Given it was created in a Blue Peter competition by a nine year old, I personally think it was okay, not brilliant, but still better than what many nine year old's can create.
From the Doctor Who Wiki on the subject:
A Hater Revisits nuWho
- Thread starter Bones2
- Start date
Given it was created in a Blue Peter competition by a nine year old, I personally think it was okay, not brilliant, but still better than what many nine year old's can create.
From the Doctor Who Wiki on the subject:
Honestly, given that a little kid designed the monster (and apparently the concept behind it), I'm willing to cut it some slack. Let a kid's dreams come true and let the thing be, I say.
^Says the man who won't let classic Who off for having a miniscule budget 
The problem with the monster is less about its creation, than about how it was portrayed on screen and that's down to RTD and Peter Kay. The kid's design could have been realised in a far less stupid and far scarier way (within the limits of the 7pm timeslot obviously!)
The problem with the monster is less about its creation, than about how it was portrayed on screen and that's down to RTD and Peter Kay. The kid's design could have been realised in a far less stupid and far scarier way (within the limits of the 7pm timeslot obviously!)
^Says the man who won't let classic Who off for having a miniscule budget
If every TOS DW monster was designed by 9-year-olds, that would certainly explain a lot....
*shrugs* I didn't find the Absorbaloff particularly stupid. I didn't find it particularly memorable, but not particularly stupid, either.
^Says the man who won't let classic Who off for having a miniscule budget
If every TOS DW monster was designed by 9-year-olds, that would certainly explain a lot....
Hey for every awful classic monster there was an awesome one, a Zygon, or Linx the original Sontaran, or the Robots in Robots of Death, or the Mummy robots in Pyramids of Mars...
*shrugs* I didn't find the Absorbaloff particularly stupid. I didn't find it particularly memorable, but not particularly stupid, either.[/QUOTE]
I found it stupid, but then you probably call potatos potartoes as well
What? Don't be ridiculous. I'm an American. We fight over whether to call them "poe-tay-toes" or "poe-tah-toes." Not "poe-tar-toes." That'd just be ridiculous.
Yeah, and the most memorable scenes in The Dark Knight involved a character that used to be played by Caesar Romero. But the Joker was still better in Dark Knight than in the Adam West series.
But then the Dark Knight was much more of a reinvention. I prefer Jack Nicholson anyway.
But just because they're shinier, these Daleks are still Daleks. And as for good and memorable new monsters from this series, they're few and far between in my esteem. Flashy CGI still needs good writing to back it up.
Fair enough.
No, we do NOT agree on this. You seem to forget the law - The Sixth Doctor stories are the best of the series.
I bet Omaha disagrees on that count.
You are correct.
^
Another Sixth Doctor fan? He may well be my favourite too. Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth are joint for me I think. As for The Twin Dilemma, it's been a long time since I've seen it, but from what I remember, it wasn't that awful. I'm sure there's a good deal worse. Of course, if it is the worst, that means the worst episode immediately follows what many (including perhaps myself) consider to be the best (Caves of Androzani).
Anyway, my last exam's in 10 hours 21 minutes, so I should be able to crack with more reviews very soon.
Another Sixth Doctor fan? He may well be my favourite too. Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth are joint for me I think. As for The Twin Dilemma, it's been a long time since I've seen it, but from what I remember, it wasn't that awful. I'm sure there's a good deal worse. Of course, if it is the worst, that means the worst episode immediately follows what many (including perhaps myself) consider to be the best (Caves of Androzani).
Anyway, my last exam's in 10 hours 21 minutes, so I should be able to crack with more reviews very soon.
I don't recall Time and the Rani much either. But I have a hard time imagining now that anything can be quite as bad as Aliens of London/World War Three. Of course, in many ways, being boring is the worst thing of all for a TV show. And I'm sure quite a few of the classic series can be considered that.
Right, it's been a while, but my exams are over. Less said of those the better, but I've got to doing another review. I'll try for one every few days now.
Bad Wolf (**½)
Now I remember how this two-parter ends, but this episode actually feels quite separate from the conclusion, as I remember it at least. So this review is purely on this episode as it stands, not as I remember the whole thing.
We open to clips from The Long Game (a term which gets a namecheck in this episode, in case you didn't get it). A classic in its own right, surely. On the one hand, there's no harm in revisiting interesting places from previous episodes, but on the other hand, the Long Game is about as memorable as whatever song was number 15 in the charts this time three years ago. Indeed, that episode makes more sense if you consider it as a set up for this. Which is probably what it was really for.
