The premise alone (sans Conrad) is promising but we've been down this road with Davies before. Fool me once, shame you, fool me seven times, shame on me.
But fingers crossed!
Spoilers Wish World grade and discussion thread
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The premise alone (sans Conrad) is promising but we've been down this road with Davies before. Fool me once, shame you, fool me seven times, shame on me.
But fingers crossed!
That's the name of the episode!
Who else thinks that were going to get a call back to why Rylan said 'Oh no, not again" last week?
Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow! Wow.
Pitch Meeting references are tight!
Ah, that's what's going on. Flew right over my head since I never cared for them.
They're super easy. Barely in inconvenience.
Hmmm...
Well, that happened.
Not sure what to make of it yet. Feels impossible to judge without the resolution of next week.
Most of the episode was a bunch of alternate reality tropes, setting up the cliffhanger.
I get that the tropes were the point.
Another, very subtle, 4th wall break imo.
A few returning faces, most expected, one definitely wasn't!
So Conrad thinks he is in control, but all he really is, is a cog in the Rani's machine without any agency whatsoever.
Not surprising, really.
The third member of the unholy trinity is a smiling baby god of fantasy we've never heard of before. It was a little unnerving when it did the giggle.
The Doctor was screaming that Poppy is his real daughter and that it means something important. So we have a god baby and a space baby now. Both could be called an Unearthly Child....
Well, that happened.
Not sure what to make of it yet. Feels impossible to judge without the resolution of next week.
Most of the episode was a bunch of alternate reality tropes, setting up the cliffhanger.
I get that the tropes were the point.
Another, very subtle, 4th wall break imo.
A few returning faces, most expected, one definitely wasn't!
So Conrad thinks he is in control, but all he really is, is a cog in the Rani's machine without any agency whatsoever.
Not surprising, really.
The third member of the unholy trinity is a smiling baby god of fantasy we've never heard of before. It was a little unnerving when it did the giggle.
The Doctor was screaming that Poppy is his real daughter and that it means something important. So we have a god baby and a space baby now. Both could be called an Unearthly Child....
Overall it felt a lot like The Wedding of River Song.
The structure was exactly the same. Except then the Doctor actually had agency. That's the one thing that irked me here.
The structure was exactly the same. Except then the Doctor actually had agency. That's the one thing that irked me here.
Very difficult to judge it. I certainly enjoyed it, which after all is surely why we watch the show. However there are a lot of plates spinning and I worry that it may lead to another overly complicated finale, sometimes less really is more. I like the new Rani, Had me thinking that if Mille Gibson had stayed as the companion they could have made Ruth Madeley the main focus of Luck Day and I think that would have made Conrad's switch and sudden cruelty much more powerful. I liked the vaguely 1950s look of Conrad's ideal world, harking back to an idealised time that never was. Although I notice that, while he's clearly prejudiced against disabled and LGBTQ people as well as being sexist, he doesn't seem to have an issue with people of colour. Presumably to fit the realities of the cast fitting in in his world.
I guess we'll see next week how well this ends. I understand it's over an hour long. It'll need to be to wrap everything up.
Oh, and those giant bone creatures? either they are yet another mystery to be solved, or what was the point of them?
I guess we'll see next week how well this ends. I understand it's over an hour long. It'll need to be to wrap everything up.
Oh, and those giant bone creatures? either they are yet another mystery to be solved, or what was the point of them?
That was the situation in 2005-2010, but who knows, next week might be the most low-key yet.
Oh come on, COBOL is cool!
COBOL - Wikipedia
It's amazing how prevalent it still is.
I doubt she was on screen teaching anyone that for 45 minutes, however.
The Mas-- the Rani is definitely back, though it may as well have been the Master, Davros being Omega's assistant, a dust bunny, a stale buscuit, you name it.
Were it 15 years ago, I'd say "to sell toys" but today? probably to give people something to talk about.
The bone creatures might simply be a feature to induce doubt. It's the opposite of the matrix. The matrix was designed over and over again by the machine to eradicate any sign of doubt within the humans trapped within.
But wish world wants people to doubt. And not only that, but on a time crunch.
It needs the illusion to have cracks. And big non-sensical bone dinosaurs will do that.
But wish world wants people to doubt. And not only that, but on a time crunch.
It needs the illusion to have cracks. And big non-sensical bone dinosaurs will do that.
Well that episode was kinda nothing but a big nothing burger.
I'm willing to give it a chance because it is part one of two, but I've also been edged to many times before from RTD with no satisfactory conclusion, that I'm not getting my hopes up.
Also, just to be a bit sassy, but a story with two Ranis, Susan AND Omega, not to mention Mel and MisterSexyMcBritches (sorry cannot remember, nor care too remember, the actual name of Jonathan Groff's character), sounds like a terrible fan fiction.
RTD needs to learn to stop throwing everything at the wall and see what sticks (or Julie be much firmer in her role as an exec). More is often less and less is often more satisfactory.
I'm willing to give it a chance because it is part one of two, but I've also been edged to many times before from RTD with no satisfactory conclusion, that I'm not getting my hopes up.
Also, just to be a bit sassy, but a story with two Ranis, Susan AND Omega, not to mention Mel and MisterSexyMcBritches (sorry cannot remember, nor care too remember, the actual name of Jonathan Groff's character), sounds like a terrible fan fiction.
RTD needs to learn to stop throwing everything at the wall and see what sticks (or Julie be much firmer in her role as an exec). More is often less and less is often more satisfactory.
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44 mins of setup like a pre credits sequence, all thrown out window (everyone’s dead! Again!) in the last 5.
A couple of grim fates for normal people (that once again won’t be undone) that again show the drift in the writers head. People die in Doctor Who, historically, but not normal families. That’s an RTD that’s getting worse and is tonally quite unpleasant. (See also: the giggle.)
