only 9 & 10. Watch the part near the end when they're about to go their separate ways again when 11 mentions the timelines aren't in sync. Nicely done by the writers to tie up that loose end rather than just lazily let it go as "time can be rewritten."

    Oh, well. I liked him better when he was remorseful and generally trying to undo the wrongs (see Eccleston).


  • :belt_onion:

    i actually liked martha, but maybe because she was the sidekick in the first episode I happened to watch.



  • @darkmatter said:

    i actually liked martha, but maybe because she was the sidekick in the first episode I happened to watch.

    They say you never forget your first.


  • :belt_onion:

    after now having seen every new ep, I like the impossible girl > amy > all the rest except donna > donna.


  • I survived the hour long Uno hand

    I was not pleased with the most recent episode. :(


  • :belt_onion:

    i haven't seen the last ep, it's on the dvr though.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Yamikuronue said:

    I was not pleased with the most recent episode.

    It's funny. While I had some pretty specific complaints (the entire idea was, frankly, silly) I didn't mind much. Perhaps it's because Capaldi seems to be settling into "testy Tom Baker" as a persona.

    [spoiler]The idea of flying a Space Shuttle to the moon is ridiculous enough I didn't care. The idea that Mexico was going to finance an expedition when the rest of the world has apparently turned it's back on space was just silly: I assume it's just Moffat'n'co throwing out random stuff for the sake of being random.
     
    The whole idea that the Moon is an egg for a 100-million-year1 butterfly-dragon/tribble was like the Shuttle: too silly to be annoyed at; just pretend for a few seconds you're in a fantasy instead of a nominally science fiction show.[/spoiler]

    1 Never mind the "how come it didn't get heavy until the end." This episode suffers massively from fridge logic. (Btw, that's a TvTropes link, so...)


    Edit - PJH: Fixed broken spoiler. Something to do with that blank line which I filled with a  .


  • I survived the hour long Uno hand

    Your spoiler tag broke.

    Regarding your issues:
    [spoiler] Mexico started a space program in 2010; I thought it was clever of the show to use that 😃
    Really, the shuttle to the moon didn't bug me, nor did the Mexico thing. The idea of the Moon as an egg is par for the Dr Who course. But the fridge logic is massive: Apparently the writers think eggs are empty until 5 minutes before hatching, when a fetus teleports into it. [/spoiler]

    Other things that bug me:
    [spoiler]

    • Why even introduce the giant spider-shaped germs if they're not going to be important? By naming them as germs instead of aliens, they encourage the watcher to comb their brains for knowledge about germs and how germs would be related to the ultimate solution, but they didn't even fucking matter, so my husband and I were left with questions like "why do germs need webs" and "how does a germ support a spider-shaped body" and "why do they have legs at all really" and "how did they get that big square-cube law omg" and there's no payoff whatsoever.
    • Why is the doctor such a massive asshole all of the sudden? He's not only forgotten how humans function, he's totally forgotten how to interact with anyone. The Doctor's always (since 9) had this thing where humans fascinate him and he's excited to learn how they work, but 12 now has this thing where humans are the most vile things he's ever encountered and he hates them. Why show up at all if you're not interested in helping out? I felt much better when Clara left him.
    • Anti-fixed-points ("fuzzy points") are dumb. Dumb dumb dumb. Especially since if anything was going to be a fixed point, that should have been.
      [/spoiler]


  • @FrostCat said:

    (Btw, that's a TvTropes link, so...)

    Thanks for the warning. Not going there; I have actual work I need to get done today. :)



  • Pfft. Not even in the running.

    "The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!?" is probably number three.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Yamikuronue said:

    Mexico started a space program in 2010

    Didn't [spoiler]the show say they paid someone else for the rocket, though? Whatever, it's still fridge logic.[/spoiler]

    Let's try the spoiler again--no idea what I did wrong unless it was the embedded link.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Yamikuronue said:

    He's not only forgotten how humans function,

    I don't think that's really new. See the 11th doctor episode where he went to live with the guy with a time machine upstairs, and also the one with the little cubes.

