Doctor Who

[DLA]

Deep Breath was just as good as I was expecting. And I LOVE the new intro. It looks so cool.

Spoiler : :

The return of the clockwork droids was pretty cool. Also, I think Moffat might be forgetting his own writing. Clara is having trouble dealing with the regeneration thing, yet she met all of The Doctor's previous incarnations in Name of The Doctor when she went into his timeline on Trenzalore, so she should be used to this. Unless I'm missing something, this doesn't make much sense.

[Ami]

Deep Breath was just as good as I was expecting. And I LOVE the new intro. It looks so cool.

Spoiler : :

The return of the clockwork droids was pretty cool. Also, I think Moffat might be forgetting his own writing. Clara is having trouble dealing with the regeneration thing, yet she met all of The Doctor's previous incarnations in Name of The Doctor when she went into his timeline on Trenzalore, so she should be used to this. Unless I'm missing something, this doesn't make much sense.

Spoiler : Deep Breath/Day of the Doctor spoilers :

Regarding Day of the Doctor, that's because she met three incarnations, but never lost the one she was with.

Now, she's with an entirely new doctor with no way to find "her" doctor.



... Though I'm glad, because Moffat is rubbish at writing romance. Most benignly, he writes fatalistic one-note characters like post-Vashta Nerada River Song, at worst he writes Amy Pond sexually assaulting The Doctor with no consequence.


... Also, was that a freakin' Eternal at the end of the episode? O_o

[Koopakirby]

I thought Deep Breath was pretty fun, barring some weird pacing at the beginning. Once Capaldi's Doctor calmed down(And the background music stopped drowning his voice out) I was able to enjoy him fairly easily.

Spoiler : :

I like how the villains were the clockwork droids from "The Girl in the Fireplace", but it kind of bums me out because I was planning on bringing them back myself in my session of the Doctor Who tabletop RPG. There's something to say about contrasting villains who replace their face so often that they don't seem like themselves anymore and a Doctor who's freshly regenerated. Nice touch.

Also good choice to leave it ambiguous whether or not the Doctor pushed the villain to his death. I wasn't sure if I was ready to believe this Doctor would kill yet, so leaving it up to imagination(for now) is a nice addition.

Overall this episode had much more focus on character moments versus the story, as told by the wonky pacing at the beginning. But that's not really enough to bring it down, so I still enjoyed it and consider it an okay start.

That being said, was there any reason to have a dinosaur(that's perplexing as tall as Big Ben) other than for shock value in the trailer/when they killed it?

[Lind]

Almost caught up now. Watching series 7.

9th Doctor: "Coward or killer? Coward, any day."
10th Doctor: "I would never. You hear me?! I would NEVER!"
11th Doctor: *casually murders villain*

HMMMMMM.

Looks like someone is forgetting Time Lord Victorious, who was one small push away from becoming The Valeyard.

See, here's the thing. I don't actually mind if the Doctor kills someone, or breaks his moral code - as long as it's an actual struggle, if he's pushed to his breaking point, which he was in The Waters of Mars.

Whereas in Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, he just straight-up lets the villain, who he could very easily have saved, die. And does so with a taunting quip and a freaking smile.

Spoiler : Deep Breath :

This is also why I will be okay with it if The Doctor pushed the Clockwork Droid to his death. He made it clear that the only other option was for the droid to kill himself, and that he was against murder. Thus, not quite out of character for the doctor.

[Lind]

OK, so, if I wasn't completely sold on the 12th Doctor's character by the first episode, I was by the second. Into The Dalek, in spite of a slightly shaky premise, was absolutely bloody fantastic. Capaldi simply IS the Doctor, and his snarky, old-married-couple arguing with Clara is an infinitely better dynamic than she had with the 11th... or, really, than anyone in the new series bar maybe 10th and Donna had.

Also, I like Danny Pink from what we've seen so far, even if I am slightly annoyed that he's being brought into the series for yet another bloody romantic subplot.

[TheDoctor]

I know, right? The existence of Clara and Danny Pink's romantic subplot makes it seem like Clara's only sticking around with 12th as a favor to 11th. I don't care whether she feels the same way about the Doctor's new face as she did the last one, I just wish we could go for a while without there being any kind of romantic subplot being shoehorned in.

To clarify, I didn't mind it with 10th and Rose since I was new to the series at the time. I didn't like it with 10th and Martha though because of how one-sided it was. 10th and Donna sibling-esque relationship was a breath of fresh air, especially considering we almost had another romantic subplot with 10th and Astrid in Voyage of the Damned.

Amy going after 11th bugged me to no end, and don't get me started on the non-existent love triangle between her, the Doctor, and Rory that they kept shoving in our faces. I did however enjoy the ship teasing between Clara and 11th, if for no other reason than I thought they were kind of cute together. Now that we have 12th though, I think they need to give any and all romantic subplots a break. It wouldn't really work with the new Doctor, and if it's with anyone else, I simply don't care enough to need to watch it. If they want to make an offhand mention of it on occasion, that's fine, but other than that, they need to tone it down for a while.