So, the next new thing we see, the Doctor has found himself in the Big Brother house of 200,100. Which, though it's ending this year, means someone will bring it back between now and then. Curse that individual. So, things are explained to him by Tanya Branning from Eastenders, and all the while, the Big Brother theme plays really loudly. I'm guessing this is part of the soundtrack, rather than to make us believe that it's actually playing there, but who knows. It's too loud either way. Can hardly hear what's being said. So the Doctor is called to the diary room, where we find pop has eaten itself (several times over by then, probably) and they're reusing the chair from the 2005 series. People probably got more out of this intro at the time than we do now, as Big Brother was at its peak then, but it suitably evokes a sense of puzzlement as to what's happened and why the Doctor's there. That said, if they hadn't flashed up "100 years later" on the screen after the Long Game clips, we'd have no idea it's meant to be 200,100 and not 2005 or thereabouts.
After the titles, we see Rose wake up and get told she was transmatted there. And she's warned not to provoke the android. Or, so we find out shortly after, Anne Droid (ha-ha!). Rose recognises that she's on the set of The Weakest Link, only Anne Robinson's obviously dead by then, so she's been replaced by a robot with a face only marginally less human looking.
Then we get to Captain Jack, who's with the robot versions of Tranny and Sasquatch (you'll have to settle for that, I'm not doing the "human looking" line twice), and I imagine non-UK audiences didn't get it. Indeed, anyone watching today may struggle to remember Trinny and Susannah now, so it seems they'll make a comeback too. So Jack gets his clothes removed by the "defabricator", and then we get a line so awful that it challenges the Doctor's one about not farting when he's trying to save he world in Aliens of London (and it's not Barrowface's dismal delivery of the line "What's the defabricator?"):
While all this is going on, the Doctor adopts his usual strategy of waving his screwdriver around looking for a way out. Only this week, the screwdriver's being lazy and won't help. Apparently it can reattach barbed wire and act as a medical diagnostic tool, but can't handle a deadlocked seal. So the Doctor's transmat amnesia wears off, and he remembers what happened. Him, Jack, and Rose were in the Tardis, then there was a bright light and he woke up there. Good thing he's a Time Lord so we know he's not just dead, because that would be a terrible afterlife. He then deduces that that transmat beam was 15 million times more powerful than your standard transmat (to get inside the TARDIS y'see). So he threatens the camera, and because he's the Doctor who looks and sounds like a Northern binman, it actually seems threatening.
Back at The Weakest Link, the show starts, and Rose is a contestant. Rather than being freaked out at waking up in an unknown place in a weird version of a rubbish game show, Rose seems happy and decides to play to win (as you do). So she answers the easiest Maths question ever and looks proud of herself (because she's an idiot). During the questions, we also get a Torchwood reference. Apparently the Great Cobalt Pyramid is built on top of where it used to be. For what it's worth. Rose gets into the swing of it though, and laughs quite a lot. She soon changes her tune when the weakest link (the loser, for the uninitiated) in the first round appears to get disintegrated though. Another contestant tries to run away, but he gets disintegrated too (I suppose they'll just have to run another 5 minutes of ads instead). In case she didn't get the idea (she is an idiot after all), another contestant (Paterson Joseph, the black Doctor we probably won't get) informs her "Don't try to escape. It's play - or die". Though with a delivery like that, I'm glad we got Matt Smith (at the risk of speaking too soon).
At Big Brother, the Doctor is continuing to point his sonic screwdriver at the door and holding the on button in an attempt to get out. One of the contestants then is voted out while the others (Doctor aside) act like your average BB idiots. Eviction, of course, means being disintegrated (wish it did in the real one), and the remaining housemates gather around and watch it on the screen. As you do.
Then we see the Controller, who would seem to be the one controlling all this crap TV and looks all Minority Report. Apparently she hasn't beeen human for years, whatever that means.
So we find out that contestants for all this rubbish are people picked out at random from Earth, and the prize for winning is staying alive. And there are 60 Big Brother houses on the go all at once (they had to cut back). So when Lynda asked earlier what people thought of her on the outside, she was assuming the Doctor had been watching that one. How dull must the others be then...
Rather than join in with it though, the Doctor instead blows up a camera (by pointing his screwdriver at it, naturally) in order to get evicted.
Back at What Not to Watch, Jack's having the time of his life. While trying on a tennis player oufit (with racket), he insists it's too safe and decent. Err, whatever. Then Trampy and Sarsparilla try and cut his face off. Sadly it doesn't work, because despite being naked (again), Jack was apparently hiding a "compact laser deluxe" up his arse. Nice writing. Even had the clichéd "where were you hiding that"/"you really don't wanna know" bit. And then, rather than firing like a laser (ie a beam), it instead seems to fire like a gun.
