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Spoilers The Woman Who Fell to Earth grade and discussion thread

How do you rate The Woman Who Fell to Earth?


  • Total voters
    130
Tim Shaw
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I'm watching the second 8 PM BBC America showing, which was billed as an extended edition, but there's no new episode footage as far as I can tell, just some clips from Whittaker and Chibnall's NY Comic-Con panel.

I think my favorite bit in the music was the sonic screwdriver reveal. If that turned out to be the Doctor's new theme, I'd be happy with that.
 
They made it obvious. Try paying attention...oh wait, you've made it clear you wont.

Yeah, I'm not going to pay much attention to the adult trying to ride a bike when I'm watching

DOCTOR FUCKING WHO

and the show spends the first 10 minutes refusing to show the title character. Fuck, even Clara managed to make a good first impression, she just got terrible almost immediately after her first episode (I'm talking about her first full episode, not the Dalek one) and didn't waste everyones time. I actually barely remembered that bike guy had even found the stupid pod until he talked about what he did, because it was all so boring and went on way too long. The first 8-10 minutes of the episode should have been 2 minutes, and The Doctor falling out of the TARDIS should have started the episode. Instead, a bunch of boring characters did stupid shit, and an idiot saw a space pod.

So, yeah, maybe they outright said he had some disorder. Maybe if he wasn't shit, and the bike riding thing wasn't so stupid, I would have caught whatever they said about it. Instead I was fighting off a TV induced coma until The Doctor fell out of the sky, so my attention wasn't really on why the characters were doing stupid things in moronic situations, I was mostly just thinking "Where the fuck is The Doctor? Did Chibnail forget the show he was writing?". I'm pretty sure the answer to that is yes he did forget, and then didn't want to go back and rewrite pages of script so he just went with it.

They did indeed. Very explicit.

If you didn’t hear it, you weren’t paying attention.

Not to mention you missed the whole point of that scene.

That Bike guy has a disorder for no reason? There was no point to the scene at all, except to show he didn't like his step granddad very much (which could have been done with a line or two of dialog).

Unless this ends up being chekhov's disorder and him being unable to balance on bikes comes back to effect the plot, I once again have to ask: Who gives a fuck? None of the companions are interesting or likable, so them also having stupid subplots is just obnoxious.
 
Yeah, I'm not going to pay much attention to the adult trying to ride a bike when I'm watching

DOCTOR FUCKING WHO
I tend to pay attention to the entire show. It's how people usually watch TV, including DOCTOR FUCKING WHO. Not just the parts with the Doctor in them.

That Bike guy has a disorder for no reason? There was no point to the scene at all, except to show he didn't like his step granddad very much (which could have been done with a line or two of dialog).

Unless this ends up being chekhov's disorder and him being unable to balance on bikes comes back to effect the plot, I once again have to ask: Who gives a fuck? None of the companions are interesting or likable, so them also having stupid subplots is just obnoxious.
I'm going to go out on a limb and predict his disorder and his relationship with Graham will figure in future episodes. Yeah...probably a long shot.
 
I really enjoyed this episode and I generally found opening episodes dull. I really love the new Doctor, she seems kinder or at least more willing to show it and comfort her companions. I really like that she was way more open with what she was going through, no longer hiding it until the companion learned to understand her and notice it. Her describing how it felt to become a new person after regeneration was fascinating. I like the new companions so far, I like that they are knew each other to some degree before meeting the Doctor. The direction of the show looks amazing, I'm not sure if it was the individual director of the episode or the general direction of the show itself. I noticed that it really seems like there is an effort to make you feel for every single character, even one-offs who get killed.
 
The condition he suffers from is dyspraxia and I am pleased that they are showing someone with this condition. In some ways he would have similar problems to what my son has. My son has the ataxic form of cerebral palsy which has some symptoms similar to dyspraxia though the causes are different.

I believe that this is the first companion to actually have a disability.
 
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I voted Very Good. However, I think Jodi was absolutely fantastic! I completely believed that she was the Doctor from the very first moment that she appeared. She owns the role and I have no reservations at all! I also thought the companions were great.

However, I thought the story itself was a bit slow. I liked how they had to work (a little) to even understand what the aliens (or alien as it turned out) was up to. Stories often zip past that discovery stage. So, I liked aspects of it. But, there were parts that just dragged.

But, I'm really excited about the upcoming series because I think the characters are all great. They show a lot of potential. It's pretty much the same reaction I had to "Rose" when it aired way back. So much potential for the characters, but the story wasn't that great--not bad but not great. Of course, like the current story, it had a lot of heavy lifting to do in terms of introductions.

So, I'm very optimistic where this season is heading!
 
Good but not great. I hope the rest of the series isn't so dark, either literally or metaphorically. (A guy with a faceful of victims' teeth seems a bit dark for the family audience!)

I wasn't exactly thrilled with the return of RTD-style knife-turning bloodthirstiness about NDs (sweet ol' grandad has to go get his face frozen off now. Love you, sweetie!). Big ups for a non-awful maternal figure, and... we'll see if having the parental angst confined to the TARDIS keeps it from being too exhausting. I'm hopeful this can combine my love of big TARDIS teams with including the companions' family lives without either Moffat-style, "The family is fine, they're normal people who call every now and then but otherwise it doesn't come up" or RTD-era, "I need to give this person a reason to not want to be on this planet anymore" awfulness.

