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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
I know Chibnall talked about going more old-school classic-series style, but I really REALLY hope this isn’t a start back to the JNT era where casual violence was the norm and sometimes the Doctor and Companions were the only ones still standing by the end.
I don't mind that. What stood out to me was the slow pacing. I welcome a slower pace than the frantic Moffat years, but things dragged out a bit too much in this one. A happy medium please!
 
As opposed to "Spearhead from Space," "Castrovalva," and "The Christmas Invasion" where the Doctor was fully asleep for much of the story?

Yes. Because they didn't need to have personality, since they were actually asleep. Thus, this is the greater failure.

Try some synonyms for my turn of phrase that might suit you better: dull, lifeless, completely uninteresting. Better? Or do you need to continue to be pedantic and insulting?
 
Wow. That was really fantastic. It cut away all of the excesses of the Moffat era. The characters were all likable in their own way. And man, Jodie killed it.I was not a fan of her casting bcause so many people were somehow trying to make it something that it shouldn't be. The wife wanted a dude for the eye candy.

We were sold after the first preview. Been burned before by previews that were too good to be true, but they delivered. They really did.

It doesn't hurt that they're using a story idea that I posited here a while back. Where the TARDIS dumps the Doctor somewhere and he has to go find it.
 
Hardly the first time Doctor Who has done that. Moffat used the Cracks in Time to wipe out the public's knowledge of aliens from the Davies era. And in the Davies era and Torchwood, most people dismissed the alien invasions as hoaxes or mass hysteria. Not to mention all the times that present-day characters in the classic series continued to disbelieve in aliens well after the spate of invasions during the UNIT era.

And goes back even further.

DOCTOR: The burn marks. See them? Well?
ACE: A landing pattern for some kind of spacecraft, isn't it?
DOCTOR: Very good.
ACE: But this is Earth, 1963. Well, someone would have noticed. I'd have heard about it.
DOCTOR: Do you remember the Zygon Gambit with the Lock Ness Monster? Or the Yetis in the Underground?
ACE: The what?
DOCTOR: Your species has the most amazing capacity for self-deception, matched by only its ingenuity when trying to destroy itself!

Remembrance of the Daleks
 
I just saw an interview with Chris Chibnall, and it's surprising how much he looks like Russell T. Davies. Steven Moffat is also a fairly similar physical type. Weird.


It's amazing how the kids who used to critique the show are now running it

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Young Moffat- I wish we had daleks in bright colors.......

Special shoutout to Capaldi who wanted to be the doctor who fan club president and David Tennant a life long fan who married into the doctor who family.
 
The episode's ratings consolidated to 10.5m. 11th best of New Who. Just below Journey's End.

Actually even better than that as BARB now count non-TV viewing as well.

TV: 10,535,000
PC: 234,364
Tablet: 110,450
Phone: 22,251
Total: 10,902,065

Which makes it *blows trumpet* the No. 1 Programme for the week for only the second time ever!

A woman Doctor. It's never work!
 
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Actually even better than that as BARB now count non-TV viewing as well.

TV: 10,535,000
PC: 234,364
Tablet: 110,450
Phone: 22,251
Total: 10,902,065

Which makes it *blows trumpet* the No. 1 Programme for the week for only the second time ever!

A woman Doctor. It's never work!
The spiteful part of me wants to go through YouTube and comment this on all the videos that said that the new series will tank because they alienated the fanbase. But the lazy part is like "Yeaaaah, let's not."
 
I liked the season opener, overall. It felt like a GREAT episode for later in the season, not quite as good as an opener should be, but nonetheless I enjoyed it!

Jodie was fantastic as The Doctor. I really got the sense of eccentricity and goofiness layered over top of a very strong intellect. It fit for me. I felt that this version of the doctor, as it was written in this episode, was somewhat haughty and arrogant. The anti-knife bit stuck out at me, as if there is absolutely zero legitimate uses for one. Apparently the Doctor has never needed to cut a loose thread, cut his sandwiches in half, section an apple for easy eating, open a package, or needed to strip a wire in all of his/her MacGyverism-ing.. to name a few.

