Images are a lot more visceral, and tend to both stand out more and stick with me for longer. (Honestly, until I got to the end of that sentence I thought you were going to be talking about Miracle Day - I forgot that came up in S8 too.)
Spoilers The Woman Who Fell to Earth grade and discussion thread
- Thread starter The Nth Doctor
- Start date
More importantly, if she can't always control where the TARDIS goes, there will be people saying it's because she's a woman driver. There's clearly no evidence to show that the Doctor hasn't always been able to fully control where the TARDIS goes.
The tardis has always been referred as broken, faulty or temperamental, right from the beginning. A handy dramatic vehicle indeed! The Doctor did actually steal it , so perhaps the empathy between the Tardis and the Doctor is not as close as it should be. It does usually come through for the Doc.
Im willing to bet at the end of this episode they are actually in the tardis's observation lounge
Im willing to bet at the end of this episode they are actually in the tardis's observation lounge
Ah so Chibnall does have the RTD rule book and he's following it step by step.
Episode 1 Present day
Episode 2 space/the future
Episode 3 The past!
Obviously sometimes that gets shuffled around and the past gets episode 2, but it's interesting to note how predictable Who's been with regard to that first troika of episodes in a series since 2005, Moffat changed it up on occasion but even he stuck to it. It makes sense I guess, certainly early doors and definitely back in 2005 it was a good choice. "See kids we can go anywhere!"
Chibbers also seems to be reverting to the famous historical figure episode trope early doors as well (Dickens, Victoria, Shakespeare...)
It is odd because we've seen the Doctor reprogram present day tech or build stuff out of rubbish numerous times. You're spot on, it is because she's a woman though, same as the "Ha, woman Doctor can't fly her Tardis" bullshit just after she regenerated (forgetting Tennant, Smith and Capaldi all similarly struggled post regeneration)
I do love this notion that the show is suddenly violent. Who's struggled with violence since its earliest days.
No, he's not.
I don’t think it’s ‘suddenly violent’ I think it’s headed into ‘too violent’ and the new team, rather than wisely dialling it back, look, on the basis of this episode, to have gone further in, whilst mistakenly thinking ‘if we don’t show the visual, it will be O.K’. So, I don’t think it’s sudden, and it’s even not necessarily about the violence as such.
For me, Matt Smith really worked in the role once he couldn’t walk away from the children in The Beast Below, starship U.K a highly fantastic set up allowed him to show what he stands against, and what he stands for (the end scenes in particular) in much the same way as Capaldi’s monologues in his last few episodes did. The problem with this new episode is that there was no urgency to stopping the hunter from killing humans...just from getting his last and intended victim. Drunk Kebab man might be funny to see in some respects, but not one of the human collateral deaths is presented as a problem for anyone really, not once the initial ‘oh look that’s terrible’ is over with. A serving police officer appears to have failed to report several deaths...but that’s her bosses fault right? Because he never listens? Typical ‘feds’. It’s only just hanging together, and needs it’s edges sanded down, because it’s much much clumsier than it’s nearest comparison, The Eleventh Hour, or even Rose. It will be good to see it improve.
Incidentally, I see a lot of people wondering how Sheffield got its Chinese population lost in the episode, something I didn’t quite understand, but now do, and can only assume every Chinese Actor in Britain was busy over on ITV with Strangers...though there seems surprisingly few, considering that is set in HK. And can you imagine it? That Drama, not for kids, manages to handle its deaths better than the family show, even if they are more graphic. Shocking isn’t it. Mind you...it’s so predictable in places I managed to call a kiss scen to the second, and the hiding place for secret stuff. British Drama has become a little...tired. But at least it’s still trying in some areas. Very trying others.
Chibbers needs to get his head into the eighth doctor novels, that will show him how to handle the Tardis team dynamic he has. The rest of us? Some need to take off their political blinkers in either direction when we are critiquing the episodes. Of course the Doctor can hack and do things with earth tech. But yes, the finger tap phone hack was silly. Every Doctor has run into Tardis problems, but why the heck is it half a universe away?
