Spoilers It Takes You Away grade and discussion thread
- Thread starter The Nth Doctor
- Start date
..or maybe it was! That's the big twist of the season!The frog was fine, but it was no Susan.
Hey, I got a kick from the frog as well (as did the Doctor, though in a very different way)!
The visual in combination with Grace's voice was what sold it for me.
Maybe some viewers are not so much "put off" on the notion of a frog "avatar" as they are by the technique to visualize it, obviously a puppet. Personally, I thought it was quaint, but I wonder if some thought, "Why not use a real frog with a bit of animation for the mouth?" Maybe the effects team considered that and for whatever reason, it just was not working as well as they hoped? Remember, the frog gestured much like "Grace" and the dead wife to hurl the Doctor back into the "bridge". It could be protection groups objected to the crew doing nothing more harmful than lifting its foreleg. I mean, when some YouTube commenters have sh!t fits from a clip of a kitten simply meowing, claiming animal cruelty, mercy only knows what objections the crew faced? "You probably broke that poor frog's leg! You monsters!!!" So the effects team was probably limited to either a puppet or CGI.
Considering the concept itself, this is the kind of thing the Doctor might have described in passing, "Sarah? Did I ever mention the time I encountered a sapient universe? Took the avatar of a humble frog. Spoke with a Sheffield accent. Great conversationalist, odd taste in tea..." Here, we finally see one of those Adams-esque encounters.
Apropos of nothing, but that lil' pond hopper sure kept wriggling her hindquarters, didn't she?
The visual in combination with Grace's voice was what sold it for me.
Maybe some viewers are not so much "put off" on the notion of a frog "avatar" as they are by the technique to visualize it, obviously a puppet. Personally, I thought it was quaint, but I wonder if some thought, "Why not use a real frog with a bit of animation for the mouth?" Maybe the effects team considered that and for whatever reason, it just was not working as well as they hoped? Remember, the frog gestured much like "Grace" and the dead wife to hurl the Doctor back into the "bridge". It could be protection groups objected to the crew doing nothing more harmful than lifting its foreleg. I mean, when some YouTube commenters have sh!t fits from a clip of a kitten simply meowing, claiming animal cruelty, mercy only knows what objections the crew faced? "You probably broke that poor frog's leg! You monsters!!!" So the effects team was probably limited to either a puppet or CGI.
Considering the concept itself, this is the kind of thing the Doctor might have described in passing, "Sarah? Did I ever mention the time I encountered a sapient universe? Took the avatar of a humble frog. Spoke with a Sheffield accent. Great conversationalist, odd taste in tea..." Here, we finally see one of those Adams-esque encounters.
Apropos of nothing, but that lil' pond hopper sure kept wriggling her hindquarters, didn't she?
I suspect a real frog wouldn't have been very dynamic. It would've just say there or... worse... hopped off the chair. Then, they would've had to animate the whole frog.
Which I'm glad they didn't. CGI still feels unsubstantial to me. Animators and the directors overseeing them, I feel, over animate the characters. Rather than have a little movement attached to stillness, it's "LOOK WHAT WE CAN DO!" and the frog would've been all wiggly and shit.
I liked the frog puppet. I thought it was charming as hell.
I enjoyed when the Doctor called him an idiot. I thought she was going to resign herself to leaving him and then whisk Hanne away to Oslo where we'd get a quippy survey of her cool life going to bands her mom liked.
That episode was brilliant. Great mystery in the beginning. And I loved the wacky scifi and metaphysical conclusion.
The solitract world reminded me of the Nexus in Star Trek Generations. Like the Nexus, it was this other world that seemed real but wasn't and that people did not want to leave.
Well, the Doctor did say Granny 2 and Granny 5 didn't get along, and that 5 accused 2 of being a Zygon. I guess that doesn't necessarily rule out the possibility of them being different incarnations of the same person, nd the conflict between Grannies 2 and 5 wasn't a subplot in The Seven Grannies.
Okay, now I need the super special episode "The Seven Grannies," starring Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Helen Mirren, Eileen Atkins, Miriam Margolyes, Zoë Wanamaker, and Joanna Lumley, with special appearance of Diana Rigg as The Peace Granny. And I need it NOW.
With a special cameo shot of the attack earrings of Granny 8.
Frogs are difficult to work with, total divas. Kermit is generally a good egg, but you should see his contract.
I don't know if it's available in the US, but we have our own 'after show' show where the ep is discussed. The latest opened with the host talking to Kermit. It can be found at
https://iview.abc.net.au/
This one didn't grab me. 6/10. It had some intriguing possibilities but it all didn't work for me. Another non-villain. It was a misunderstood conscious universe. Didn't buy the Dad's actions. He would've taken his daughter through right away and tried to live as a family again. It sounds like most liked it more than I, but it just didn't work for me. A jumbled mess. I'm glad for those who liked it.
Yep, no way. He would've taken her with him right away. He'd want them all to live as a family again.
God, that was something I forgot to mention in my review. The massive amount of exposition was boring. Lots of telling rather than showing.
This casting is superb.