    I always thought the idea of fixed points were stupid anyway. What's so special from the universe's perspective about any given place in space and time?


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @HardwareGeek said:

    Thanks for the warning. Not going there; I have actual work I need to get done today.

    Fridge logic, if you don't know, is just where, after the show's over, you get up to get a drink, and you realize all the stuff that doesn't make sense because the writers are ignorant, or reality isn't cool enough for what they wanted to do, or just that the writers are ignorant.


  • I survived the hour long Uno hand

    I think any markup inside a spoiler tag breaks it. I had to rely on a markdown issue to break my bulleted list or the spoiler tag wouldn't work.

    Continuing spoilered discussion: [spoiler] I didn't catch that; the team that intercepted the Doctor was from the US or some such, and had to steal their shuttle from a museum where it had been repurposed as an exhibit. [/spoiler]

    I liked 11's "not understanding humans" thing, so the concept doesn't bug me, but what I continued on to say was irksome and generally made me not want to root for him. It's not a fun episode when I'm rooting for the aliens to eat the Doctor, you know?



  • How would you rank Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death?



  • Hmm. Not bad.

    ... meaning "godawful". I don't think it's on the same scale as the one's we've been talking about.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    [spoiler] Re: stealing the shuttle. I was having trouble hearing quite voices in the episode over noise from the other room; I assumed they had gotten it legitimately. First off, there's no way a standard shuttle stack can get to the moon. Second, even if there were, they'd have to also steal a million pounds or whatever of lox+lh2, not to mention finding functional SRBs. Massive fridge logic fail, so I just handwaved the assumption that someone designed and built a new rocket big enough for the job. Why not, when you've convinced Czar Putin II to give up 30-40 nukes, and managed to dredge up a relic of an astronaut that you didn't even tell how to prime the nukes until he got to the moon?[/spoiler]

    I get your point about not liking the doctor. I don't always dislike testy characters, though, so it didn't bother me too much.

    Also, I'm heartily sick of Mary Sues on that show so I don't mind her getting so upset. I actually approved of the general idea that [spoiler]"hey, something big is coming, and you guys really need to make the decision for yourself"[/spoiler]. Frankly, the Doctor's anti-military bigotry is annoying me more.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @abarker said:

    How would you rank Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death?

    I've seen that movie a bunch of times before Maher became popular and seems to have managed to get it suppressed. It shows he's always been an ass, though. 😄



  • @FrostCat said:

    What's so special from the universe's perspective about any given place in space and time?

    From what it seems, it's mostly "if you change it, so many things will change that the universe will not even be remotely the same".

    Obviously, it's just a convenient excuse for the writers to shoo off the Hitler-killing questions.

    @Yamikuronue said:

    I liked 11's "not understanding humans" thing

    Eleven was goofy anyway. Twelve doesn't really seem like a blubbering goofball - it's dissonant with the rest of the persona.

    @Yamikuronue said:

    It's not a fun episode when I'm rooting for the aliens to eat the Doctor, you know?

    Eh, I don't know. I like that he's a bit more independent and rough, but it all seems grossly out of character for him. I mean, we went through the whole Season 4,5 and Ten's god complex only to have him do pretty much exactly the same a few (hundreds) years later?


    Filed under: and apparently the universe's retribution is sending giant pterodactyls after you



  • You may need to read this one a few times:

    Night of the Day of the Dawn of the Son of the Bride of the Return of the Terror


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Maciejasjmj said:

    From what it seems, it's mostly "if you change it, so many things will change that the universe will not even be remotely the same".

    Obviously, it's just a convenient excuse for the writers to shoo off the Hitler-killing questions.

    Yes--it's really just an excuse by poor writers who can't think of a better reason not to take the obvious way out.



  • Doesn't count if it's done on purpose.


