Sea Devils And Die: GeroniMoffat's Doctor Who In The 2010s

particularly great was that the Angel used 'sorry' and 'sir' so much after hijacking Sacred Bob ("more like SCARED BOB now eh?" <3)'s cerebral cortex, as if assuming these were standard human terms rather than specifically those of an inexperienced soldier in this context. all rather reminiscent of the Data Ghost thing from Silence In The Library.

Scared Bob joke was awesome – more wordplay needs to be built around anagrams.

Wow, that was actually great, what a pleasant surprise. Our kid was scared, for the first time in ages!

he who is tired of Alex Kingston is tired of not getting SBed.

― and ya thought that shit played out in ILX (Noodle Vague),

Yes!

I didn't like that nearly as much as the rest of you, I suspect, mainly because I hated River.

I really loved this! Didn't recognize Mike Skinner until I read the credits though...

River Song really bothers me. But I have no good explanation as to why. Also found Pond slightly irritating this week. Maybe I was in a bad mood. May merit a rewatch

I think what I disliked most about her is that in SitL there was a legitimate reason for her "shh, spoilers" thing whereas this time - even the way she said it - came over as smug and condescending as she continued to flip through her book reading them herself while telling other people not to. Like a hott version of Harry Knowles.

Lots of bits of this didn't work either.

The TARDIS materialisation/dematerialisation noise is not caused by leaving the brakes on, unless every Time Lord ever has been trained to do it that way.

River Song says she has pictures of "all of your faces" in her book. In which case, why the "Oh, you're so young" in SitL? if she knew what DT looked like and he didn't look any older when he regenerated?

"Sonic me please!" Moffatt has established in The Eleventh Hour that the sonic screwdriver is essentially part of the TARDIS and that MS got a better one than he had previously. So how come when RS has one in SitL she has an older, inferior one? Doesn't this imply the TARDIS doesn't like her enough to give her a good one? Also OH NOES TIMING PROBLEMS this also means she gets her own sonic screwdriver after she and the Doctor have split up and she's started adventuring on her own i.e. between this (where she's already on her own) and SitL (where she has her own sonic screwdriver). Does this sound massively likely for someone who is an annoying ex-wife, always calling in favours after you've split up by exploiting you? Unless he gives her it between this and SitL in her time to try and get rid of her or because he knows she'll need it for SitL, in which case why doesn't her "shh, spoilers" instinct kick in and she refuse to take it?

You can't have an army of Weeping Angels and some of the shots shown (particularly in the next week trailer when they're coming down the corridor) explicitly prove this as some Angels are in the field of view of the others. This would be forgiveable or could be overlooked if it hadn't been the resolution of the last one - that them being able to see each other is enough to freeze them.

Weirdly, the viewer appears to count as watching them i.e. they never move on 'our' camera. I can let this go in the interests of drama, but it's still not right.

Why didn't the angels just leave after they'd killed the monks rather than remain there to die? Nobody was left to watch them, and since they've been around since near the beginning of time they clearly don't need spaceships to travel the universe.

"Whenever an image of an Angel is created, it can become an Angel" - what, like the one on the back of your eye? That's recorded by your optic nerve until your brain processes it, and remains there until you forget it? Yes, it happens very quickly, but what is time on that level to a being that exists in the quantum?

Finally, to me the dead blokes voices over he radio felt ripped off from SitL. Didn't the Doctor even call Dave 'Dead Dave' in that?

The TARDIS materialisation/dematerialisation noise is not caused by leaving the brakes on, unless every Time Lord ever has been trained to do it that way.

oh god yeah, worst piece of retconning for cheap throwaway gag ever.

Loved the "trap" speech at the end, despite it having been completely spoiled in its entirety by the trailer for the episode.

Also glad that they addressed the one massive inconsistency that almost stopped me enjoying Blink: the angles being the "quickest beings in the whole of the universe" or whatever, but only creep up on people at the speed of someone playing What's the time, Mr Wolf. It wasn't a great explanation but i'm appeased.

Weirdly, the viewer appears to count as watching them i.e. they never move on 'our' camera.

