Re: A really good Dr. who related Youtube series
I know we have multiple reply syndrome on this thread, but sinse I've just watched the finale of dark water/death in heaven, I wanted to offer some detailed thoughts (anyone who has seen it feel free to chime in). The He Who mones podcast mentioned earlier has still not done anymore reviews sinse flatline, and even Jo Ford and his blog has only got up to Mummy on the orient express, (though he's also been doing this months' audios from Big finish), either way I do like discussing these things so here we go.
Needless to say, if you've not watched the two episodes of finale, here come the spoilers of spoilery spoilage!
Danny Pink getting hit by a car was a nice way to start off and for Clara and The Doctor to have the "should he be bought back" conversation, even though I've never really got this relationship at all sinse the two of them never at any time seemed to share chemistry or even be enjoying each other's company th at much. However, then Clara tries to force the Doctor to go back and change history in a really horrible sequence of manipulation which turns out to be The Doctor seeing how far she'd go. Upon learning that Clara would go to the lengths of attempting to destroy his Tardis the Doctor responds with "oh okay tthen, lets go and try and gate crash the afterlife!" ---- I'm not sure if the Doctor is just a pushover for all his supposed dark Scotish stubbornness, or whether he has just forgotten that mmmm, people you know, die and has decided he is god, albeit a rather ineffective second fiddle god to miss Clara, goddess of pushing him around.
I did rather like the corporate afterlife idea, very being human, and the idea of dead bodies still feeling is geuinely scary. The easthetic for the nethersphere, the skeletons in tanks and the dysen sphere (sorry about mangled spellings), mixed with all the vibes of a care home was really a nice idea, and I wish it&# 039;d had more time devoted to it rather than Moffat playing his usual stupid flirting game with missy and the Doctor once again.
The big reveal of the Cybermen wasn't actually that big if you remember the cybermen theme music from age of steel (really Murry gold should be consulted), though I disliked how quickly the cybermen just popped up here sinse the Afterlife was far more interesting. Plus, why would the cybermen need the minds of dying people? Even just waving a mention of the matrix of galifrey here didn't work.In the past, the cybermen have proved quite capable of pinching dead boddies from grave yards, sending them to the cyber chop shop and doing a full convertion, so why the hell the hole dying mind afterlife thing? really it reminded me of the film The Matrix, an amazingly illaborate mental landscape for a physical process that probably was entirely unnecessary, and don't even ask why the hell the cybermen from alternative earth are hear (really e ver sinse their appearence in the first moffat episode with their huge space empire I'm totally uncertain what happened to the cybermen alternate earth origin at all, they just seem to pop up when needed, and in this episode they were quite literally rent an army for the master (or should that be mistress).
The no emotions bit with Danny i could vaguely bye into, sinse about all we know about Danny is that he's a soldier that has killed people in action and it's reasonable this bothers him, though all the lying to Clara over the phone seemed amazingly superfluous to requirements.
Missy as The Mistress aka female master I did actually rather like. timelord regenerations switching gender is something that has been speculated, and there's really no reason they shouldn't, and while Missy was yet again the standard moffat over s/xual, smart mouthed quipping hyper nutcase we're used to from any Moffat character with two x chromosomes, at least fo r an evil character that sort of attitude works, indeed it's remarkable how little evil and good female characters seem to differ under Moffat.
Clara again seemed not too bothered about Danny other than all the fibbing on the phone and the "i love you" stick, which while nice in principle probably would've worked a bit better if I'd actually cared about those two characters connection a little more than I did.
So then we get to the second episode, death in heaven.
My first problem with this episode is one of pacing, sinse the main plot seemed to get really incoherent while there seemed to be bags of time on the clara and danny cyber romance which I just didn't get the connection of at all, quite different from any of the Russel relationships. For a start, I wasn't sure from various lines whether the corporate death company was supposed to have been getting every soul in human history, or whether it's been just the hyper ri ch and being investigated by unit, or whether it was just the few cybermen that went and exploded, or how the mind transfer thing related to the condition of the boddies in the afterlife, the skeletons in tanks, the fear of crimation etc. Heck, one moment the nethersphere seemed to be inside saint Pauls, at another it was some sort of tardis, at another it was some sort of other dimention. A bit more info and time to deal with the concepts here would definitely have been good.
I also really didn't feel the cybermen pollen, or nano virus or whatever it was got enough explanation, particularly sinse where the episode started with cybermen jetting off all over the world and creating doomy black clouds in actually a quite atmospheric sequence, not a lot seemed to happen with this as it was all ddelayed reaction to create cybermen from dead boddies in grave yards. Above all with the pollen, I have to ask if cybermen can create rain that instantly creates fully upgraded cyberm en from dead boddies from some nano virus or dna or something, why not just have it convert living people? It just seemed a pretty gaping hole, quite apart from the fact that getting cybermen that way sidesteps the real issue of cybermen, the body horor of having your body chopped up, covered in metal and your emotions removed to make you a cold blooded killing machine.