  • I survived the hour long Uno hand

    @FrostCat said:

    Frankly, the Doctor's anti-military bigotry is annoying me more.

    Yeah, that's kind of WTF. It's clearly just there so he can fight with Clara's boyfriend, so I'm kind of shelving it under "attempting to steal Twilight fans" and ignoring it.

    Re: idea you approve of:
    [spoiler]Yeah, but it just came off wrong to me. It didn't sound like he was actually taking a step back, it sounded like he was so put off by the nuclear option being questioned that he said "fuck this, you're on your own, I'mma go hang with e.e. cummings while you blow yourselves up". And that's not an attitude I ever wanted the Doctor to have. [/spoiler]

    Testy is fine, but there needs to be goodness underneath or I'm left wondering why I should root for him, you know?

    (Also, this thread makes a good test of the spoiler tag plugin. So far, not impressed.

    Link that spoiler tags broke: http://hellopoetry.com/poem/1585/humanity-i-love-you/



  • So ... we're restricted to poorly translated movie titles?


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Yamikuronue said:

    Testy is fine, but there needs to be goodness underneath or I'm left wondering why I should root for him, you know?

    I guess you have to leave it to fridge logic, or decide you don't like this incarnation. The [spoiler]"shoot us"[/spoiler] bit really cracked me up. [spoiler]"It might take a while because I'll regenerate"[/spoiler] was comedy genius.

    Maybe he was having a bad eyebrow day and just sick of people asking him to make the hard decisions all the time.


  • I survived the hour long Uno hand

    Oh yeah, I loved the opening scene, I was totally on board at the start of the episode :)



  • The two I listed are titles on English by English speakers.



  • @Yamikuronue said:

    It's clearly just there so he can fight with Clara's boyfriend,

    Is it? I think it goes on way longer (at least since Ten).


  • I survived the hour long Uno hand

    I dunno. I could see it being true that far back as an offshoot of hating war, but this tendency to throw tantrums about how soldiers are OMG the most awful things ever and he HATES them, precious, he does! is new.

    I mean, Rory was a Centurion and they got on fine.



  • There's one episode where Doctor 32164128643 or whoever is pissed at Unit trying to shoot at those ugly potato alien clone dudes, and he's like "your guns won't work etc blah blah", and it turned out Unit had already thought of that and had special plastic guns which worked and also used their weird helicarrier they stole from Marvel Comics clear the air and OMG I need a jobbbbbb



  • @Yamikuronue said:

    I mean, Rory was a Centurion and they got on fine.

    He spent like 5 years embedded with a UN military branch and didn't have any problems. In fact, half of those episodes, the fact that Brigadier and the guys under him had guns resolved the fucking plots. That's why "5 rounds, rapid" is like a 4th class Doctor Who memorable quote. (At least it has a dun dun duuuuun TVTropes page.)


  • I survived the hour long Uno hand

    An argument could be made that he's changed his mind thanks to being the War Doctor, but honestly that whole thing is kind of overdone to begin with.

    Point being, he now can't stand soldiers so Clara can date a soldier and they can be pissy at each other. Or whatever. Next year he'll be fine with them again I'm sure.



  • He also didn't seem to have any problem with the British military shooting down the spider horrible-voice monster's spaceship in that one Christmas episode.

    BTW, suspension of disbelief: I can buy the UFOs, the time machines, the fact that every villain has a ear-shatteringly awful voice mod applied-- but I can't buy that the British military can have an appreciable number of tanks in downtown London in under 10 minutes. Not buying it guyz.



  • @FrostCat said:

    Fridge logic, if you don't know,

    Thanks, I know what fridge logic is. I have been sucked into the infinite time sink that is TV Tropes before; that's why I'm not going there today. :)



  • @Yamikuronue said:

    Continuing spoilered discussion

    Thank you. I'm way behind on watching, and appreciate not being spoiled.



  • I've never liked this show.



  • Finally got around to watching that last episode. It manages to be amazing, horrible, and ridiculous all at once.