At the Weakest Link again, another poor soul is voted off. Rose asks Johnson from Peep Show why he voted for the one who just disintegrated, as that contestant had banked more money (you get to win something more than just staying alive in this one then), and he informs her that he wants to keep Rose in because she's stupid. Though he only thinks that because she doesn't know the general knowledge of the period, whereas we know that because we've been watching her for 12 weeks. And - get this - everything is run by the Bad Wolf Corporation. So we get some flashbacks to previous episodes featuring the term, in case you haven't got the idea yet.
Back at Big Brother again, the Doctor is about to be evicted. Then the disintegrater cuts out, because as he reasoned, whoever brought him there wants him alive. Makes sense, but I'm not sure I'd have risked my life, as well as my future 4 and perhaps Rose's (though Jack's, yes) on trying that. The Doctor then opens the outermost door (you'd have thought they'd have deadlock sealed that, considering that's the one that potentially going to get tried the most, as the only reason someone'll be near it is to get disintegrated), convinces Lynda to come with him, and exits to recognise Satellite 5. Only now, it's called the Gamestation. And they do deadly versions of all game/reality shows that were around in 2005: Call My Bluff, Countdown, Ground Force, Stars in Their Eyes etc. And apparently, everyone watches them, so you can only wonder what society's like down on Earth. I mean, it would be bad enough to have a planet of people watching these shows in their current versions, but now there are people dying horribly all over the TV as well. Also, as a sidenote, when Lynda says that it's literally Stars in Their Eyes now, it's still in fact metaphorical. But then, the Doctor's missing one blonde idiot companion, he may as well try his luck with another. We also find out that you get executed for not paying your TV license. Which isn't so different from how it is now, either.
Meanwhile, them upstairs have noticed the security problem. They ask the Controller who unsurprisingly weirds about, and just tells them Archive 6 (where the transmat logs are) is out of bounds, and that they should return to work. Though when everything's on computer and all information is given on computer, why's there an archive room? Are we really to believe there are shelves or filing cabinets in there, filled with paper transmat logs?
Back to Jack, and he's fiddled the defabricator into a gun (apparently the one he just used wasn't enough, or maybe he wanted a bigger "gun" to "hide" somewhere), and he utters the line "well ladies, the pleasure was all mine, which is the only thing that matters in the end". People like this guy? Once out, he somehow uses his gun (which we saw had no readout, and is just a modified clothing removal beam) to detect someone with two hearts being on the station, and works out which floor. That's the stupidest thing I've ever seen. In this episode anyway.
The Doctor and Lynda have a look outside the window at Earth, and it's all smoggy and doesn't look very well. Which is why people are brainless sheep watching TV all the time. Biting the hands that feeds you, eh Rustbucket? Then, we get something that I do like. It turns out that things turned this way when Satellite 5 was shut down. All the news channels went, there was no information, and the government and economy collapsed. The Doctor realises (so we are to believe for the time being at least) that this means the world being the way it is there is essentially his fault. If I were writing for Doctor Who, this is the kind of element I'd have more often. The aftereffects of the Doctor's influence not necessarily always being for the better. What this moment does is show us that the Doctor isn't perfect and does make mistakes, and that's the kind of idea I might introduce more of, rather than the lonely god who turns up, waves a screwdriver, and sets things right.
So, Jack finds the Doctor and finds him irritable (even criticising Jack for flirting, so this being and RTD story, he must be very unhappy). The Doctor, at the same time, messes around with a console and finds that the Station is doing more than just transmitting TV signals. Somehow (it's not really explained), he detects Rose is on Floor 407, which Lynda recognises as the Anne Droid floor (it's not explained how she'd know that either; it could be she somehow knows what show is on each and every floor, or she read it off the display the Doctor's holding and recognised it as a bad thing, but it's ambiguous either way).
At the Weakest Link, it's the last round and it's down to Johnson (or Rodrick as it turns out he's called) and Rose. The Doctor, Jack, and Lynda rush to get there. Rose loses the last round and as the other three rush in, seems to get disintegrated, leaving a pile of dust. I'm not sure I even believed at the time that she was actually dead, and that was without 5 years of watching RTD nonsense resets. So, they get captured by security. Not that they've done their jobs very well so far; The Doctor, Jack, and Lynda have been wandering around the station for quite a while now.
While they're being transferred, Jack and the Doctor easily (ridiculously easily) knock out the two guards holding them (outnumbered 3 to 2, and the guards still didn't bother handcuffing them), and each pick up their magic wands (the Doctor his magic screwdriver and Jack his magic gun, as well as the guards' two guns). They then easily make their way to the top floor and the Doctor tries shouting at the Controller a bit, but she doesn't answer. Turns out her brain is used to control the whole Gamestation, and she can only recognise staff members.
