Doctor Who and Torchwood

[Super Moose]

You guys are way more observant than me. I don't think I caught half the stuff you did and I bet some of it will end up meaning nothing. Anyway, that last episode was alright. It wasn't great, but it certainly wasn't bad. I'll second Rene's "eye patch lady WTF?". That's really all I can say about that. I also think poor Rory needs to stop being almost kind of killed. Either kill the guy or leave him alone! I also don't really know how he came back to life this time. He was drowning and he just randomly came back a little bit after Amy stopped CPR. Did the water in his lungs just evaporate or something?

[Rene]

To be fair, that's the least of the issues regarding how TV thinks CPR works.

"OMFG HIS HEAD JUST GOT BITTEN OFF BY A LION! DO SOME CPR! IT'S MADE OF MAGIC!"

[Super Moose]

To be fair, that's the least of the issues regarding how TV thinks CPR works.

"OMFG HIS HEAD JUST GOT BITTEN OFF BY A LION! DO SOME CPR! IT'S MADE OF MAGIC!"

It's ok. No TV show will ever destroy the reality of CPR like Lost did. But really, Rory needs to stop dying all the time. Why couldn't they have killed Mickey as much as they've killed Rory? At least that would have been amusing. Or even Donna. I still don't like her.

[Rene]

That might be my favourite episode of the series thus far. Brilliant. Let's run through this.

- Playing on the TARDIS-being-sentient thing was really smart.

- Oooooh, crikey. That Time Lord stuff was pretty chilling. When he found the message boxes that was a seriously cold moment.

- Rory "died" again. Seriously, this is going somewhere. Moffat's not this short of ideas. Although that whole scene was pretty excellent. Nice to see the capabilities of whatever's in control of the TARDIS.

- Speaking of things happening again, the Doctor loses control of the TARDIS again. Hm.

- I'm kind of disappointed that House is now almost certainly dead. (I don't imagine the TARDIS fucks about when something unwanted is inside the box...) What a fucking horrible, brilliant, ancient, malevolent fucker.

- Old TARDIS set! Wheeeeee! I also like seeing more of the TARDIS. I'd often thought I'd like to see an episode set more inside the TARDIS and this went a little way to dealing with that.

- Not quite enough Ood for my liking, but any Ood is good Ood.

- Lots of cracking quotage from this episode. "Fear me. I've killed hundreds of Time Lords." "Fear me. I killed all of them."

- MORE NEIL GAIMAN PLEASE. MORE. PLEASE.

- Seriously though, he did a great job of this. Properly dark. That junk planet was proper sinister and with the people being "repaired" with bits of the dead. Makes you wonder though if Moffat plans to have more Time Lords alive but outside the main universe.

- While it's all sort of covered up, it seems Michael Sheen did the voice of House and I thought he was good. I like that it was sort of clipped and neutral, rather than over-egging it.

- I thought Suranne Jones did a great job as Idris/The TARDIS. Calm and yet clearly scattered all over the place. Very Time Lordy in a lot of ways.

- The Doctor is clearly not satisfied at how many Ood he hasn't managed to save. Not a big surprise, but given they're a sort of Who staple now I wonder if that'll come up again.

- I'm sure I've mentioned it before (prior to this thread) that I wondered if the TARDIS was often ignoring the Doctor's desired destination (rather than getting it wrong) and I was sort of right! Doesn't happen very often.

- They're also kinda continuing to build up the Doctor's origins and that of the TARDIS. I wonder if this is just fleshing him out or if it's going to have greater meaning.

Really, really enjoyed that episode. I'm sure there's more stuff I meant to comment on... just really liked it. Will look forward to seeing how it fares a second time when I watch it again this week.

[Chappelle]

I really enjoyed that episode too. I think Gaiman being a massive fan meant Moffat trusted him to add slightly more to the Dr's backstory without ruining anything.

I was starting to think about Rory's recurring deaths last week and wondered whether the universe is trying to correct the fact that he shouldn't be alive, or whether Amy's main thought of him is her pain at his death, which could be recurring as the universe was partly made up from her mind. That's also presumably why he still has some memory of being alive for 2000 years.

I was a but suspicious of the Ood being dead. The whole, "Oh he must have died when the scrap Tardis landed" seemed a bit sloppy compared to the rest of the script.

Although I'm glad we got to see more of the Tardis, I was a bit disappointed that all we really saw were the corridors and the old console room. It would have been nice to have seen a bedroom or the swimming pool or something.

Also, and this isn't a criticism...but this series is awfully dark, and I'm really surprise at the start times considering it's aimed at kids and we saw Rory die again, a well as all that writing about killing Amy on the corridor walls.

Anyway, looking forward to next weeks too as it's the first of a double parter and it's episode 5/7 so we might start to see where this series is going.

[Rene]

Yeah, I've not batted an eyelid at the previous dark aspect of the episode but I did wonder if the "Kill Amy" "Die Amy" stuff wasn't a bit much for what's meant to be teatime viewing... It's aimed at everybody but there've been some things thus far that doesn't seem youngster-friendly.

Although I'm glad we got to see more of the Tardis, I was a bit disappointed that all we really saw were the corridors and the old console room. It would have been nice to have seen a bedroom or the swimming pool or something.

Which is why it didn't quite hit the spot for me in that sense. It'd be nice to see some more interesting stuff in the TARDIS, but the fact that they've opened it up at all is a start.

[TheRealF'nShow]

Apparently there was going to be a sequence involving the swimming pool, but was too expensive. And there was a point where Rory was going to get trapped in the Zero Room. Which I had too look up when I read it.

I'm going to watch it again then probably have more to say, but I thoroughly enjoyed pretty much everything about this episode. And I'm not too sure you can really call this "yet another death" for Rory, to be honest.

