Spoilers The Woman Who Fell to Earth grade and discussion thread

[The Nth Doctor]

I haven't read this whole thread, but it's just occurred to me that this year's TARDIS crew are all accidental travellers - people who stumbled into the episode and kept on going by necessity and not choice, with an initial mission of simply getting home. In all of modern Who, every companion has been invited along at the end of their introductory adventure (except Donna, but she was also invited after her reunion with him), and they've all willingly said yes. Here, none of them were invited along or even wanted to teleport off, and until they get back will be unwillingly following along.

We haven't had this sort of thing since arguably Tegan got stuck with the gang in "Logopolis", and it really harkens back to Ian and Barbara being kidnapped, or other companions over the years who were effectively swept away in the Doctor's natural associated chaos. Nice.

Mark

And Dodo, too. Everyone forgets poor Dodo.

Also is Vinette Robinson going to play Rosa Parks? In the Guest Star bit at the end, she really did look like the classic images we have of Rosa.

Also Chris Noth, the Law & Order/Doctor Who crossover we never knew we wanted, but now we really need!

One of the earliest scoops about the season we as how South Africa is standing in for 50s Montgomery, Alabama, so I think it's pretty safe to say she's playing Rosa Parks.

As for Chris Noth, Allyn and I had the same reaction earlier.

 

[Saul]

So no love for the first 15 years?

Erm....

They're probably referring to the fact that the show was off the air for about 15 years between 1989 & 2005, save for one movie. So it really is more like 40 years in two non-consecutive blocks.

Whew!

 

[BritishSeaPower]

I have to wonder where people think the sonic screwdriver came from if the Doctor didn't build them? Yes, Nine claims to have gotten one from the banana factory but it's always been implied to be something they made. If Twelve can sonic up some sunglasses, surely the Doctor can make a sonic with alien tech and some steel.

Although, interestingly, this is technically the fist sonic to not be directly connected to the War Doctor's in the new series. As Day of the Doctor establishes that War, 9, 10 & 11 all have the same programming and 12 recycled 11's into the new blue one.

 

[Marc]

I have to wonder where people think the sonic screwdriver came from if the Doctor didn't build them? Yes, Nine claims to have gotten one from the banana factory but it's always been implied to be something they made. If Twelve can sonic up some sunglasses, surely the Doctor can make a sonic with alien tech and some steel.

Just had a gander at the entry on the TARDIS wikia's entry on the sonic screwdriver (couldn't remember if the 6th and 7th Doctor's had gotten a new one after the old was destroyed in the Visitation). It refers to the Doctor Who Visual Dictionary (but doesn't consider it canon) which said the device was common Gallifreyan technology so any Time Lord can whip one up when needed.

This would actually be consistent with what we've seen with the various new era Doctor's having their own.

btw can anyone remember if the line from the 5th (think from Caves) was about getting a new one or making a new one?

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I enjoy the new Doctor herself. She's a winner. The companion cast is nice too.

The story seemed fairly typical fare for nuWho. Almost all of those have wonky elements. One of the wonky elements in this episode was that the application of the DNA bombs didn't make sense. What was the point of tagging everyone in the vicinity of the random target with DNA bombs, if not to melt their DNA, and if the intent was to melt their DNA, then why wait? If the Predator alien thought that those tagged with DNA bombs would be threatening enough to have to threaten them at some point with detonation, then why not detonate immediately? Every frustration the Predator alien suffered happened because detonation of the DNA bombs was delayed. Never mind how he thought he could use all that tech and not get caught cheating. Those Predator aliens much be pretty dumb is all I could come up with.

The wonkiness of the police behavior has been covered by others.

When some glowing energy floated away from the Doctor, my first thought was that maybe it was going in search of the TARDIS.

I didn't really buy that the Doctor could make a sonic screwdriver using stone knives and bearskins stuff available in 21st century England, and nor did I buy that she could cobble together an interstellar teleporter using more of the same, but whatevs.

Fair.

 

[Burning Hearts of Qo'nos]

Honestly, that episode could have been about baking pie and I would have loved it. The episode itself was standard fare, but Chinball's Doctor Who has some flare to it. The splashes of color, the music, the snappy and up-beat, conversational writing...it was all great! These companions we've met are pretty damn normal, and I'm loving them for that. What's more is that they feel like real people rather than walking high-concepts.

And the Doctor herself... Well, count me as someone who can't wait to see a whole generation of kids cosplaying as her, boys and girls alike. The whole time, watching her eyes lighting up and her many, many excellent facial expressions, the ease in which she steps into the role... it was actually pretty damn magical. I can't put my finger on it, but something about her just screams WONDER...it might be her eyes, and that's what I've been wanting back in the Doctor...someone who isn't tied down to TONS of emotional baggage like Capaldi was or was so pre-occupied with how damn clever he was like Moffat. I'm a bit jealous of the fans that are going to count her as 'their' Doctor, because that seems really, really special.