And the line to crane-operator-prey who's name escapes me, "You had no right to do that!" after pushing him off the crane (even though he was already dying thanks to the DNA bombs and even if it weren't for that, could have teleported away anyhow). The Doctor surreptitiously and purposefully moves the bombs into the Gathering Coils full well knowing what could or would happen... so it's OK to trick someone into killing themselves but NOT OK to push an attacker to his death, even whilst he is dying a horrible and painful death already? What?

But all of that aside, I think Jodie and the new 'who will be a great season. I look forward to watching it.
 
^I figured Tim Shaw had the option to go back home and have the DNA bombs deactivated/the process halted. That would explain why the Doctor would throw him the teleport control back, and why he'd use it (beyond a "I'm not dying on this shitty planet" thought)
 
^I figured Tim Shaw had the option to go back home and have the DNA bombs deactivated/the process halted. That would explain why the Doctor would throw him the teleport control back, and why he'd use it (beyond a "I'm not dying on this shitty planet" thought)

Could be... but what if he activated the bombs, and they were not reversible, or the DNA-breakdown reaction occurred quicker than the Doctor anticipated? Oops... a lot of unforeseen things could have made that go from a mild and reversible, yet aggressive move on the Doctor's part, to being essentially murder, which I'm sure was not her intention.

So long as Tim Shaw doesn't retain his current momentum and altitude when he teleports back home, he should be fine and the falling bit won't affect him either way. Probably at worst will be like ST09 when Kirk was transported back mid-fall and just hit the transporter pad with a good thud.
 
^I figured Tim Shaw had the option to go back home and have the DNA bombs deactivated/the process halted. That would explain why the Doctor would throw him the teleport control back, and why he'd use it (beyond a "I'm not dying on this shitty planet" thought)

Yeah -- I realized on my second rewatch yesterday that she actually, explicitly said "Go home" to Tim when she threw him the device. Her plan was to force him to go home for medical care, not to kill him. That's why she was mad at Karl for kicking him off the crane, which was intended to kill him.
 
Yeah -- I realized on my second rewatch yesterday that she actually, explicitly said "Go home" to Tim when she threw him the device. Her plan was to force him to go home for medical care, not to kill him. That's why she was mad at Karl for kicking him off the crane, which was intended to kill him.

Good point. Although, knowing nothing about his species' customs, traditions or laws regarding a failed "hunt", going home may be a death sentence as well. Karl kicking him off the crane while he was holding the recall device was not particularly deadly though... so long as the recall device was activated (and still worked) before he hit the ground.

I think now it may have been the sentiment behind the act that the Doctor had issue with.
 
I as well. It wasn't a TOTAL giveaway as she used bits of Tim's pod to build it, so the tech is in there, and The Doctor's built all sorts of stuff out of local (and often non-technological) technology. The speed with which she did it is a bit suspect, but it didn't really take me out of the story. The doctor has been seeing doing things at speed on occasion, so it's hardly out of the blue.

In any case, the Doctor has never been seen to build a sonic. The last two were literally created for him by the TARDIS, and it's unknown just what input he had in its construction. Heck, one could argue that he built the function into the TARDIS in the first place, to save the time and trouble of firing up a double flamethrower every time.

Mark

Amazing how many species conveniently have all the technology and magic crystals around... at least Classic WHO had a plethora of stories getting reviewers to ask about the remarkable convenience.

And, yes, the Doctor has been written to do stuff out of the blue before. Is the rest of the story surrounding it any good or compelling?
 
Just setting up the inevitable cameo. Or the entire year-long story arc culminates with all the Stenza’s enemies invading London on a mission of revenge, in a very tragic case of mistaken identity.

Mark
 
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