[Rene]

No but they're toying with him dying to give us a response from Amy (and us, I suppose, though it was clear there was some trickery going on there) for the death.

I'll probably give it another watch today.

[Rene]

Latest message on Doctor Who website (I'll paste 'em all again and colour the newest one):

Spoiler:

The Impossible Astronaut - "All the secrets you seek can be found here on the Webb" (web?)

Day of the Moon - "We found your message your alive but what secrets do you mean my friend"

The Curse of the Black Spot - I mean I glimpsed him and may the gods help him or perhaps you can.

The Doctor's Wife - "To see what I saw click on the spot beyond the Doctors home planet"

And when you do it links to this video (Sorry Moose, you may have to try and see if anybody's got this up on Youtube, dunno if this works outside the UK):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/dw/videos/p00gygrl

So at whatever point that video's set the Doc knows he's on borrowed time. So the two obvious questions are when is it set and who is it for? Also, notable that the first three messages sound like they're part of a conversation (or conversations) and this one just tells you how to find a video.

And on Digital Spy where I saw this posted they commented that the name of the video, "Analysis Lessons", is an anagram of "Lonely Assassins", which was what the Doctor called the Angels...

[Chappelle]

Messages

Spoiler:

Very strange.

Hmm...it would also be interesting to find out where the Dr is when that is filmed.

This clue could still be part of a conversation. It's still written in a first person style.

It's all a bit odd

[Rene]

A Q&A with Neil Gaiman:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-rad...rt-of-comments

Some interesting stuff. Most notably that in the original version(s) of the script it was more obviously left open that we didn't know the fate of House.

I'd like Gaiman to become a regular contributor, he seems to really like the show and is pretty damn good to boot.

[Chappelle]

Shame that he didn't get to answer that many questions. I think he would be a brilliant series regular, as he is the kind of person that I would imagine Moffat could use as a sounding board, to create a brilliant story-arch, based on the history of the Doctor.

I found this answer from him quite interesting:

And he filled me in on that, and on some Sekrit Backstory stuff, and on the significance of The Only Water In The Forest Is The River, and I went off to work.

...so he was asked to put that in there, and it is significant, not just a throwaway line to make people talk about it.

[Rene]

I imagine all the writers basically get told there's a few things they have to put in somewhere and that other than that they're reasonably free to do what they want.

And then Moffat tweaks stuff, adds lines, etc. once he gets the scripts back.

[TheRealF'nShow]

I assumed that "The Only Water In The Forest Is The River" is referring to Silence In the Library/Forest Of The Dead. What the significance of that is going to be coming up I don't know, mind. And that could be done deliberately to throw people off what it is actually about.

[Chappelle]

....unless it refers to the two Ponds?

[Rene]

Two Ponds?

But yeah, linking it to those episodes does seem to be the obvious thing...

[Chappelle]

As in Rory & Amy.

I know technically they aren't Mr & Mrs Pond, but the Dr made a point of saying to Rory at the end of the last series that he was Mr Pond as far as he was concerned.

[Rene]

Ah, I see.

I do wonder if there's any significance in the water-based names.

Was wondering back to SITL/FOTD when River first meets the Doctor and wondering what, if any, bearing they could have on current episodes. Hard to guess, really.

[Chappelle]

The name Pond has always stuck with me, presumably because the Dr always calls her Pond, and also the odd scene from the first episode, where he asked why there was a duck pond without any ducks. I'm pretty sure that question was repeated in another episode, last series.

It could just be a coincidence, but Moffat choose both Rivers name, and presumably Amys....and he must have picked up on the connection as some point.

[Rene]

Well. Crikey.

- Nothing overtly relating to the overall story arc. That we know of without finding out what's happening, anyway.

- Have we ever had a situation before where the Doctor has so obviously lied about knowing what was going on? It's intresting that he seems to have gone to investigate what's going on without telling Rory and Amy what's happening. That and the fact that, for me, he can't have not had an inkling what would come of touching the "flesh".

- Prediction: I think the Doctor clone will die through trying to save one of Rory, Amy or the (real) Doctor in the next episode. Certainly I imagine Doctor 2 (as it will be easier for us to refer to him as henceforth, methinks) should prove the most interesting clone as he's got a lot more shared experience. What I find interesting is the clips of the two Doctors having a scrap.... I wonder is the Doctor going to instigate that or will Doctor 2 be a little more unpleasant than he would logically be? I mean, he knows the Doctor inside out and knows he shouldn't be under threat, but perhaps he'll empathise with his fellow gangers.

- Going back to the thing of the Doctor knowing why he's there, it also feels like he's there to stop something happening. Or to change the outcome of existing events... doing something timey-wimey anyway, which obviously he doesn't normally actively do.

- Eyepatch lady! And she's in the next episode too, by the looks. And in the TRAILER for the episode, which suggests to me that there's going to be something more significant going on there.

- First Rory saying a few times in this series (I think) about being a nurse and it clearly grating on him that he can't help some of the people he encounters in travelling with the Doctor, then him actually making a reference to how often he nearly dies or appears to die and his sudden burst of independence from Amy of wanting to help Jennifer when both Amy and the Doctor are telling him to do otherwise. There's definitely something in the works with Rory, isn't there? No idea what it's going to be but there's definitely something brewing.

- The "flesh" technology appears, to me, to be uncannily similar to how the Autons work. Roman Rory also had all of Rory's memories, made of some sort of synthetic material that can take different shapes. Riffing on how the Autons work or something more to it?

- ....I really feel like I'm missing something, or that there's something nagging at me about this episode that I can't quite put my finger on, that there's something about what's going on that I feel I can almost see but not quite...