[Lind]

Amy going after 11th bugged me to no end, and don't get me started on the non-existent love triangle between her, the Doctor, and Rory that they kept shoving in our faces.

THIS.

It bugged the hell out of me that we were supposed to be okay with her pretty much attempting to sexually assault The Doctor. Hell, Amy is easily my least favourite of the modern companions in general, but that was one of her low points.

Honestly, though, the only romantic pairings with the doctor that have really worked at all are Rose + 9/10 and River Song + 11. Although in Martha's case, that was sort of the point.

[TheDoctor]

Aside from her coming on to the Doctor in that one episode (which I agree was definitely her lowest point), my biggest problem with Amy is that she had this horrible tendency early on to steal the Doctor's spotlight. She was the one to solve the problems in episodes like The Beast Below and Victory of the Daleks (because for some reason, 11th has difficulty grasping human emotion). Is this necessarily a problem? Not exactly, but when done too often, it makes the Doctor seem like a weaker character; and let's face it, we just went from David Tennant to Matt Smith, so people were already going to have a hard time trying to like the new guy.

This is why I much prefer the way they handled Donna. Most of the time, she would either give the Doctor a flash of inspiration and let him do his thing, or she would be like "You're better than this. Find a better way!" forcing him to come up with a new plan. It wasn't until the very end of her run that she got to steal the spotlight, but I was okay with that because we got to see her character development for almost a full season before that happened. With Amy? Episode 2.

[~Dataman~]

Hey there. I have only seen one (though double) episode of Doctor Who, the one with weeping angel statues. I think it was fairly decent as a thriller, there were some really good parts and the characters were likable. How good was this episode compared to other episodes of Doctor Who? (Wondering here id I should watch or not)

[TheDoctor]

Was it the two-parter? If so, it's about average for the series. There are different styles of episodes, so it's hard to say for sure which ones would appeal to you. I would recommend starting at the beginning of the 2005 series with the episode called "Rose." This way, you get introduced to the characters, and you get to see their development along the way. One thing to note however, is that the Doctor is played by a different actor during that season. That's par for the course though, and the change in appearance is explained whenever it happens unlike some shows.

As a side note, some of my favorite episodes in season one include Father's Day, The Empty Child, and Dalek. The only episode I'd recommend skipping entirely is in season two, and it's called "Love and Monsters." Absolutely terrible episode with no relation to the main arc.

[Lind]

Hey there. I have only seen one (though double) episode of Doctor Who, the one with weeping angel statues. I think it was fairly decent as a thriller, there were some really good parts and the characters were likable. How good was this episode compared to other episodes of Doctor Who? (Wondering here id I should watch or not)

Well, there's only one two-parter with the Weeping Angels in it, so that must be The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone. Definitely a very good episode - I mean, every Weeping Angel centric episode is great - but not quite one of the best.


The best way to describe Doctor Who's overall quality is "patchy". Some episodes are absolutely fantastic, some episodes are okay, and there's a small handful that are downright awful. And not everyone can agree which is which.

It's definitely worth watching, though.

Personally, my favourite episodes that aren't a big part of the overarching story are Midnight, Blink, Vincent and the Doctor, The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, and The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit. Might be worth checking those out if you want to sample it a bit more.


EDIT: Oh, and I agree with The Doctor in that Love and Monsters is absolutely THE WORST episode of Doctor Who. Honourable mention to "Fear Her" and "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship", though.

[~Dataman~]

Thank you for the help. When I started at a new school, there was a guy that's a big fan and he keeps referring the show and telling me to watch it and showed me few episodes.
Those two that I have already told you, and one where the Doctor (The same guy who's in The Doctor's profile picture) gets poisoned but somehow avoids death. Also, space. And nazis. And Doctor being all enigmatic and stuff.

[Lind]

Thank you for the help. When I started at a new school, there was a guy that's a big fan and he keeps referring the show and telling me to watch it and showed me few episodes.
Those two that I have already told you, and one where the Doctor (The same guy who's in The Doctor's profile picture) gets poisoned but somehow avoids death. Also, space. And nazis. And Doctor being all enigmatic and stuff.

That one was "Let's Kill Hitler". Kind of an opinion-splitting episode, but I quite like it.

[Lind]

I absolutely loved Robot of Sherwood. Robin Hood's character was perfect, and Ben Miller was fantastic. 12th's constant banter is fantastic and he had some brilliant quips this episode. It also displayed just how good of a character Clara is getting as of late, which is surprising considering how utterly boring she was in series 7.

Spoiler : :

"I... am the Doctor.

And this... is my spoon!"

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that by the end of series 8, Capaldi will absolutely be my doctor.

[Ami]

So uh... did I miss anything last episode that is hugely important? I want to know that before I hit the next episode, because I don't know if they'll repeat the previous episode.