Seemed to match with many modern companions.
Spoilers Joy to the World grade and discussion thread
- Thread starter The Nth Doctor
- Start date
It felt very rushed and half baked. I just don't understand who Doctor Who is for these days despite liking the Doctors we are getting but not the stories.
Moffat's Who is my favourite era so quite disappointed that was the story he came back with. There were some nice parts but the story just felt a bit of a mess and the ending was nonsense even by Doctor Who standards.
Moffat's Who is my favourite era so quite disappointed that was the story he came back with. There were some nice parts but the story just felt a bit of a mess and the ending was nonsense even by Doctor Who standards.
Nope. That would be Capaldi's second season. This is light years better than what we got there.
That red banner by the thread's title means we don't need to use spoiler tags within the thread. Though I should think common sense would dictate that if you're worried about spoilers, you shouldn't click on a thread for an episode you haven't watched yet. But I understand common sense isn't at all common.
The writing for Capaldi was mostly awful with a few gems.
So I haven't been a Moffat fan in a long time and didn't really enjoy Boom, but this Christmas Special was absolutely special. I loved it. He had on display all his most overused DW cliches and tropes and it all came together in such a wonderful episode, so I gotta give it to him. And I think the reason, this time, is that the episode didn't spend the entire time trying to convince the viewer just how clever it thinks itself, it just told the story and the story was lovely.
I thought this episode was somewhere between 'fair' and 'terrible', but because it's Christmas I went with the higher score.
It was more on the 'fair' side for me while the Doctor was stuck working in the hotel, building a friendship with Anita, but I was waiting to see what the pay off would be, what it was all leading to, and then... Joy ate the sun and flew 400 light-years away to explode into a star of joy, giving people hope, whether they're trying to survive the Blitz, climb Mount Everest or be a minor character a Bond movie.
Doctor Who is too weird for me, man. It didn't used to be, I was a fan during RTD and Steven Moffat's first go around, but it's really been losing me.
I mean Villengard could've just rented the dinosaur room and left the briefcase there, they didn't need to mind-control anyone! And how the hell do you have the Doctor be complete cool with the idea of a time hotel in the SAME STORY that he brings back the 'mavity' joke? Also we're one season after the Doctor's last visit to dinosaur times, where Ruby wiped out humanity by stepping on a butterfly, so there's a bit of a cause for concern there!
Maybe I should change my vote to 'terrible'.
It was more on the 'fair' side for me while the Doctor was stuck working in the hotel, building a friendship with Anita, but I was waiting to see what the pay off would be, what it was all leading to, and then... Joy ate the sun and flew 400 light-years away to explode into a star of joy, giving people hope, whether they're trying to survive the Blitz, climb Mount Everest or be a minor character a Bond movie.
Doctor Who is too weird for me, man. It didn't used to be, I was a fan during RTD and Steven Moffat's first go around, but it's really been losing me.
I mean Villengard could've just rented the dinosaur room and left the briefcase there, they didn't need to mind-control anyone! And how the hell do you have the Doctor be complete cool with the idea of a time hotel in the SAME STORY that he brings back the 'mavity' joke? Also we're one season after the Doctor's last visit to dinosaur times, where Ruby wiped out humanity by stepping on a butterfly, so there's a bit of a cause for concern there!
Maybe I should change my vote to 'terrible'.
You do realize that was probably the most important part of the episode, right? It was his time with Anita that got him to a place where he's ready to start traveling with a companion again.
But they didn't really die, they all got to live on as part of the star.
Come to the 'terrible' rating... we have cookies!
I've been watching a lot of Classic Doctor Who lately, and I definitely agree that it's far different today.
On a semi-related note, a part of me wondered if Moffat was making a self-deprecating joke when he had the Doctor yelling at his future self "this is why nobody likes you! Mysterious is not the same thing as clever!"
I feel that's common to Moffat's work -- the throwaway ideas and characters are sometimes more interesting that the foreground ideas and characters.
It also brings another Moffat habit to the fore -- he likes to play with the idea of the Doctor on "the slow path," but afterwards the experience didn't really matter.
100% intentional - this was a very self aware episode.
I enjoyed this one a lot. I didn't give it the top grading as I was left a bit "huh?" at the reason behind all the case carriers and the messing around ("Hi, I'd like to rent your furthest room back in time please"... Directed by Alex Sanjiv Pillai) but the rest of it I very much enjoyed and the Doctor's time in the Sandringham was a particular highlight. The idea of a Time Hotel I love, I hope we see that again.
The ending was rather lovely (I'm over, by this point, the fact that this version of the Doctor is fantasy, not sci-fi, so I choose to ignore things like how the hell the birth of a star in first century Palestine didn't destroy the world) and reminded me of a humanist/womanist interpretation of the nativity I read written by Aleah Black.
"I'm told a star hangs in the sky over the bed of the Child of God, the king of kings. Do you see it? The whole of the night is painted with stars."
