Agreed, the info dump about Susan in this episode was rather surprising given this season is supposed to be essentially a new starting place, a point where new audiences can join in. I wouldn't expect something like that unless there was a plan to see her at some point. I mean, just when was it we got our first reference to her in the modern era, either by name or just a reference to the Doctor's granddaughter? I don't think it was until the Moffat era.
I dunno, its not the first time the Doctor mentions Susan? He's mentioned Susan numerous times in NuWho.
I’m honestly not enjoying the Maestro’s performance in this episode. Every frame they’re on screen is too cartoonish and overblown for my liking.
Also, did RTD retcon Master's genocide of Gallifrey as an event that happened across all of time or something? That seemed a little...weird.
This was even better than Space Babies. I loved Jinx Monsoon's Maestro, she just the right amount of over the top, and still a little scary at times. And they gave us some bigger hints at what our arc for the season is with reveal that what happened with The Toymaker has apparently set up an ongoing conflict with other members of his family. And it sounds like they also connect back to Ruby since one of them was apparently there when her mother left her at the church. Could her mother have been one of them and Ruby is a demi-god or half whatever The Pantheon members are? I was a little surprised they didn't do more with The Beatles, but since the casting for them wasn't that great, it was better that way. I do love that it was John and Paul who actually defeated The Maestro. Loved the musical number at the end. Anybody know if Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson did their own singing?
Is it any less weird that the Time Lords were all dead, but not so dead they couldn't regenerate, they just didn't do so until after they'd been cyber-converted?
I was just thinking aloud that RTD changed some of what the Master did towards the Time Lords et al. before that event.
This was vastly better than "Space Babies" (mind you, low bar). I loved seeing music weaponized and consumed in such a manner as it was by Maestro. I adored Jinkx Monsoon's performance as them, which almost immediately reminded me of the Chief Blue Meanie in Yellow Submarine. I don't know if that was deliberate or not, considering the Beatles connection in the story, but it stood out to me nonetheless. The overall theme of the importance of music resonated with me, but I wished the Beatles' involvement had been a bit more than it what we got. Yes, I loved how John's and Paul's inherent love for music, buried within themselves thanks to the Maestro, ultimately saved The Doctor, Ruby, and the rest of the world. But otherwise their role in the episode was lacking and the lack of use of their own music (especially during the music battle after The Doctor verbally noted the value of their music) was glaring. I get why their music wasn't used but I don't think the episode wasn't quite as clever as Davies seemed to think in avoiding that issue. Speaking of the music battle, it reminded me of the battle between Doctor Strange and the variant of himself consumed by the Darkhold in Multiverse of Madness, and like that battle, I imagine this one will split viewers. I thought it was a lot of fun and a wonderfully (even if a little silly) unique way to express a battle between two people. Unsurprisingly, Maestro is directly connected to The Toymaker but I didn't expect them to be his progeny (literal or otherwise). As for the mysterious "him" (and presumably the same person as the Meep's boss), early on in the episode, I wondered if the big bad of the season (or maybe even for the entire Fifteenth Doctor era) is the Black Guardian. Considering both The Toymaker and Maestro are embodiments of fundamental ideas (games and music) as noted by The Doctor, it would seem like a logical conclusion that the utmost embodied character would be the head of such chaos. Despite its silliness (the denouement was a bit too much), I do hope the rest of the season is much more like "The Devil's Chord" than "Space Babies." Susan has been referred to a few times here and there over the years (particularly in "The Doctor's Wife" and "The Pilot"), but that scene was by far the biggest reference to her since the show returned in 2005. Considering how the show has otherwise gone to great lengths avoiding mentioning her when it would've been perfectly natural to slip in a reference, this infodump definitely feels like Chekov's gun.
Eh, The Doctor will be part of it too. The ‘love’ aspect or some such. Rusty loves the grand stuff way more than Moffat — Moffat spent almost his entire tenure deliberately and carefully undercutting and deconstructing the lonely god stuff that had accreted. Right up until the finale, it was all about making the Doctor a person who made choices, not some uber being. It was all undone in the Chibnall era. (And yes, there’s plenty of grandstanding stuff in Moffats era, but look at what was actually going on, and where it all led. He made sure you could see it, and see it being essentially debunked.)