I like to think of this as a bit of 4th wall breaking viewer participation. They have used "video recordings" and full closeups in this episode and in blink and i imagine they'll do it a bit more next week.

I agree with all of aldo's complaints and still enjoyed the episode. I just roll with the gripes and enjoy my kids being terrified :)

TARDIS brake thing was terrible though. You'd get away with retconning some og vs nu Who but we've had The Master steal the TARDIS and "forget to put the breaks on" only a series ago.

I still did enjoy it, though.

I need to watch it again, watched in a room full of people under the influence of some alcohol. We did all go "fucking hell, that's Mike Skinner!" at the same time though, which was nice and funny and reminds me that my mates are ace. I think all of Aldo's things annoyed me as well, but I basically still really liked it, was right levels of geeky and scary.

You can't have an army of Weeping Angels and some of the shots shown (particularly in the next week trailer when they're coming down the corridor) explicitly prove this as some Angels are in the field of view of the others. This would be forgiveable or could be overlooked if it hadn't been the resolution of the last one - that them being able to see each other is enough to freeze them.

I think this is why they all appeared to be decayed to the point of not having eyes or proper faces.

did nobody else just completely hate this:

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4056/4550745002_4ccd96a569.jpg

an animated gnorton popping up in the middle of the doctor's "there's one thing you should never put into a trap" speech.

Ugh. I watched it on iPlayer fortunately. F' me, if I were Moffat I'd be livid.

it doesn't help that their cartoon Norton actually looks more like Tennant.

think the complaints upthread are some olympic pedantry as usual.

River Song says she has pictures of "all of your faces" in her book. In which case, why the "Oh, you're so young" in SitL? if she knew what DT looked like and he didn't look any older when he regenerated?

she also said she needed the "spotter's guide" to know which order they go in. when she met DT she didn't seem to know if he was before or after MS (SITL dialogue actually includes "have we done crash of the Byzantium yet?" :o ). i'm going to handwave all this as 'she's got a bit of the ol' space madness'. hopefully she doesn't know what the 12th Doctor looks like.

There are likely to be hundreds of well-earned complaints about the Graham Norton plug but I did wonder if it wasn't put there to flummox 'pirates'?

who's pirating this tho when its on iplayer? bit unfair on non-brits!

Was thinking of people trying to watch or make a DVD further afield. Also I guess only the English got served with the Norton preview.

http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/files/images/1996-gold-medal.jpg

River Song's comments about meeting the Doctor in the wrong order surely have something to do with the crack in time and space? Therefore nitpicking about continuity errors when these inconsistencies may well be part of the mysterious timey-wimey story arc running through the season seems premature.

with the 'how come they can look at each other' thing, seems like the Lonely Assassins were a subdued/sensitive sort generally as they weren't snapping people's necks either.

Like a hott version of Harry Knowles.

I am never going to be able not to think of her this way now.

I thought this episode was absolutely fucking splendid.

lots of pics of new daleks in sheffield the other day:

http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=all&q=daleks+sheffield&m=text

dunno what that black one with the double guns is about though. hold does it hold its tea?

Weirdly, the viewer appears to count as watching them i.e. they never move on 'our' camera. I can let this go in the interests of drama, but it's still not right.

Are you real?

No.

That is kind of a weird criticism, that they didn't break the fourth wall when they could have.

My point is that there's implicit fourth wall, when I don't think there should be.

In terms of my realness, is your doubt in that I'm prepared to handwave away errors, or that you don't think I should criticise errors in writing? (btw, I am not nearly the only one on the internet who has spotted this fault)

It never made sense for them to not be able to look at each other. How could they ever exist as a race if that were the case? Why have faces at all etc. I'm still putting this down to the Lonely Assassins just being emo freaks with low self-esteem.

Now what would be really cool is if we see a drawing of an Angel become animated and materialise.

