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[Thad]

Richard E Grant to play the villain in the Christmas show.

Grant played the Doctor in the non-canon Scream of the Shalka (which was originally intended as a Doctor Who relaunch but was never followed up since the new live-action series happened instead), and the even-less-canon Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death:

Rowan Atkinson is Doctor Who - Classic Comic Relief

Hope they at least throw in a nod to it somewhere.  Like when the cast Derek Jacobi as the Master.

[Büge]

welp

[Royal☭]

Doctor Who Prequel: Pond Life part 1 - Series 7 Autumn 2012 - BBC One

[Thad]

Quick little typo-riddled io9 interview with Smith and Gillan.  A couple interesting teases, mostly for this Saturday's episode.

[Royal☭]

[Mongrel]

In a fucking DeLorean, no less.

[Niku]

 
McBain - Let's Get Silly!
That's The Joke
That's the Joke

[Smiler]

McBain - Let's Get Silly!
That's The Joke
That's the Joke

[Thad]

Episode posters!

[Lottel]

WELL!
I'm going to give myself a break and then rewatch it before I say anything other than it  seems the budget is bigger!



Well that and [spoiler]finally an episode not about River[/spoiler]

[Bal]

[spoiler]"DOCTOR WHO?! DOCTOR WHO?!" Seems like the list of people asking that question is getting bigger[/SPOILER]

[Sharkey]

Just assume this is all spoiler tagged.

Kind of annoyed they apparently went to the trouble of getting a bunch of old dalek models and only used them as blink-and-you'll-miss-it background elements. Especially where they just went and used time war daleks in the ward that was supposedly full of the guys from classic episodes. You know, where using those old models would have made perfect sense.

But really nothing compared to how much the rest of it annoyed me, from what seemed like it should have been a big deal breakup having such a trite and soap opera-y wrapup, to the fucking idiocy of locking a bunch of crazy assholes inside a prison where the lock can only be worked from the inside (and it even has a working teleport in there, just in case the entire premise wasn't already fuckoff stupid.)

I did, however, like the creepy dance scene. Especially where the ballerina recalled the music box dancer from Oswin's room and effectively, if kind of obviously foreshadowed the big twist at the end. Which I was enjoying right up until nobody said "come with me anyway." What, can't she run fast enough? Am I supposed to think the Doctor is a kind of stupid asshole here? Mission fucking accomplished.

Man, if it had gone that way it'd be the best thing ever. Not just trading out the usual hot chick peril monkey for a monstrous blob in a can, but the blob still thinks it's a hot chick, so hey, no need to sacrifice the apparently necessary eye candy. Might be a little too Julia Roberts in Hook in terms of the actress never actually getting to be on on the same set or directly interacting with rest of the cast, but that could be brilliant, too. "Surrounded by friends and still isolated" has an awful damn lot of narrative potential.

Nah, fuck it. She's a Dalek. Go die in an explosion.

Also, who the hell has been going around chaining these things up when it's demonstrated that it's about as effective as restraining someone with construction paper christmas tree decorations? It worked in Dalek because nobody actually knew better. Here it's just asinine.

[Bal]

I think the problem was that she was, through a great deal of willpower in that moment, resisting her essential Dalek programming, and wouldn't have been able to keep it up forever. I mean, as soon as she realized what she was she was nearly overcome by it. Additionally, every single person in the universe hates and is terrified of the Daleks, and no amount of perception filtering by the TARDIS is likely to solve that one.

[Sharkey]

Sure, but none of that was said or even really implied. Hell, she'd been keeping it up for a year, and really, she seemed pretty much okay with it after a little bit of waffling for the sake of dramatic tension. And traveling with someone who scares the shit out of everyone could also be interesting. Hell, I liked dragging Legion everywhere in Mass Effect just to get the reactions. That's not a problem so much as serious potential. If that got too hard to deal with, fuck it, do some hand waving with holograms after a couple episodes. Maybe finally clone her a body and get her out of the can, everybody cries a bunch. Hurrah.

Again, for a show that really loves to stave your head in with it when it feels like imparting a moral, the only one I got here was that people who look like monsters are just monsters. Screw them.

[Thad]

Pretty much with Shark on all points -- though Jenna-Louise Coleman is the new companion, so maybe she gets better.  Which is a lot less interesting than having her stay as a Dalek, but still looks like it'll give the Doctor a shot at not being a stupid asshole after all.  (Alternately -- and the point that her character's name is Clara, not Oswin, would seem to support this -- it could just be that they're double-dipping like they did with Martha and Amy.)

On the plus side, I liked the atmosphere; at least they managed to make the Daleks seem creepy again.  And, trite resolution aside, the Amy/Rory stuff was solid; it was damned interesting to come back to them a little sadder and more broken.  I don't think we've seen the last of that.  (Of course, the subtext is a little bit of a downer, too -- it's one more example of how Moffat's run has defined every single supporting character in terms of their relationship to the Doctor, to the point that their lives go to shit when he doesn't show up for a few months.)

Also, showing just one quick shot of Skaro was a bit of a disappointment.  Then again, it's not like there's much more to say about Skaro; you can't really top "the Doctor tricks Davros into blowing it up" from Remembrance of the Daleks.

[Sharkey]

Oh, and "I can't have babies therefore I'm no good to you" actually manages to push the envelope of misogynistic horseshit for a show that's been doing a spectacular job of that already. It's just shy of Twilight at this point. I probably shouldn't be amazed that so many teenage girls are in love with it now.

[Bal]

RE: Dalek girl. Either that was a fleeting moment of sanity, or she gets to spend the rest of her life as a dalek that knows it used to be a person. In either case, I think she'd want to die.

As for Amy and Rory, it wasn't that she "was no good to him" it was that she could never have children with him, which for a lot of women is very important, particularly since she knew it was a dream of his. What she failed to grasp was that he didn't want kids, he wanted kids with her. It's not like she was proposing some kind of breeding stock purpose for her life, she was just devastated by the aftermath of Demon's Run. First she has a child, then loses it, then finds out she's alive, but has like 50 years on her now, then she finds out she fucking grew up with her own daughter, and then to top it all off they can never try again as it were. That this caused friction in their marriage is unsurprising.

[Sharkey]

Yeah, if you say so. Nobody writing the show bothered to, though. It's still a really uncomfortable implication in both cases. At least, without going in and filling in explanations and excuses that weren't actually part of the story. I love this thing enough to want to do that, but taken on its own terms this one had a lot of ugly stuff going on.

Also, I love how the Doctor has to pull out his screwdriver and scan the crew jerky. "Yup, they're dead."

You fucking think?

[Bal]

It's not like I'm grasping at straws here. That's how I read the scenes when I saw them.

[Sharkey]

Maybe we're just coming at this thing from different perspectives, then. Still, this sentient, speaking Occam's razor keeps telling me it was probably just kind of crap. It's all Elric up in this shit, except I have melanin and the magic sword is less with the killing and more keen on bitching about children's television.