I did like the fact we saw the brig's portrait and that Kate Stewart returned, which is a nice link to the past, though what the heck was all that guff about the Doctor being president of the world? I much preferd it when he was just Unit's scientific adviser. In the same way as the cybermen were a bit confused I also didn't get mentions of the valiant aircraft carrier last used by Unit in "journies end" or of Saxon as Prime minister, particularly considering that Moffat (as reviewer jo ford so wonderfully put it), shoved all the previous invasions from the Davies era up Amy's crac k so they never happened, (a shame as the earth who remembered alien invasions and had agencies like Torchwood to guard against them was much more interesting than just the earth who constantly forget).
Missy also seemed remarkably ineffective here, especially as compared to the last time we saw the master in New who, you know the person who destroyed one tenth of the earth's population with the future versions of earth, tortured characters for a year or made all the world into clones of himself. Missy seemed pretty ineffective here, sinse even if we bought her army of cybermen zombies plan she never really seemed to put it into practice and ended up in a pretty silly position, indeed it felt rather like the writer didn't know what to do with her so had her chained up for half the episode while the Clara and Danny romance played out, indeed it's rather odd how the story started as a big "zomby cybermen army threatens the world" and devolved into a few people having a chin wag in a graveyard.
One thing I will say about Missy though is her "she calls and you obey, heal doctor, the ultimate control freak and the man who can't be controlled" remarks were rather nice, even if pointing out the flaws in the writing doesn't really make them any the better.
I actually did like Danny asking for Clara to turn off his cyber inhibitor, sinse it was nice to see the emotionless cybermen from another perspective, even if Danny was so wooden (tears withstanding), that you didn't really notice much difference, and again his "where are your big speeches now doctor" moment was again a nice comment to the problems of the writing, even if I didn't buy into the Doctor as soldier business.
"love is not an emotion it's a promise" is just so problematic on psychological grounds I could write a hole paper on it's wrongness, but lets skip on to the doctor.
Clara's &qu ot;I am the Doctor" was actually a pretty good fake out, sinse I wouldn't put that sort of twist past Moffat, indeed it almost feels like that was a rejected idea. The Doctor in general I didn't mind, and I loved his "I am just an idiot" moment sinse it was far closer to the way the Doctor should be thinking, but it seemed Missy and the Doctor just didn't get enough room to breathe as an interaction compared to the dragging story of Clara and Danny. Likewise, the Master (or missy), gives the Doctor command of an army? possibly an interesting plot if we actually had any idea that this doctor might be someone who would! use such an army, but however dour and Scotish and grumbly Capaldy has been, he's just not convincing on the dark front at all, sinse he's never threatened to be write in the wrong way, indeed on the rare occasions he has been even close to being right Clara has given him a slap and told him off, so, ---- mmmmm, the Doctor has an army? meh!
now david tenant with an army, after his "timelord victorious" speech in waters of mars, or Silvester Mccoy with an army, mr, I can manipulate the hole universe, or even Ecleston, that! would have been scary sinse there would be a possibility they'd go too far, but not capaldy. INdeed this is probably one of my biggest issues with the eleventh and Twealth doctors, in such a fluffy universe where nobody dies and nothing bad happens, the Doctor is a much less interesting character if he always has the power to solve anything once his boss aka assistant has told him to. I actually would've preferd the Doctor to shoot Missy at the end, sinse hay at least that would've given him a bit of kick and satisfied the "oooh look, morally ambiguous!" trait, but no.
So meh, angel Danny turns up and brings back Tiny Tim, the Doctor and Clara both lie to each other about being okay (though why exactly I'm not sure, sinse there was no r eason not to tell the truth there), and everything is left in grim dysmality with cyber Danny's sacrifice, ---- or at least would be accept that a post credit sequence pretty literally says "don't worry kiddies, everything will be alright come christmas"
I think over all "meh" is my feeling to this finale. I suppose that is an improvement over my irritation with moffat's other finales with their timie wimie convolutions and instafix solutions, (at least there were no robot clones or instant resets here), but it's still a long way from Russel's finales sinse at least with Russel at the emotion was there.
But for the two episodes penned by MAtheson "meh" is sort of my summation for this series, which is certainly not! what I want to be thinking of Doctor who. capaldy could be a great doctor, some C baker grumpiness and unpredictability, some ecleston world weariness, some Mccoy manipulation, some T Ba
ker tactless eccentricity and some Heartnal alien aloofness, plus his own personality. The problem is he's just not been given stories that show up these qualities, and it doesn't matter how many times you ask "is the doctor a good man?" if there is no possibility of him not being, then what is the oint in the question?
I really miss that universe which Tenant was in, the one with no timelords, chaos and darkness, where as Tenant put it "Everything became less kind" and that is what hurt Capaldy most for me, sinse with no reason or logic behind them in a fluffy "everybody lives" world, all these dark tendencies just look like the Doctor is Mr. Grumpy and has to be constantly told "chear up and don't sulk" by the ever smart and perky Miss Oswld.
I really hope Moffat finishes soon, and maybe under another show runner we can get back to the scarier, nastier universe populated by real, fragile people who we care about, in that! universe capaldy would be awsome! as it is, I still hold to my previous theory, there are ten doctors, one timewar, and yes, it did! happen.
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