Jack, meanwhile, gets into Archive 6. Now here's the thing: to open these doors, there's a handscan. So, why is his hand working for all of them? Is it just because it only needs any old hand? That's no way of sealing off an out of bounds area. That's, dare I say, kind of stupid. But yeah, in the Archive 6 room, there seems to just be the TARDIS. No transmat logs at all. So why's it even called an archive? Do archives 1-5 exist (going back to the point earlier about paper)? Jack unlocks the TARDIS door, meaning the TARDIS is harder to get into than the room it was held in. Though, if Jack's had all his clothes defabricated away several times, how has Jack still got his TARDIS key handy? Was that up his arse as well? So he goes up to the TARDIS console, looks at the screen, and reads something that causes him to exclaim "what the hell?".
The Controller then starts talking to the Doctor, and says that while some solar flaring is covering the station (a rare thing, so it's handy the Doctor's there at the right time), her masters can't hear her. Turns out these masters have been controlling the earth for hundreds of years (presumably thus absolving the Doctor of that guilt he was feeling earlier, because he's actually perfect y'see), and that her masters fear the Doctor. This may have held some actual tension if they hadn't shown Daleks in the trailer at the end of last week's episode. But anyway, the solar flare ends before we find out who they are. Jack then rushes back in, and we find out that the disintegrater is actually only a transmat beam that transfers people between the games. So why don't people remember that after they've been transmatted? And don't any viewers at all notice that the same people crop up in different shows? I mean, I know there are clearly a lot of shows, but if we accept all people do is watch TV (and Lynda's asking the Doctor earlier what people thought of her on the outside would support the idea that people take in an awful lot from a wide range of the programming available), won't anyone notice at all? And what about that pile and cloud of dust that's left there after the transmat? What's that then?
So Rose wakes up in a strange place and still we don't see the Daleks. If they've shown them in the preview, don't the producers understand that it builds no tension? No one's actually wondering who's behind all this, we all know. I've sat through 40 minutes of parody of shows that were on in 2005 and weren't Doctor Who, and it got old really quickly. The Controller gets transmatted to the Dalek ship and gets exterminated (and we see a slight reflection of the Dalek). Jack slightly flirts with another man, and then we discover that the Gamestation is also sending out a signal that's hiding something else out there (specifically at the edge of the solar system) from all forms of detection. I'll pretend that makes sense, a signal from one place effectively being a cloaking device for something else hundreds of millions of miles away, so long as we get some Dalek action soon. The Doctor cancels this magic signal by pressing three buttons (though you'd have thought that the Daleks would have made it impossible to stop the signal from the station. Just in case). This makes a big Dalek ship immediately visible. Putting aside the fact that this signal therefore also makes things literally invisible (which I'll no longer forgive, I've waited too damn long for these Daleks now), but cancelling the signal makes the ship appear immediately. Now, Earth is around 5.5 light hours from Eris (currently said to be the outermost planet), so even putting aside however fast this signal travels and how long it'd be before it cancels out, then if they've just zoomed in a telescope on this bit of space, they should be waiting hours before they can see the ship. What idiot wrote this? Oh yeah, I remember.
So yeah, then we see lots of Dalek ships. 200 of them. And finally, Daleks! Wonder how they survived the Time War. Sure hope there's a satisfactory explanation. But these things aside, we finally get to see the Daleks. And I really love the new design. Admittedly absolutely all of them being gold was a bit much, but still. I love the Daleks, me.
So the Daleks finally chat to the Doctor, and he goes a little bit sarcastic. They tell him they're holding Rose hostage, but the Doctor says he'll win. Somehow. I just hope it isn't resolved really stupidly. Then there's the shot of lots of Daleks I've been waiting for. It lasts for about 5 seconds. Still, judging by the preview for next week, there's loads. It must be a good episode, right?
As for this one, I see this mentioned a lot as one of the best. It's quite well paced admittedly, and not boring at least, but very little actually happens. And you don't need to look too deep to find stupid things. What this episode does could actually have been done in about 15 minutes. It may not be Aliens of London/World War Three levels of stupidity, but this is certainly no classic in my view. But still, as with all two-parters, it's the whole thing that really counts.
Extraordinary screwdriver:
1. Stops plastic arm from receiving signal.
2. Disengages computerised lock on door.
3. Seems to be the only tool you need while fixing a time machine.
4. Even opens conventional doors.
5. Helps "patch in the radar [and] link it back 12 hours so it can follow the flight of that spaceship". You mean your screwdriver can't?