Don’t chase the visual, don’t chase the easy beats, and yes, that costume is awful. The Capaldi left overs did indeed look better.
But the TARDIS always takes the Doctor where he/she needs to go. It even dropped her where she'd go through the roof of that train at just the right moment.
Though to be fair, I thought the Doctor was in that pod as a form of protection. #4 fell from a radio antrenna, #10 fell from a spaceship, now #13 falls from orbit.
Remember, according to the TARDIS, she stole him.
The interesting question is, like Miss Marple or Jessica Fletcher, why when The Doctor is where he/she intended to, there’s still trouble. Perivale for instance.
The TARDIS "exitsts across all time and space". She knows where the trouble is going to be and puts the Doctor where he/she needs to be to fix the problem. Kind of like a 4th dimensional Charlie sending her Angel to help.
Now, now. Much like Mary Poppins, I'm practically perfect in every way. But this is very much a trend and I'm not alone in seeing it. And it's not *every* negative opinion expressed on the subject. But there are definitely a lot of them that look and sound the way I and others have noted. To wit...
You know, I'd completely forgotten about 10's high atmosphere dive from the spaceship in The End of Time. See this is exactly what I'm pointing to. There have been a few people - in this thread and in others I've been wrapped up in - bemoaning how "now that she's a woman she can suddenly survive a fall like this" and a few that again, elide that direct point into "this would never have happened in the XXXXX era" and yet we have another example of the Doctor doing it, just a few years back, not regenerating and not having the "out" of having just regenerated and it took this long for it to really be mentioned. It's hard for me to not see that and make those connections.
Come to think of it, this means 10 was the first to break the glass ceiling!
Oh I know the warm fuzzy theory. But he only needs to stop off for milk and an intergalactic threat lands next to him. I mean he takes Ace to catch up with her mates, and manages to run into a dying dimension hopping predator species and the master. The seventies or eighties were invasion a week for the earth, then a period of quiet until roughly the noughties, with only intermittent n dimensional threats and the odd lost traveller. There’s that whole turning the earth inside out thing of course, but it got better. Still maybe it would have shaken the spiders out.
You can see why he has a bad rep. And now he’s a she, and within seconds there’s an advert for consuming as many sugary drinks as possible (they missed a trick there...kebab man should have smiled all gummy at him after spitting his dentures at him, and lived to tell the tale.) nipping around with his bejams fingers.
I always think of that in relation and...well..I can only assume he was already regenerating right through that. Because that was a very very silly drop, from an ugly ship.
Edit to clarify...the fall did him in, unless there was gravity flux cos of gallifrey. It wasn’t Der Kabinet Auf Wilfigari wot did him in. Though renenacting The Second Coming and it’s rat bolongnese scene a little may have finished him off.
Jamie, Paragraphs are your friend. Not sure about your Chinese comments. Judging by the figures the Chinese community in Sheffield is relatively small, certainly compared to the white, black and South Asian communities.
Having watched it a second time the pacing seemed much better, the companions came across better and Jodie was probably even better than she was first time around, though as others have noted, on occasion she seemed to be trying too hard (but then Tennant did that all the time!)
I don't think this version of Who is particularly any more violent, however it did feel like some of the deaths were way too disposable, and if Tim Shaw was happy enough to kill X Files guy, salad guy and security granddad, why on earth didn't he just trigger the DNA bombs? That's just really sloppy writing. There are also way too many coincidences. Ryan finds the pod, and his gran and Graham just happen to be on the train with Tim Shaw's target, the same train the Doctor drops into? (I can just about buy the Tardis did this on purpose though seems a trifle extreme!). And then you have Yaz knowing Ryan from school and the fact that, oddly, Tim Shaw's people only seem to hunt in Sheffield...maybe the next Predator film should just feature a Predator hunting shoppers in Meadowhall?
Having watched it a second time the pacing seemed much better, the companions came across better and Jodie was probably even better than she was first time around, though as others have noted, on occasion she seemed to be trying too hard (but then Tennant did that all the time!)