Why wouldn't he be ready to travel with a companion? Because a generic blonde woman went home after a bit of time traveling with him? If The Doctor is that much of a simp for Ruby then we're approaching Hybrid 2.0 territory. He was bummed about Ruby leaving, fine. But he was going to get a new companion anyway, he wasn't that broken up and he didn't need to wait on Earth. The Doctor always comes back from leaving a companion behind, he just broods about it for a bit sometimes. Ruby isn't Rose (well she kind of is in that she's a bland young blonde woman, but you know what I mean) or Amy or Clara, The Doctor didn't need to learn some lesson to "get over" her.
Courtesy of flu, colleagues off sick, extra workload and a range of vaguely Christmas things I only just got to this, already in a fragile state emotionally.
So it isn't surprising that I ended up weeping buckets.
A few random thoughts:
I generally like standalone Moffat stories. I generally loathe convoluted, nonsensical Moffat story arcs. So this worked for me mostly.
Very little was new. There are several stories involving people going on time holidays ("Let's go to Golgotha" by Gary Kilworth springs to mind. Or even the Atavachron, for true Trekkies).
The Doctor having to live life slowly isn't even new for Moffat. He lived for a year with Amy and Rory in The Power of Three.
And in just about every imaginable mythology the stars are actually heroes turned starry. The doctor hopping back through time to collect things reminded me of the pandorica story... I half expected him to return with a fez.
I agree with @jaime that 4 years is too soon for Christmas 2020 in hospital to be used in light fiction. Maybe drama and documentary, but not yet light stuff. And that despite the fact that I personally didn't lose anyone terribly close to me to covid. I was the one at the other end holding up the iPad. I imagine that opened a lot of wounds - both grief for the bereaved, and all the unresolved moral injury for hospital staff forced to apply rules against their better judgement. All so Moffat could make a point and score a sparkly ending. Plenty of ways Mum could have died, it didn't need to be covid. (Especially given current infection rates, though I guess he couldn't predict that). And he did get in a dig about wine and fridges and parties... though I'd bet real money that was an RTD edit.
The ending looked a little like the adipose returning home, but just felt derivative. And the whack around the head about Bethlehem at the end was unnecessary. Just leave the scene looking like a Christmas card. Though you could have found a way to overlay the current bomb site that is Bethlehem.
So lots to niggle at, little that was new and fresh. But new and fresh are out of place at Christmas. The whole (mostly) worked for me, and left me weepy. No complaints.
And add me to the "bring back Anita" team
So it isn't surprising that I ended up weeping buckets.
A few random thoughts:
I generally like standalone Moffat stories. I generally loathe convoluted, nonsensical Moffat story arcs. So this worked for me mostly.
Very little was new. There are several stories involving people going on time holidays ("Let's go to Golgotha" by Gary Kilworth springs to mind. Or even the Atavachron, for true Trekkies).
The Doctor having to live life slowly isn't even new for Moffat. He lived for a year with Amy and Rory in The Power of Three.
And in just about every imaginable mythology the stars are actually heroes turned starry. The doctor hopping back through time to collect things reminded me of the pandorica story... I half expected him to return with a fez.
I agree with @jaime that 4 years is too soon for Christmas 2020 in hospital to be used in light fiction. Maybe drama and documentary, but not yet light stuff. And that despite the fact that I personally didn't lose anyone terribly close to me to covid. I was the one at the other end holding up the iPad. I imagine that opened a lot of wounds - both grief for the bereaved, and all the unresolved moral injury for hospital staff forced to apply rules against their better judgement. All so Moffat could make a point and score a sparkly ending. Plenty of ways Mum could have died, it didn't need to be covid. (Especially given current infection rates, though I guess he couldn't predict that). And he did get in a dig about wine and fridges and parties... though I'd bet real money that was an RTD edit.
The ending looked a little like the adipose returning home, but just felt derivative. And the whack around the head about Bethlehem at the end was unnecessary. Just leave the scene looking like a Christmas card. Though you could have found a way to overlay the current bomb site that is Bethlehem.
So lots to niggle at, little that was new and fresh. But new and fresh are out of place at Christmas. The whole (mostly) worked for me, and left me weepy. No complaints.
And add me to the "bring back Anita" team
In my opinion, most should stay that way.
River Song as the woman in the library in one two part story who knew the Doctor well from another part of his timeline was a fascinating, mysterious idea. By the time she had parents, a back story, several main story lines and generally been flogged to death. she was ruined.
Weeping angels, who turn to stone when looked at were a terrifying antagonist in one episode, quite ruined by a range of unrelated elements (whatever contains the image...)
Some of Moffat's best work should be left untouched.
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Loved Anita. Enjoyed the ep. Yes, it was sweet & a bit treacly, but if you can't do that at Christmas, when can you?
Had some time to gather my thoughts, and I liked it. Was it cheesy? Yes. Did it had convoluted time travel that gave you a headache when you tried to think about it? Yes. Did it had political commentary? Also yes. Did I mind? Hell no! And I'm joining team "bring back Anita"