That said, whether or not this Doctor-drunk I feel will last whole season and/or her tenure has yet to be seen. LOL, jk. She can do no wrong by me.

 

[GNDN18]

I enjoy the new Doctor herself. She's a winner. The companion cast is nice too.

The story seemed fairly typical fare for nuWho. Almost all of those have wonky elements. One of the wonky elements in this episode was that the application of the DNA bombs didn't make sense. What was the point of tagging everyone in the vicinity of the random target with DNA bombs, if not to melt their DNA, and if the intent was to melt their DNA, then why wait? If the Predator alien thought that those tagged with DNA bombs would be threatening enough to have to threaten them at some point with detonation, then why not detonate immediately? Every frustration the Predator alien suffered happened because detonation of the DNA bombs was delayed. Never mind how he thought he could use all that tech and not get caught cheating. Those Predator aliens much be pretty dumb is all I could come up with.

The wonkiness of the police behavior has been covered by others.

When some glowing energy floated away from the Doctor, my first thought was that maybe it was going in search of the TARDIS.

I didn't really buy that the Doctor could make a sonic screwdriver using stone knives and bearskins stuff available in 21st century England, and nor did I buy that she could cobble together an interstellar teleporter using more of the same, but whatevs.

Fair.

 

[BritishSeaPower]

^ Yes, thank you! It's almost like odd inventions and cobbled together technology are something the Doctor is known for!

EDIT: Both Nine and Eleven heavily imply, if they don't overtly say, that they made/invented their particular sonics. (Doctor Dances & A Christmas Carol)

 

[Christopher]

Aw, brilliant — 1-Down in Wednesday’s New York Times crossword puzzle (which goes online at 10 PM the previous evening) is “_____ Whittaker, player of the first female Doctor on ‘Doctor Who’.” Oh, it’s right on the tip of my… what do you call it?

 

[The Nth Doctor]

Sweet. I'm rather behind on my New York Times crosswords (digitally speaking) but I'll be sure to check that one out.

 

[Christopher]

I'm glad they saved it for Wednesday. I never do the Monday and Tuesday puzzles -- way too easy.

 

[David cgc]

I didn't really buy that the Doctor could make a sonic screwdriver using stone knives and bearskins stuff available in 21st century England, and nor did I buy that she could cobble together an interstellar teleporter using more of the same, but whatevs.

Well, the teleporter was in Tim Shaw's landing pod, she just stole it. As for the sonic, I would've preferred Twelve's was broken, either in the fall or by the tentacle-probe, rather than just slipping out of her pocket and landing somewhere in England (along with the psychic paper, the bag of jelly babies, probably that yo-yo was still in there...) and she was rebuilding it rather than making a new one from scratch but, hey, what are you going to do? The Doctor invented sonic screwdrivers, never mind all the tinkering and repairs, it's not like it's a Time Lord iPhone she picked up at the store that she needs a proprietary screwdriver just to open up.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Well, the teleporter was in Tim Shaw's landing pod, she just stole it.

Ah, OK, thanks, that makes more sense. I'm gonna plea not being able to follow the accents through every line.

But she had to reprogram it to a degree so it wouldn't send them back to where the Predator wanted to go and instead to coordinates that she supplied, which is more believable, and also adapt a scanner to get the coordinates of the TARDIS that she did cobble together on her own, right?

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

Seen to, no, but said to, yes. The Eleventh Doctor once said he'd "invent[ed] a new kind of screwdriver," and it was always implicit that he was the maker, given how its design kept changing and how he wasn't exactly in a position to pop back to Gallifrey to buy the newest model from the Sonic Store.

Right up to the point the TARDIS had the "sonic builder" option installed (aftermarket of course). That came in with the first Matt Smith control room, no?

 

[Skellington]

I was disappointed when the last Christmas Special indicated that the First Doctor wasn’t familiar with the screwdriver, especially given Eleven’s line (in an earlier Christmas Special by the same author, no less). I had liked to imagine that he made his name on Gallifrey partly through the invention of the Sonic Screwdriver.

(Also, until canonically indicated otherwise, the Master did some groundbreaking work involving perception filters and other telepathy-related technologies . C/f Simms’ indignation in his first two-parter when the Doctor tries to use a modified perception filter to make himself, Martha and Jack go unnoticed.)

 

[Christopher]

I was disappointed when the last Christmas Special indicated that the First Doctor wasn’t familiar with the screwdriver, especially given Eleven’s line (in an earlier Christmas Special by the same author, no less). I had liked to imagine that he made his name on Gallifrey partly through the invention of the Sonic Screwdriver.