It was a pretty good sign so far that I didn't really miss the Doctor in the first part of the episode. I find "The Christmas Invasion" interminable for sidelining the Doctor for the majority of the runtime, and "Rose" isn't much better. It also helps the characters were all pretty assertive even without the Doctor needing to tell them to be.
 
I like the idea of a ‘hidden disability’ being explained. Dyspraxia is probably a good disability to show and it would not slow the show down too much. Also, it is common, but not that well known so the show could educate people about it

Dyspraxia is a neurological disorder in which the brain has trouble planning movement. That is why Ryan has trouble riding a bike. His brain has trouble planning what to do. This is because riding a bike is in the reflexive movement phase for Ryan whereas it would seem that climbing a ladder is was a little more towards being an automatic movement phase for him. It is possible that Ryan might be actually be able to ride a bike if it was done on an impulse ie he was running from a monster and a bike was his only way of escape, his brain would be concentrating so much on flight that the bike riding could become an automatic movement to him. I am not sure if that would happen, only that it could be possible (this is all a simplified explanation of dyspraxia, people often have other problems that are common with the condition - poor balance, hypotonia)

Whereas with my son’s CP the brain has trouble getting the message to the muscles.
 
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While I really like the idea of a wheelchair-bound companion and intrigued by the possible dynamics between that person and The Doctor might have, I agree with Miss Chicken that the idea of exploring a "hidden disability" is a fascinating prospect. I particularly like shedding light on a common disability that's not well known by people (I hadn't heard of the term until today) and help educate them about what that disability means for people who live with it.
 
Yeah, I'm not going to pay much attention to the adult trying to ride a bike when I'm watching

DOCTOR FUCKING WHO

and the show spends the first 10 minutes refusing to show the title character. Fuck, even Clara managed to make a good first impression, she just got terrible almost immediately after her first episode (I'm talking about her first full episode, not the Dalek one) and didn't waste everyones time. I actually barely remembered that bike guy had even found the stupid pod until he talked about what he did, because it was all so boring and went on way too long. The first 8-10 minutes of the episode should have been 2 minutes, and The Doctor falling out of the TARDIS should have started the episode. Instead, a bunch of boring characters did stupid shit, and an idiot saw a space pod.

So, yeah, maybe they outright said he had some disorder. Maybe if he wasn't shit, and the bike riding thing wasn't so stupid, I would have caught whatever they said about it. Instead I was fighting off a TV induced coma until The Doctor fell out of the sky, so my attention wasn't really on why the characters were doing stupid things in moronic situations, I was mostly just thinking "Where the fuck is The Doctor? Did Chibnail forget the show he was writing?". I'm pretty sure the answer to that is yes he did forget, and then didn't want to go back and rewrite pages of script so he just went with it.



That Bike guy has a disorder for no reason? There was no point to the scene at all, except to show he didn't like his step granddad very much (which could have been done with a line or two of dialog).

Unless this ends up being chekhov's disorder and him being unable to balance on bikes comes back to effect the plot, I once again have to ask: Who gives a fuck? None of the companions are interesting or likable, so them also having stupid subplots is just obnoxious.

Look, I understand you’re a negative person. I mean, that’s your wheelhouse. I get it.

What I don’t get is why you’re so angry? You don’t like it, that’s fine. I think there were some flaws in this initial episode.

But your reaction is so over the top, it just doesn’t make sense to me. It’s just a TV show, after all.

Seriously, I think you should try to relax a little bit before you stroke out.
 
Just finished it and while I thought the episode was just ok, I thought Jodie Whittaker nailed the role. In fact I thought this was the best new doctor introduction ive seen not including Eccleston (mainly because that was my first).

As for the episode itself I found the companions a little annoying in that it felt like they kept asking questions and didn't really offer anything. I did like Ryan of the three, in that when we talk about representation I feel like people with disabilities get ignored and Doctor Who won't do that. I also liked Graham's speech at the end and his reveal. Still when it came to the problem at hand, they seemed more in the way. I will give them a chance as the season goes on.

Still not really a fan of the new outfit and thought the suit looked better. I'll get used to it so it's not a big deal. The coming soon trailer has me excited for what is to come.
 
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Huh. That wasn't so good. Not really bad. Just kind of there. I daresay, dull.

And this is the first time I can ever remember having the Doctor onscreen and actively thinking, "No, please get back to the interesting characters please." The companion family really carried this one, while the Doctor was just there to move the plot along.

It usually takes me a bit to get into a new Doctor. Nine, true, had me from his first "Run!" Ten took most of his first series. Twelve I wasn't really sold on until Rusty. Eleven had me following along with his speech at the end of The Eleventh Hour, but I wasn't fully convinced until during the otherwise mediocre The Beast Below ("It's a tongue."). So it isn't like I'm worried if I can't get into a new Doctor right away.

That said, so far, not finding much of the new Doctor to get excited about. She felt half asleep for most of the episode, honestly. The bit building the new sonic was probably the strongest sequence of the episode in terms of this new Doctor. Sparks of something. But I'm going to have to wait to see what they do with the character next week, and moving forward. Early days.
 
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