I don't think this version of Who is particularly any more violent, however it did feel like some of the deaths were way too disposable, and if Tim Shaw was happy enough to kill X Files guy, salad guy and security granddad, why on earth didn't he just trigger the DNA bombs? That's just really sloppy writing. There are also way too many coincidences. Ryan finds the pod, and his gran and Graham just happen to be on the train with Tim Shaw's target, the same train the Doctor drops into? (I can just about buy the Tardis did this on purpose though seems a trifle extreme!). And then you have Yaz knowing Ryan from school and the fact that, oddly, Tim Shaw's people only seem to hunt in Sheffield...maybe the next Predator film should just feature a Predator hunting shoppers in Meadowhall?
I'm sure you're right that there's a gendered element to it, but there are always fans who have short memories and accuse a new incarnation of being the first to do something that was actually common in previous incarnations. Star Trek fans have been doing it for decades -- like saying that Enterprise or Discovery was the first Trek series ever to have continuity errors (hold on, was it lithium or dilithium crystals?) or the first one to portray Vulcans as less than perfect saints (even though our very first visit to Vulcan in 1967 was for a literal fight to the death over the ownership of a woman). Some people just want any excuse to hate on something that's different from what they knew, even if it's different in ways that previous versions were already different from each other.
Maybe it'll turn out that there's a reason for all those connections, although that would feel a bit too much like Moffat's companion-mystery arcs with Amy and Clara.
It's still not useful to suggest the presence of ulterior motives, when simple forgetfulness about what the Doctor has done in past episodes will suffice to explain issues that some people are having, to paraphrase Hanlon's razor.
There’s at least two paragraphs there XD
I had no idea about the Chinese population in Sheffield, but I see people commenting on the lack of Chinese people in the episode. So I asked someone, and it turns out it’s a big hub for international students, Chinese in particular. Which explains why people were asking I guess. *shrug*
Most of my Chinese mates were old Hackney, Chinatown, or quite a few Scots, and mostly Cantonese speaking out of HK families. One was from Brunei, but she was a bit of an oddity. I wouldn’t know Sheffield if I fell into it from outer space to be honest. Never been. It did look like Yorkshire though, as I’ve seen that on telly. They didn’t show any pubs serving drought Bovril, so I know it wasn’t the midlands...
On the violence debate, Doctor Who does seem to have a knack for getting away with things other shows might not. How much is due to the erratic, inconsistent way violence is regarded in 'family' TV and films - you can splash blood around as long as it's not red, be thoroughly brutal as long as no blood is shed, kill as many people as you like as long it's not dwelt upon, and a long, slow death by CGI disintegration is always preferable to a short, sharp stabbing - and how much to it just being accepted that Doctor Who has always had a nasty streak, is a good question.
A better one is - why is it seemingly preferable to be distant and fantastical about death where children could see it in a show/film? All that seems to mean is you can get away with as much killing as you like - look at Atlantis - without having to really justify it or give it any depth or weight.
That said, that sense of things not being addressed properly could be on purpose, with an element of the next episode devoted to it; the effect of all that happened on the new TARDIS Team. We might not have seen the last of Toothface and his ilk, either. We shall see.
A better one is - why is it seemingly preferable to be distant and fantastical about death where children could see it in a show/film? All that seems to mean is you can get away with as much killing as you like - look at Atlantis - without having to really justify it or give it any depth or weight.
That said, that sense of things not being addressed properly could be on purpose, with an element of the next episode devoted to it; the effect of all that happened on the new TARDIS Team. We might not have seen the last of Toothface and his ilk, either. We shall see.
I've always believed that showing kids that death is painful and ugly and sad and important is better than showing them that death is some clean, casual, irrelevant thing that heroes inflict without blinking.
The point traditionally is that it’s rarely the heroes doing it in Who. And it usually has to be justified, or a last resort, or Both. Sometimes it drifts off that, but it usually is best summed up Terrance Dicks and his ‘never cruel or cowardly’.