Personally i wouldnt be adverse to seeing the Doctor turning up on a world carried on the back of four elephants standing on the back of a space turtle, it would be interesting to see who'd win in a battle of wits, The Doctor or Lord Vetinari.
5x02 The Beast Below (Grading/Discussion) (SPOILERS!)
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Personally i wouldnt be adverse to seeing the Doctor turning up on a world carried on the back of four elephants standing on the back of a space turtle, it would be interesting to see who'd win in a battle of wits, The Doctor or Lord Vetinari.
Just back from Whitby, so I'll comment after tonight's BBC3 repeat...
An apt destination given tonight's episode!I interpreted this as meaning that if the space-whale were freed, it would hightail it out of there so fast that it would probably damage the ship badly as it left (or it might even take its resentment out on the ship that had been torturing it for so long.) Mind you, nothing in the episode really backs up my interpretation, so I'm not sure what the writer really had in mind (if anything).
I don't think they ever really needed to feed people to the whale to sustain it. When Amy and the Doctor fall into the whale's mouth, the Doctor notes that there is a lot of organic waste there. Based on this, I figure that the whale mostly eats the organic garbage (food scraps, coffee grounds, basically the stuff you compost) of the residents of Starship UK. Tossing humans down there is simply a convenient way of getting rid of dissidents and "citizens of limited value" (since presumably Starship UK has constrained resources) and perhaps an occasional meaty treat for the whale.
As to why they throw bad children down there, I imagine it has a huge deterrent effect, as the other children above probably assume the bad children are killed (they never see them again, after all).
I thought it was great.
The whole scene with Amy in the booth was creepy though, when she saw the video playback. And she didnt remember anything.
It had its moments, but Smith is still a fantastic Doctor. The scene when theyre on the tongue was brilliant.
A little star wars quoting going on aswel. We Like.
The smilers are another creepy addition to the universe by Moffat, although, i wouldve prefered them not to be half human. Just a mysterious powerful booth with a scary head. Like like the machine in 'Big.' The best part of that film is not knowing how/who/why it exists, it just does. To me, having those smilers get up out of the booth was a bit of a disapointment.
I loved the way that Matts Doctor can be so dark at the drop of a hat. That was a fabulous scene. Especially the rant and the fact he was so un happy and angry that Amy made a human error in judgment and i really felt for her as it was like home/school where you are right, you know you are right but the person above you doesnt believe you, and its so frustrating as you know full well you are right. Again, Moffat taps into the kid in everyone, and importantly, the kids watching. When he told her to shut up, and that he didnt want anyone human talking to him while he commits possible murder to the creature was great. We see The Doctor, we see that hes not this nice cheery guy with a blue box, but a a guy who has so much burden upon him that it mounts up and just explodes in a five minute anger burst against the race that he adopted all those years ago.
I also love the fact that this season, each episode seems to be fading into the next. With the phonecall from Churchill. I love that, rather than the episodic RTD eps these seem to be creating one continuous epic.
The whole scene with Amy in the booth was creepy though, when she saw the video playback. And she didnt remember anything.
It had its moments, but Smith is still a fantastic Doctor. The scene when theyre on the tongue was brilliant.
A little star wars quoting going on aswel. We Like.
The smilers are another creepy addition to the universe by Moffat, although, i wouldve prefered them not to be half human. Just a mysterious powerful booth with a scary head. Like like the machine in 'Big.' The best part of that film is not knowing how/who/why it exists, it just does. To me, having those smilers get up out of the booth was a bit of a disapointment.
I loved the way that Matts Doctor can be so dark at the drop of a hat. That was a fabulous scene. Especially the rant and the fact he was so un happy and angry that Amy made a human error in judgment and i really felt for her as it was like home/school where you are right, you know you are right but the person above you doesnt believe you, and its so frustrating as you know full well you are right. Again, Moffat taps into the kid in everyone, and importantly, the kids watching. When he told her to shut up, and that he didnt want anyone human talking to him while he commits possible murder to the creature was great. We see The Doctor, we see that hes not this nice cheery guy with a blue box, but a a guy who has so much burden upon him that it mounts up and just explodes in a five minute anger burst against the race that he adopted all those years ago.