Well, the term "sonic screwdriver" was never spoken until "Fury from the Deep" in the Troughton era. The only mention of the First Doctor using one was in one of the Missing Adventures novels. Eleven's line in "The Christmas Carol" could've just been his usual blarney and bluster, or maybe failing memory over the centuries.

 

[Paul Weaver]

Just rewatched eleventh hour. Now I'm depressed. Sunday's episode couldn't hold a candle to it.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

I will never stop watching Doctor who. So, sorry, you'll still have to see opinions that don't agree with yours in episode threads going forward. It would take The Doctor regenerating into jenna Coleman to make me drop the show permanently. That is literally the only situation where I could see myself dropping the show. Well, that or them making Lungbarrow canon, but that seems even less likely.

Dude, I don't give a flying fig about your opinions, and I don't mind seeing them here. But why spend your time watching something you hate, that you clearly don't enjoy, and getting angry about it? Life is far too short to spend it on things that don't enjoy, that don't bring you pleasure. I'd hate to see you stroke out over Doctor Who.

Also is Vinette Robinson going to play Rosa Parks? In the Guest Star bit at the end, she really did look like the classic images we have of Rosa.

I thought that, too. I'm deeply concerned about the Rosa Parks episode, though. I worry that Chbinall will cheapen a seminal moment in American history with an alien and/or the "White Savior" trope. Rosa Parks was important on her own terms. She doesn't need the Doctor as an inspiration or an alien as an antagonist.

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

Nothing to say the Doctor didn't become famous on Gallifrey for inventing the sonic screwdriver AFTER he left. I mean, it's not like every Time Lord carries one around in their pocket. Romana built a superior model while she was on board, to the point the Doctor tried to swap his out with hers (unsuccessfully). He'd ultimately become famous as a warrior who didn't carry a gun around (mostly) during the TIme War, so there's something to be said about gaining notoriety about being a renegade inciting and resolving conflicts with little more than their wits and an inconspicuous tool they built themselves.

Answering earlier trivia: the sonic that was destroyed in "The Visitation" was done specifically because the writers were thinking it had become too much of a story crutch. The Doctor was sonic-less thereafter on classic Who, save for one story where the Sixth Doctor introduced and gave away his "sonic lance" in "Attack of the Cybermen"; that tool effectively did screwdriverey things (fitting, as the OG sonic had a replaceable "sonic lance" head). The next time we saw the sonic screwdriver was in the 1996 movie, where the Seventh Doctor took it from where it had been tossed in a toolbox, and thankfully put it in his pocket before emerging into a hail of gunfire. The sonic had already become part of the Doctor's identity long before that, and even if it gets too magic wandish at times, NOT having it is really the outlier.

Anyway with all the talk of the insanity of creating a new sonic in a warehouse with bits of alien tech and NO A-TEAM THEME PLAYING, what about the reformatting of Ryan's mobile phone? With his permission mind you, she grabbed it, and by mostly staring at it and MAYBE pressing a couple buttons, completely replaced the original OS with a fancy schmancy tracking app. What did she do? Go to the dark web and download an appropriate thing? Tap into UNIT servers to grab something he'd left there in a previous life? Or reprogrammed it on the spot as the Ninth Doctor once did by waving his hands in a cloud of nanites to ensure that EVERYBODY LIVES that day, or how the Eleventh created a slightly alive computer virus in the space of mouthing off to a bunch of nerds on Skype? I'm guessing box 3 was the intention.

Mark

 

[jaime]

Dude, I don't give a flying fig about your opinions, and I don't mind seeing them here. But why spend your time watching something you hate, that you clearly don't enjoy, and getting angry about it? Life is far too short to spend it on things that don't enjoy, that don't bring you pleasure. I'd hate to see you stroke out over Doctor Who.



I thought that, too. I'm deeply concerned about the Rosa Parks episode, though. I worry that Chbinall will cheapen a seminal moment in American history with an alien and/or the "White Savior" trope. Rosa Parks was important on her own terms. She doesn't need the Doctor as an inspiration or an alien as an antagonist.

If people have been watching/ supporting a show for decades, it would be a pretty sad day if they had to walk away. It also means Chibnall himself should have walked away before Ghost Light.

Second half...yeah...after the knives bit this week, it could go either way. It’s also lazy...there must be some British Caribbean historical figure that needs some time in the sun. We are taught buses and MLK in school. Which first necessitates explaining that America had segregation, because we generally don’t have a concept of that here. Maybe the Finsbury MP from 1898? I forget his name, but if memory serves, he was the first black MP.

Edit: wasn’t an mp. Can’t find it now, was a poster up when they were redoing the train station. Must have been a councillor or something. But anyway..my point is maybe looking closer to home would be an idea.

Edit on the edit: it’s the quote from Salisbury that threw me. He was Indian.
http://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/item124193.html