    [spoiler]
    Getting the science off first - okay, hell, maybe you can fly a patched-up Space Shuttle to the moon. Maybe Mexico actually does go into space. Maybe a creature manages to catch some weird burst of particles just big enough to let it amass several billions of tons. Maybe the creature hatching does not even make the water on the beach twitch.
    [/spoiler]

    [spoiler]
    But having germs - one-celled fucking creatures - gain limbs and teeth is just waaaay into the realm of "fuck logic". And it's not like it was even mandated by the plot - the damn things were useless to it except to kill off two thirds of the crew, which could have been easily done by just throwing them into a crack or something.
    [/spoiler]

    [spoiler]
    The ending is gloriously ridiculous. Clara crying and screaming about how the Doctor is patronizing and she won't be treated like any other tiny human, then running off to Danny for a hug and a pat on the back. Oh well, I liked you, but you won't be missed for at least the next episode.
    [/spoiler]

    [spoiler]
    The fucking kid. Really, I think that when the Doctor said "shoot her first", he really, honestly did mean that. I would. And what the fuck was so "special" about her in the end, outside of screaming and yelling about how "omg omg life is so beautiful and you're the monsters, MONSTERS!"? It was Clara who stopped the countdown anyway.
    [/spoiler]

    [spoiler]
    Doctor being an asshole would be good for a character arch a la "the last Time Lord" with Ten, but it seems like all we're getting out of it is a bunch of hissy fits from Clara. It doesn't really seem like they're making a point with this - it's more like "people liked House MD, so let's make Doctor Who into House MD". Which wouldn't be a bad idea in itself, but it totally breaks the character for the new series.
    [/spoiler]


  • :belt_onion:

    son of a.... i am going to have to watch it tonight so i can read this topic again.


  • :belt_onion:

    It's like one giant spoiler blur in here!


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    Yes--this pathological fear/hatred of guns is entirely a creation of the new show, and I suspect represents modern British attitudes.

    I'm pretty sure he actually used a gun in the old show at least once--certainly while he didn't prefer to use them he had no problem with other people using them.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @HardwareGeek said:

    I have been sucked into the infinite time sink that is TV Tropes before; that's why I'm not going there today.

    Wimp. I managed to get there via Googling and avoid actually reading any more of the page than was necessary to make sure I had the right one. I consider it right up there with Perseus' slaying of the Medusa.



  • @FrostCat said:

    avoid actually reading any more of the page

    The Force is strong in this one.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Maciejasjmj said:

    Really, I think that when the Doctor said [spoiler]"shoot her first", he really, honestly did mean that.[/spoiler]

    I thought that, sort of half in disbelief, but only for a second or so, and I suspect the earlier "you're not special" bit might've been a setup for this bit. It certainly fed naturally into his next lines--I saw it as a rather brazen "don't throw me into that briar patch, br'er bear!"



  • @FrostCat said:

    Yes--this pathological fear/hatred of guns is entirely a creation of the new show, and I suspect represents modern British attitudes.

    Haha the first few seasons seemed to hate marching more than anything.

    Anytime a bad guy was on screen, they'd play this super-exaggerated goose-step marching sound effect. (Except the Daleks, for obvious reasons.) I mean it was so exaggerated it almost made me laugh... it's like they're still working out issues over Nazi goosestepping, while the rest of the world associates marching with brass bands on parades.

    @FrostCat said:

    I'm pretty sure he actually used a gun in the old show at least once--certainly while he didn't prefer to use them he had no problem with other people using them.

    Yeah, that bugs me, too. Like I said, when he was stranded on Earth and could go literally anywhere, he hung out at a military base, of his own free will.

    At least MacGuyver, when he refused to use guns (at least for shooting at people; he used them as tools pretty often), that was part of his backstory from day one.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @HardwareGeek said:

    The Force is strong in this one.

    Loads of practice, I'll admit.


Log in to reply