6. Helps steal money from a cash machine in the year 200,000. Maybe they should have kept chip and pin.
7. Helps open shackles in the year 200,000. For when you're not lucky enough to have them just fall off.
8. Opens a padlock. It's a different lock, so it goes on the list.
9. Manages to be a medical tricorder, with a readout only the Doctor can see. Streuth.
10. Undoes handcuffs.
11. Reattaches cut barbed wire. Sonic welder?
12. Reverses a teleport that has already teleported. Makes serfect pense.
13. Blows up a camera. Saves you having to detag on Facebook later.
Right, it's been a while, but my exams are over. Less said of those the better, but I've got to doing another review. I'll try for one every few days now.
Bad Wolf (**½)
Now I remember how this two-parter ends, but this episode actually feels quite separate from the conclusion, as I remember it at least. So this review is purely on this episode as it stands, not as I remember the whole thing.
We open to clips from The Long Game (a term which gets a namecheck in this episode, in case you didn't get it). A classic in its own right, surely. On the one hand, there's no harm in revisiting interesting places from previous episodes, but on the other hand, the Long Game is about as memorable as whatever song was number 15 in the charts this time three years ago. Indeed, that episode makes more sense if you consider it as a set up for this. Which is probably what it was really for.
So, the next new thing we see, the Doctor has found himself in the Big Brother house of 200,100. Which, though it's ending this year, means someone will bring it back between now and then. Curse that individual. So, things are explained to him by Tanya Branning from Eastenders, and all the while, the Big Brother theme plays really loudly. I'm guessing this is part of the soundtrack, rather than to make us believe that it's actually playing there, but who knows. It's too loud either way. Can hardly hear what's being said. So the Doctor is called to the diary room, where we find pop has eaten itself (several times over by then, probably) and they're reusing the chair from the 2005 series. People probably got more out of this intro at the time than we do now, as Big Brother was at its peak then, but it suitably evokes a sense of puzzlement as to what's happened and why the Doctor's there. That said, if they hadn't flashed up "100 years later" on the screen after the Long Game clips, we'd have no idea it's meant to be 200,100 and not 2005 or thereabouts.
After the titles, we see Rose wake up and get told she was transmatted there. And she's warned not to provoke the android. Or, so we find out shortly after, Anne Droid (ha-ha!). Rose recognises that she's on the set of The Weakest Link, only Anne Robinson's obviously dead by then, so she's been replaced by a robot with a face only marginally less human looking.
Then we get to Captain Jack, who's with the robot versions of Tranny and Sasquatch (you'll have to settle for that, I'm not doing the "human looking" line twice), and I imagine non-UK audiences didn't get it. Indeed, anyone watching today may struggle to remember Trinny and Susannah now, so it seems they'll make a comeback too. So Jack gets his clothes removed by the "defabricator", and then we get a line so awful that it challenges the Doctor's one about not farting when he's trying to save he world in Aliens of London (and it's not Barrowface's dismal delivery of the line "What's the defabricator?"):
Had the opposite effect on my will to live.
While all this is going on, the Doctor adopts his usual strategy of waving his screwdriver around looking for a way out. Only this week, the screwdriver's being lazy and won't help. Apparently it can reattach barbed wire and act as a medical diagnostic tool, but can't handle a deadlocked seal. So the Doctor's transmat amnesia wears off, and he remembers what happened. Him, Jack, and Rose were in the Tardis, then there was a bright light and he woke up there. Good thing he's a Time Lord so we know he's not just dead, because that would be a terrible afterlife. He then deduces that that transmat beam was 15 million times more powerful than your standard transmat (to get inside the TARDIS y'see). So he threatens the camera, and because he's the Doctor who looks and sounds like a Northern binman, it actually seems threatening.
Back at The Weakest Link, the show starts, and Rose is a contestant. Rather than being freaked out at waking up in an unknown place in a weird version of a rubbish game show, Rose seems happy and decides to play to win (as you do). So she answers the easiest Maths question ever and looks proud of herself (because she's an idiot). During the questions, we also get a Torchwood reference. Apparently the Great Cobalt Pyramid is built on top of where it used to be. For what it's worth. Rose gets into the swing of it though, and laughs quite a lot. She soon changes her tune when the weakest link (the loser, for the uninitiated) in the first round appears to get disintegrated though. Another contestant tries to run away, but he gets disintegrated too (I suppose they'll just have to run another 5 minutes of ads instead). In case she didn't get the idea (she is an idiot after all), another contestant (Paterson Joseph, the black Doctor we probably won't get) informs her "Don't try to escape. It's play - or die". Though with a delivery like that, I'm glad we got Matt Smith (at the risk of speaking too soon).
At Big Brother, the Doctor is continuing to point his sonic screwdriver at the door and holding the on button in an attempt to get out. One of the contestants then is voted out while the others (Doctor aside) act like your average BB idiots. Eviction, of course, means being disintegrated (wish it did in the real one), and the remaining housemates gather around and watch it on the screen. As you do.