I also love the fact that this season, each episode seems to be fading into the next. With the phonecall from Churchill. I love that, rather than the episodic RTD eps these seem to be creating one continuous epic.
This may have been the episode I look back on and say "Matt Smith really did do a fantastic job as The Doctor." His whole demeanor, from the seeminly innocuous scatterbrained investigation of the glass of water to the fury over the corner that he felt that Amy painted him into, simply screams 'The Doctor' whithout being derivative of Tennant or Ecclestone. It is still a bit odd to see someone so young on screen as The Doctor, but he's inhabiting the role nicely. Karen Gillian is also quite excellent as Amy and is quite convincingly mad. The two make a great team, probably the best Doctor/companion pairing since Ecclestone/Piper.
As for the episode, I really enjoyed the parallel stories of The Doctor and the space whale and I felt that learning about the whale's history through the device of Amy forgetting and then working it all out was a very effective way of telling us about the whale and about The Doctor. The developing relationship betwen The Doctor and Amy is still nebulous, but it poses interesting questions, rather than seeming formulaic or poorly thought out. All in all, an excellent second episode for Matt Smith.
Oh, and the theme manged to suck less this time around. Hooray!
As for the episode, I really enjoyed the parallel stories of The Doctor and the space whale and I felt that learning about the whale's history through the device of Amy forgetting and then working it all out was a very effective way of telling us about the whale and about The Doctor. The developing relationship betwen The Doctor and Amy is still nebulous, but it poses interesting questions, rather than seeming formulaic or poorly thought out. All in all, an excellent second episode for Matt Smith.
Oh, and the theme manged to suck less this time around. Hooray!
really?
The first line is actually "A horse and a man, above, below," which I quite liked after seeing the episode. It seemed odd that no one ever talked about horses, ox trains, elephants, rickshaws, anything in the whole episode. Except the opening poem makes it clear that the people who made the show don't actually think we're painfully dense.
I loved it, thought it was great! Smith seems to be channelling all the Doctors past when I see the comments upthread. For me I had a 4th Doctor moment when he was poised to decide the fate of the starwhale.
Personally I hope that Amy stays in the night dress for the rest of the season. Very Arthur Dent. People seeing the Star Wars quotes and homages, I saw Britain on top of a Starwhale and thought Discworld.
Personally I hope that Amy stays in the night dress for the rest of the season. Very Arthur Dent. People seeing the Star Wars quotes and homages, I saw Britain on top of a Starwhale and thought Discworld.
Forgot to mention, I listened to the theme on both eps again carefully. The second ep theme has definitely been worked over, it's far less muddy and the bass end just booms through, giving it that oomph it was missing before,. I like it a bit more, but still prefer the original (I'm old school, me).
For me, the new theme is more old school. Ok not the front end horns and clash of the titans bass line, but the electronica carrying the melody is totally how it used to be back in the days of Who pre-RTD
Was the guy who was played by Terence Hardiman (demon headmaster) fully human?
I think so, kinda underused IMO, but I think that is true of alot of this episode.
Thats what i thought. A lot of the characters/actors were underused.
I love Terrence Hardiman though, fantastic actor, especially on stage. Shame he wasnt used more in this ep. He had the potential be a good Who villian.
The Demon Headmaster was shite though wasnt it, but i found myself watching the episodes after school back in what, 96/97 as they were, ironically, strangely hypnotic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSkDfNsjk0I
Sounds as reasonable as a shell around the whale that falls away when hitting the Abdicate button if you ask me, so extrapolate away.
they did the same with Anthony Stewart Head as well, they didnt need both him & Sarah Jane in the same episode.
The Demon Headmaster is a show I enjoyed as a child, and as such I wont ruin good memories of, watching it though the eyes of an adult.
So if Starship UK is a closed system (and they seem to be, since they were in space for two centuries) and the whale eats their waste. What are the residents of the ship eat...?
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