So it's now July for Ruby, despite the last 2 episodes taking place on Christmas day, so she and the Doctor have been together for months, and it's implied she's gone home at times during the gap too. I guess Russell just wanted to skip past the new companion stuff this time, but it's really weird to suddenly jump to them having known each other for ages. Ruby even *talks* like his old friend now, saying stuff like "you always do X" and "you never do Y". I'm wondering if this is literally just because Russell wants the finale to happen in real time, like the Christmas special did. July would be when it airs right?
My guess was that it was partially to allow for Ruby to have a sense of the Doctor without it being odd or having to wait for them to build up a rapport. I remember it felt weird in Amy's first few episodes when she referenced aspects of the Doctor she hadn't seen yet, commenting on him letting River's soldiers call him "sir," one or two others I can't remember. Actually, double-checking, the Doctor lets the pilot in the prior episode call him "sir" without comment, too, so it's doubly odd that Amy would make that observation. Plus, it leaves rooms for novels, comics, audios, video games, crossovers, fanfic, and so on, where RTD's extremely tight timelining in this first run didn't, not that that's stopped anyone.
I liked this one less than the Space babies episode. The villain was good and the Doctor and Ruby are great together but it was let down by the music just not being all that good. A important element to a musical episode. I liked the previous musical numbers this season better. I do hope they are setting up a Susan return at some point.
My thoughts exactly. And again, too bad George Harrison wasn't considered for the lost chord discovery bit, surely he was a genius too?
She's too big a deal for a cameo these days, but still, it's too bad they couldn't have had Sheridan Smith in there as Cilla Black instead of whoever it was. She played Cilla in a miniseries and also played the Eighth Doctor's companion Lucie Miller in a series of Big Finish audios. Aside from that, well, maybe RTD's gotten all the silliness out of his system by now. I'd have a hard time with a whole season/series of this kind of thing.
The whole time I kept expecting Maestro to just be another variant of the Master. I guess that would have been too obvious.
Ah, I did forget about that...unless, of course, he was lying about that. He was a genius, absolutely (and his post-Beatles work is by far my favorite of the four), but in 1963, John and Paul did the vast majority of the writing. More to the point, the general public remembers the Lennon-McCartney song crediting far more than Harrison. I do think it's a shame that George and Ringo barely get an any acknowledgement in the episode itself. I don't think we even got a close up of Ringo. I think that was a common theory prior to this episode's release. But since their connection is with The Toymaker, that theory is dashed and the character is better off that way.
Some of the scenes felt dragged out (Ruby on the piano could have been shortened by a third), but otherwise this got my pulse racing since we rarely see the Doctor so out of their depth. Didn't care for the song at the end, but everyone's doing musical eps these days and if Who had just used melody (ooh, idea for fanfic with Maestro vs River Song!) it might have seemed like a cop-out. The "Oldest" being at Ruby's dropping off at the church has me worried RTD is going to link the Doctor to the "gods", but that could be misdirection. The Doctor must have a "I'm facing an ancient godlike entity, must show my companion the ruined future that will result if I don't stop them" complex.
The original music? Yes. Mad Men paid a quarter of a million dollars for "Tomorrow Never Knows." He was not much of a songwriter at this time. (Sorry, George!) But that highlights one reason I think George started souring on the band 65-ish. The Beatles, as a live band in the early days, when they played mostly covers with a smattering of originals, had three co-leads -- John, Paul, and George. (Best example of this is the Live at the BBC albums, where the leads are pretty balanced between the three.) When they started recording in the studio, John and Paul resumed writing original material, overwhelmingly for themselves, and they started phasing out the covers, which were the mainstay of George's set, and diminished George's role. I think that's a factor in why George became so obsessed with the sitar, to the point where he self-admittedly abandoned the guitar, because it allowed him to carve out a new place for himself in the band.