I've watched it again and none of the other angels besides the one from the ship have eyes. Some just have cavernous holes where their eyes should be, others just blank, eroded stone.

question is whether the radiation/energy from the Byzantium will restore their sight, limbs etc. and if so whether they'll then be able to congregate without visual shields

Dudes, River Song is so not a future wife. She's a con-artist, there's something very weird about her, and the Doctor is going to really regret not looking in that diary. Thought the 'who or what is River Song' thing was pretty explicitly trailered in this.

She's either a con artist or a renegade Timelord with an axe to grind.

Perhaps she is The Rani.

yeah i started thinking that again but seems too obvious. interesting that Father Octavian would be willing to keep this secret from the Doctor too tho.

also is it driving anyone else mad how much that guy sounds like a newsreader?

somehow not very scared or very interested in this. can't put my finger on it. oddly unengaged with the entire series so far. only some of it can be down to wailing baby/toddler shenanigans :-(

Hmm, con artist eh? That's a good possibility, what with her antics on the space ship (very Bond, that bit). The aside about not going back to jail was very intriguing too. Why did the church guys put her in jail? And why did they let her out? What do they know about her connection to the Doctor? Perhaps the church are religious maniacs who see the Time of the Angels as the Rapture, so they've got River Song to bring the Angel down from the spaceship.
There's definitely something funny about her, but I think there still must be some timey-wimey weirdness involved...

"But they're all dead"
"So's Virginia Woolf, and I'm on her bowling team"

"Whenever an image of an Angel is created, it can become an Angel" - what, like the one on the back of your eye? That's recorded by your optic nerve until your brain processes it, and remains there until you forget it? Yes, it happens very quickly, but what is time on that level to a being that exists in the quantum?

Which is maybe why there's dust and shite coming out of Amy's eye,what wit her having stared at one too long?

Loved the episode.

> what with her having stared at one too long?

he said later that it was because she'd looked into its eyes. think it was also in her imagination, like the stone hand.

so many rules...

i liked that the angels never moved when our eyes were on them. and think about the alternatives - some bloke in an angel costume or expensive cgi.

There are likely to be hundreds of well-earned complaints about the Graham Norton plug...

Beeb apologies for crappy Norton trail

Why is the bbc behaving like a US channel even before Cameron and Murdoch Jnr. get their hands on it?

in "blink" the weeping angels were all people in costume, directed to hold really still. i don't know if they're still doing it that way, but good lord is it effective.

also, if you don't like river song, it's p. funny to remember that someday she's going to be tending to digital children in a computerized tampon commercial for the rest of eternity.

They're still people in suits in this one too, which is impressive given the final effect.

Fantastic episode, by the way. Adored the pre-titles teaser too.

Glad they set this in a gigantic space labrynth rather than yet another identikit industrial spaceship.

The con artist thing sprung from realising that's how Moffatt originally wrote Captain Jack but there's something way way shifty about her. Also "ssh, spoilers" is an annoying catchphrase.

Angels that break your neck and inhabit your body is a good innovation though, because angels that zap you back in time are not very scary when you have a working time machine.

Thought there might have been something really obvious about the eye dust thing, like maybe Amy was wearing contact lenses that reflected the angel or something.

Amy-Doctor relationship really good in this one, I like how she's constantly taking the piss out of him.

Loving almost everything about this series so far. Lots of MYSTERY.

Angel projecting image on her soul. At least that's my reading after that 'Doors to the soul' bit and reading about Ficino's theories of love and pneumatic phantasms early this morning.

To wit:

It is enough that someone looks at him: the pneumatic ray emitted by the other person will penetrate through his pupils into his spiritual organism and, on arrival at the heart, which is its centre, it will cause an agitating disturbance and even a lesion, which can degenerate into a bloody infection. In the opposite case, for instance when the subject is fascinated by the eyes of a beautiful woman and cannot stop looking at them, he emits through his pupils so much spirit mixed with blood that his pneumatic organism is weakened and his blood thickens. The subject will waste away through a lack of spirit and through ocular haemorhage

Weirdos.

Actually, ocular ghost stories are quite interesting - didn't Ringu also have an element of their being something fracture or wrong with the affected person's eye? Kipling's The End of the Passage also great for this.

Also like the way the Doctor calls her "Pond!"