Don’t mind retconning the Rani as the Doctors ex - that works fine with the characters previous appearance.
Decent if unoriginal production design, good actors, let down by some deep story flaws. (Conrad is such a ‘bad white man’ trope he wants us all back in the nineteen fifties, but it’s a special nineteen fifties where disabled people get help but not homes, and sexism and homophobia exist in a way beyond that which they did in the real world, but racism doesn’t because otherwise all the Inferno style ‘alternate’ versions of characters don’t make any sense, and you can’t have John Smith Doctor. At this point, in just this season, we’re making Hsien Chang look like a less racially stereotyped and a more nuanced character by the minute. And that was a dude in yellow face for goodness sake. We’re also having victims as villains week after week, with nothing addressing that *except* in The Story & The Engine, in a rushed ending.)
Rogues appearance was nonsense, The Doctor knew him for what, an hour? Still manages to come over as Captain Jack II, only John flipping Barrowman is a significantly better actor.
We recycle Martha’s plot from Sound of Drums etc, we recycle London’s burning from Star Beast.
I’d like to say the wheelchair using sort-of-rebellion put me in mind of Dortmund from Daleks Invasion of Earth, but it doesn’t really, it just felt… badly staged. And did that tripod appear from no where or did I blink as miss it being put up?
Omega can work, the Rani smashing a universe that runs on magics rather than science can work, and if you rip some of the books off even harder, having a Time Lady be perfectly comfortable with a magic irrational universe in the way a Time Lord wouldn’t be also can work — but it’s like a poor riff on it.
Amusing that the history of the Doctor as presented actually does ignore the TC stuff, so maybe that’s a source of hope.
I was generous giving it a 5 this time. This and the opener were the worst episodes. It looks like another RTD shaped mess is coming. Ah well.
Edit to add: thematically they’re going to click it up, but at least doubt being a reason to either mess with a universe basically based on faith and magic, or to reinforce some sort of faith, makes a sort of sense, but since we’re also dealing with Disney Witch Rani, I’m thinking that will either be by accident, or badly handled.
Maybe we’ll get a special after all. Christmas on a Rational Planet. But they’ll only crib the title
A couple of grim fates for normal people (that once again won’t be undone) that again show the drift in the writers head. People die in Doctor Who, historically, but not normal families. That’s an RTD that’s getting worse and is tonally quite unpleasant. (See also: the giggle.)
Don’t mind retconning the Rani as the Doctors ex - that works fine with the characters previous appearance.
Decent if unoriginal production design, good actors, let down by some deep story flaws. (Conrad is such a ‘bad white man’ trope he wants us all back in the nineteen fifties, but it’s a special nineteen fifties where disabled people get help but not homes, and sexism and homophobia exist in a way beyond that which they did in the real world, but racism doesn’t because otherwise all the Inferno style ‘alternate’ versions of characters don’t make any sense, and you can’t have John Smith Doctor. At this point, in just this season, we’re making Hsien Chang look like a less racially stereotyped and a more nuanced character by the minute. And that was a dude in yellow face for goodness sake. We’re also having victims as villains week after week, with nothing addressing that *except* in The Story & The Engine, in a rushed ending.)
Rogues appearance was nonsense, The Doctor knew him for what, an hour? Still manages to come over as Captain Jack II, only John flipping Barrowman is a significantly better actor.
We recycle Martha’s plot from Sound of Drums etc, we recycle London’s burning from Star Beast.
I’d like to say the wheelchair using sort-of-rebellion put me in mind of Dortmund from Daleks Invasion of Earth, but it doesn’t really, it just felt… badly staged. And did that tripod appear from no where or did I blink as miss it being put up?
Omega can work, the Rani smashing a universe that runs on magics rather than science can work, and if you rip some of the books off even harder, having a Time Lady be perfectly comfortable with a magic irrational universe in the way a Time Lord wouldn’t be also can work — but it’s like a poor riff on it.
Amusing that the history of the Doctor as presented actually does ignore the TC stuff, so maybe that’s a source of hope.
I was generous giving it a 5 this time. This and the opener were the worst episodes. It looks like another RTD shaped mess is coming. Ah well.
Edit to add: thematically they’re going to click it up, but at least doubt being a reason to either mess with a universe basically based on faith and magic, or to reinforce some sort of faith, makes a sort of sense, but since we’re also dealing with Disney Witch Rani, I’m thinking that will either be by accident, or badly handled.
Maybe we’ll get a special after all. Christmas on a Rational Planet. But they’ll only crib the title
Well, that was whole lot of setup. I feel with this one exactly like I did last year - a whole lot of questions rising for an answer we'll get in a week's time. But this one wasn't as tense, mind you.
That being said, its also the first one I thought was just alright. The rest of the season has been reasonably spot on, all of them either getting better than the last one or keeping the pace afloat. This one entertained, for sure, and the reveal at the end, if you've heard the spoilers.
That being said, its also the first one I thought was just alright. The rest of the season has been reasonably spot on, all of them either getting better than the last one or keeping the pace afloat. This one entertained, for sure, and the reveal at the end, if you've heard the spoilers.
It felt like Wandavision with a touch of 1984, but it was also more of a warmup for the actual finale. It's left way more questions than answers, and that's just a touch irksome.
Also, there were a few too many times where the Rani seemed like the Master, albeit better behaved, and that was something I hoped they would avoid.
Overall, i was entertained and it's still nice to have the Rani back.
Also, there were a few too many times where the Rani seemed like the Master, albeit better behaved, and that was something I hoped they would avoid.
Overall, i was entertained and it's still nice to have the Rani back.
The cuts just keep getting deeper and deeper and I'm here for it.