Then we see the Controller, who would seem to be the one controlling all this crap TV and looks all Minority Report. Apparently she hasn't beeen human for years, whatever that means.
So we find out that contestants for all this rubbish are people picked out at random from Earth, and the prize for winning is staying alive. And there are 60 Big Brother houses on the go all at once (they had to cut back). So when Lynda asked earlier what people thought of her on the outside, she was assuming the Doctor had been watching that one. How dull must the others be then...
Rather than join in with it though, the Doctor instead blows up a camera (by pointing his screwdriver at it, naturally) in order to get evicted.
Back at What Not to Watch, Jack's having the time of his life. While trying on a tennis player oufit (with racket), he insists it's too safe and decent. Err, whatever. Then Trampy and Sarsparilla try and cut his face off. Sadly it doesn't work, because despite being naked (again), Jack was apparently hiding a "compact laser deluxe" up his arse. Nice writing. Even had the clichéd "where were you hiding that"/"you really don't wanna know" bit. And then, rather than firing like a laser (ie a beam), it instead seems to fire like a gun.
At the Weakest Link again, another poor soul is voted off. Rose asks Johnson from Peep Show why he voted for the one who just disintegrated, as that contestant had banked more money (you get to win something more than just staying alive in this one then), and he informs her that he wants to keep Rose in because she's stupid. Though he only thinks that because she doesn't know the general knowledge of the period, whereas we know that because we've been watching her for 12 weeks. And - get this - everything is run by the Bad Wolf Corporation. So we get some flashbacks to previous episodes featuring the term, in case you haven't got the idea yet.
Back at Big Brother again, the Doctor is about to be evicted. Then the disintegrater cuts out, because as he reasoned, whoever brought him there wants him alive. Makes sense, but I'm not sure I'd have risked my life, as well as my future 4 and perhaps Rose's (though Jack's, yes) on trying that. The Doctor then opens the outermost door (you'd have thought they'd have deadlock sealed that, considering that's the one that potentially going to get tried the most, as the only reason someone'll be near it is to get disintegrated), convinces Lynda to come with him, and exits to recognise Satellite 5. Only now, it's called the Gamestation. And they do deadly versions of all game/reality shows that were around in 2005: Call My Bluff, Countdown, Ground Force, Stars in Their Eyes etc. And apparently, everyone watches them, so you can only wonder what society's like down on Earth. I mean, it would be bad enough to have a planet of people watching these shows in their current versions, but now there are people dying horribly all over the TV as well. Also, as a sidenote, when Lynda says that it's literally Stars in Their Eyes now, it's still in fact metaphorical. But then, the Doctor's missing one blonde idiot companion, he may as well try his luck with another. We also find out that you get executed for not paying your TV license. Which isn't so different from how it is now, either.
Meanwhile, them upstairs have noticed the security problem. They ask the Controller who unsurprisingly weirds about, and just tells them Archive 6 (where the transmat logs are) is out of bounds, and that they should return to work. Though when everything's on computer and all information is given on computer, why's there an archive room? Are we really to believe there are shelves or filing cabinets in there, filled with paper transmat logs?
Back to Jack, and he's fiddled the defabricator into a gun (apparently the one he just used wasn't enough, or maybe he wanted a bigger "gun" to "hide" somewhere), and he utters the line "well ladies, the pleasure was all mine, which is the only thing that matters in the end". People like this guy? Once out, he somehow uses his gun (which we saw had no readout, and is just a modified clothing removal beam) to detect someone with two hearts being on the station, and works out which floor. That's the stupidest thing I've ever seen. In this episode anyway.
The Doctor and Lynda have a look outside the window at Earth, and it's all smoggy and doesn't look very well. Which is why people are brainless sheep watching TV all the time. Biting the hands that feeds you, eh Rustbucket? Then, we get something that I do like. It turns out that things turned this way when Satellite 5 was shut down. All the news channels went, there was no information, and the government and economy collapsed. The Doctor realises (so we are to believe for the time being at least) that this means the world being the way it is there is essentially his fault. If I were writing for Doctor Who, this is the kind of element I'd have more often. The aftereffects of the Doctor's influence not necessarily always being for the better. What this moment does is show us that the Doctor isn't perfect and does make mistakes, and that's the kind of idea I might introduce more of, rather than the lonely god who turns up, waves a screwdriver, and sets things right.
