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5x02 The Beast Below (Grading/Discussion) (SPOILERS!)

What do you think about the episode?


  • Total voters
    155
Was it that short? Funny, I thought it was 45 minutes.

Considering that it's widely known that there was a small budget cut this year I'm wondering if the pay-off for the 65 minute runtime of "The Eleventh Hour" might be shaving a minute or two (or in this case four) off the remaining dozen episodes keeping the overall season runtime (excluding Christmas Special) at 9 and three quarter hours.
 
It was a 41 minute episode. I guess with no commercials, that is short, and maybe they could have made it 45, but I thought it was the right length. Heck, everyone is saying how the episode was rushed. I didn't think so.
 
The runtime makes me think maybe there was a subplot that helped explain things a bit more (the true purpose of the smilers, etc) That overran the episode and ended up getting cut out entirely.
 
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Someone said that Eleven's clothes look like Buckaroo Banzai

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God, that's harsh. :lol:

The more I think about this episode the better I like it - I'd have rated it "excellent" today.

Moffat kinda likes this business of using living creatures in place of machine workings - ala "The Girl In The Fireplace," again.
 
God, that's harsh. :lol:

The more I think about this episode the better I like it - I'd have rated it "excellent" today.

Moffat kinda likes this business of using living creatures in place of machine workings - ala "The Girl In The Fireplace," again.
also the little girl in Silence In The Library.
 
Looks like initial viewing figures are out.

The programme had an audience of 6.4 million on BBC One, with an additional 330,000 watching on BBC HD. A big drop from last week. Thanks to football and nice weather though, tv viewing was down all across the board. It was STILL the most watched show for Saturday.

It also scored an 86 AI, (about average for DW) which is pretty damn high.
 
we are really going to have to do something about the hot weather, if you believe in global warming, then it may well end Doctor Who.
 
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Or perhaps that was the point. If Liz had to live with that knowledge it might gnaw at her conscience and eventually either release the Whale or kill herself.

Absolutely. For all we know, Elizabeth X helped design the system in the first place, and set up the whole ten-year loop because she knew her personality well enough that even with her memory wiped, she would always inevitably discover the truth.

The whole system of forgetting, indeed their whole system of government, seems to be based on the fact that the Government of Spaceship UK knows that what it is doing is wrong, wrong, wrong, yet completely necessary to their continued survival. The Queen gets her memory wiped every ten years as a temporary respite from her guilt, and her Government (Hawthorne and his helpers), who presumably can never have their memories wiped (since someone needs to remember to ensure things continue to run) try to live with themselves with the knowledge that their people support what they're doing, since most of them choose to Forget rather than Protest every time they learn the truth at five-year intervals. And based on Amy's reaction, they press "Forget" not because they're worried about what happens when they press "Protest" (no one knows for sure, since the people who Protest are killed before they can tell anyone else what "Protest" does) but because they are wracked with guilt about their terrible crime yet know that the continued survival of their whole society is dependent on that crime.

Basically, the society of Starship UK is like the society of Oceania in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, except rather than having a malevolent, power-hungry government controlling the minds of the population for the sake of their continued power, they have a benevolent government controlling the minds of the population for the sake of their consciences and their society's continued existence.

Maybe I'm over-analyzing the episode, but I really did find the premise intriguing.
 
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When Matt Smith does his sort of stiff mannerisms he reminds me of somebody but I can't think who.

A lot of what Smith is doing with his hands and arms, his "stiff" sort of mannerisms, and his looks and stares -- especially during his "We're inspecting all the water in this area. Escaped fish" bit -- reminds me of Patrick Troughton.
 
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