So, Jack finds the Doctor and finds him irritable (even criticising Jack for flirting, so this being and RTD story, he must be very unhappy). The Doctor, at the same time, messes around with a console and finds that the Station is doing more than just transmitting TV signals. Somehow (it's not really explained), he detects Rose is on Floor 407, which Lynda recognises as the Anne Droid floor (it's not explained how she'd know that either; it could be she somehow knows what show is on each and every floor, or she read it off the display the Doctor's holding and recognised it as a bad thing, but it's ambiguous either way).
At the Weakest Link, it's the last round and it's down to Johnson (or Rodrick as it turns out he's called) and Rose. The Doctor, Jack, and Lynda rush to get there. Rose loses the last round and as the other three rush in, seems to get disintegrated, leaving a pile of dust. I'm not sure I even believed at the time that she was actually dead, and that was without 5 years of watching RTD nonsense resets. So, they get captured by security. Not that they've done their jobs very well so far; The Doctor, Jack, and Lynda have been wandering around the station for quite a while now.
While they're being transferred, Jack and the Doctor easily (ridiculously easily) knock out the two guards holding them (outnumbered 3 to 2, and the guards still didn't bother handcuffing them), and each pick up their magic wands (the Doctor his magic screwdriver and Jack his magic gun, as well as the guards' two guns). They then easily make their way to the top floor and the Doctor tries shouting at the Controller a bit, but she doesn't answer. Turns out her brain is used to control the whole Gamestation, and she can only recognise staff members.
Jack, meanwhile, gets into Archive 6. Now here's the thing: to open these doors, there's a handscan. So, why is his hand working for all of them? Is it just because it only needs any old hand? That's no way of sealing off an out of bounds area. That's, dare I say, kind of stupid. But yeah, in the Archive 6 room, there seems to just be the TARDIS. No transmat logs at all. So why's it even called an archive? Do archives 1-5 exist (going back to the point earlier about paper)? Jack unlocks the TARDIS door, meaning the TARDIS is harder to get into than the room it was held in. Though, if Jack's had all his clothes defabricated away several times, how has Jack still got his TARDIS key handy? Was that up his arse as well? So he goes up to the TARDIS console, looks at the screen, and reads something that causes him to exclaim "what the hell?".
The Controller then starts talking to the Doctor, and says that while some solar flaring is covering the station (a rare thing, so it's handy the Doctor's there at the right time), her masters can't hear her. Turns out these masters have been controlling the earth for hundreds of years (presumably thus absolving the Doctor of that guilt he was feeling earlier, because he's actually perfect y'see), and that her masters fear the Doctor. This may have held some actual tension if they hadn't shown Daleks in the trailer at the end of last week's episode. But anyway, the solar flare ends before we find out who they are. Jack then rushes back in, and we find out that the disintegrater is actually only a transmat beam that transfers people between the games. So why don't people remember that after they've been transmatted? And don't any viewers at all notice that the same people crop up in different shows? I mean, I know there are clearly a lot of shows, but if we accept all people do is watch TV (and Lynda's asking the Doctor earlier what people thought of her on the outside would support the idea that people take in an awful lot from a wide range of the programming available), won't anyone notice at all? And what about that pile and cloud of dust that's left there after the transmat? What's that then?
So Rose wakes up in a strange place and still we don't see the Daleks. If they've shown them in the preview, don't the producers understand that it builds no tension? No one's actually wondering who's behind all this, we all know. I've sat through 40 minutes of parody of shows that were on in 2005 and weren't Doctor Who, and it got old really quickly. The Controller gets transmatted to the Dalek ship and gets exterminated (and we see a slight reflection of the Dalek). Jack slightly flirts with another man, and then we discover that the Gamestation is also sending out a signal that's hiding something else out there (specifically at the edge of the solar system) from all forms of detection. I'll pretend that makes sense, a signal from one place effectively being a cloaking device for something else hundreds of millions of miles away, so long as we get some Dalek action soon. The Doctor cancels this magic signal by pressing three buttons (though you'd have thought that the Daleks would have made it impossible to stop the signal from the station. Just in case). This makes a big Dalek ship immediately visible. Putting aside the fact that this signal therefore also makes things literally invisible (which I'll no longer forgive, I've waited too damn long for these Daleks now), but cancelling the signal makes the ship appear immediately. Now, Earth is around 5.5 light hours from Eris (currently said to be the outermost planet), so even putting aside however fast this signal travels and how long it'd be before it cancels out, then if they've just zoomed in a telescope on this bit of space, they should be waiting hours before they can see the ship. What idiot wrote this? Oh yeah, I remember.
So yeah, then we see lots of Dalek ships. 200 of them. And finally, Daleks! Wonder how they survived the Time War. Sure hope there's a satisfactory explanation. But these things aside, we finally get to see the Daleks. And I really love the new design. Admittedly absolutely all of them being gold was a bit much, but still. I love the Daleks, me.
So the Daleks finally chat to the Doctor, and he goes a little bit sarcastic. They tell him they're holding Rose hostage, but the Doctor says he'll win. Somehow. I just hope it isn't resolved really stupidly. Then there's the shot of lots of Daleks I've been waiting for. It lasts for about 5 seconds. Still, judging by the preview for next week, there's loads. It must be a good episode, right?
As for this one, I see this mentioned a lot as one of the best. It's quite well paced admittedly, and not boring at least, but very little actually happens. And you don't need to look too deep to find stupid things. What this episode does could actually have been done in about 15 minutes. It may not be Aliens of London/World War Three levels of stupidity, but this is certainly no classic in my view. But still, as with all two-parters, it's the whole thing that really counts.
Extraordinary screwdriver:
1. Stops plastic arm from receiving signal.
2. Disengages computerised lock on door.
3. Seems to be the only tool you need while fixing a time machine.
4. Even opens conventional doors.
5. Helps "patch in the radar [and] link it back 12 hours so it can follow the flight of that spaceship". You mean your screwdriver can't?
6. Helps steal money from a cash machine in the year 200,000. Maybe they should have kept chip and pin.
7. Helps open shackles in the year 200,000. For when you're not lucky enough to have them just fall off.
8. Opens a padlock. It's a different lock, so it goes on the list.
9. Manages to be a medical tricorder, with a readout only the Doctor can see. Streuth.
10. Undoes handcuffs.
11. Reattaches cut barbed wire. Sonic welder?
12. Reverses a teleport that has already teleported. Makes serfect pense.
13. Blows up a camera. Saves you having to detag on Facebook later.
No, that's not true. In fact, I was quite sure this would be around a 4 star episode. I barely remembered it, but it's quite a popular one. As for the RTD criticism, we've just come out of The End of Time, and it reminds me of what an exasperating writer he can be. There's often a lot of potential in his stories and he's very much an ideas man, but there are also often a lot of silly things in his stories that make for an unsatifying whole. And you'll see I try to give reasons for when I dislike things.
You watch this why
No, that's not true. In fact, I was quite sure this would be around a 4 star episode. I barely remembered it, but it's quite a popular one. As for the RTD criticism, we've just come out of The End of Time, and it reminds me of what an exasperating writer he can be. There's often a lot of potential in his stories and he's very much an ideas man, but there are also often a lot of silly things in his stories that make for an unsatifying whole. And you'll see I try to give reasons for when I dislike things.You watch this why
Read the Writers Tale, go on read it. Maybe it will cement your opinion of RTD, but I'm hoping you'll turn 180 degrees, it just shows what absolute pain he goes through to create this series.
As for there are also often a lot of silly things in his stories that make for an unsatifying whole, you are aware, first and foremost it is a Children's Programme aimed at the under tens and most under tens I know really rather like it.
You know a lot of your complains about the plot don't make sense right? The Doctor isn't there randomly, the Controller brought him and the others there. Jack may have been hiding the key up his bottom but, more likely, he got a spare from the Doctor once they met up again.
To be honest how you can critisise RTD's writing whilst lauding Nemesis which is a film with more plot holes in it than all of RTD's episodes bundled togeather is quite funny.
I'm not actually a huge fan of this one; I'm no fan of reaslity tv and the notion that only 21st century shows are remade in the far future is just daft (but then this is Who and one thing we should love about it is that its daft some of the time)At least there's mention of the show featuring the bear...Nice to see Patterson Joseph, Lynda is fun (though she'd have annoyed as a regular companion) and I actually love the Jack naked stuff, its camp and funny. The ending redeems the entire thing anyway. Just the sheer balls of Eccleston standing up to the entire Dalek fleet.
"But you have no weapons, no defences, no plan."
"Yeah, and doesn't that scare you to death."
A tiny exhcange that sums up the Doctor brilliantly.
To be honest how you can critisise RTD's writing whilst lauding Nemesis which is a film with more plot holes in it than all of RTD's episodes bundled togeather is quite funny.
I'm not actually a huge fan of this one; I'm no fan of reaslity tv and the notion that only 21st century shows are remade in the far future is just daft (but then this is Who and one thing we should love about it is that its daft some of the time)At least there's mention of the show featuring the bear...Nice to see Patterson Joseph, Lynda is fun (though she'd have annoyed as a regular companion) and I actually love the Jack naked stuff, its camp and funny. The ending redeems the entire thing anyway. Just the sheer balls of Eccleston standing up to the entire Dalek fleet.
"But you have no weapons, no defences, no plan."
"Yeah, and doesn't that scare you to death."
A tiny exhcange that sums up the Doctor brilliantly.
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