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

<q>i was disappointed in this one, actually. the menace of the Weeping Angels, to me, was the idea that you had to strictly control yourself in order to stop them encroaching, and if you let them advance too far it was probably too late, etc. but here our protagonists were busy chatting and looking at other things while relying on the soldiers to look at them, so a lot of that tension was lost.</q>

Ditto -- the Angels approached the heroes far too often and allowed them to escape far too often, too, and even when they killed their victims, it was in such a mundane way (any reason they didn't just send their vics back in time?), that their menace and other-worldliness kind of vanished (see: Borg). Anyway, my suggestion: next time you have anything to do with Weeping Angels, wear a suit of mirrors.

Surely there's a connection between Amy and the ducks, i.e. Amy POND and Duck POND. And her being the most important person in the history of existence is a lot like Donna, innit?

I don't know why, but I really loved Amy's sneakers -- err, I guess you Britishes call them trainers?

lol @ ultimate retcon

looked like converses with the logo ripped off. it will be funny to see how far they take this super retcon

yeah this was like Aliens vs Alien in the level of too-much-exposure-to-the-baddy

> the whole gravity concept here was pretty neat

why didn't they bash their heads when they jumped?

ncluding revisiting a 7yo Amy (hence that bit in ep 1 where she remembers sitting in the garden as a child and hearing the Tardis noise)

Hold on to this thought...

couple of things i noticed on rewatching the last two. in TTOA when River is asking the Doctor to do stabilise the TARDIS he appears to playing pinball, possibly as a means of looking busy but not helping her cause. in FAS at one point it sounds like he says "Bash you, Bishop" instead of "thank you" to Octavian.

I went back and watched bits of 11th Hour and noticed the clock in the kitchen when she's doing him a midnight feast - it moves all over the place, and not in a proper, linear fashion. Also, if there's a crack in her wall, it's also a crack that cuts right across the town and two of the things that are probably not really supposed to be touching are Amy and her fiancé. Just my guess.

Daytime, waiting Kid Amy could well have seen him come back and still be kept waiting twelve years for the next appearance, for some as-yet-unexplained reason. Originally I'd thought that she was one of those stubborn kids who would wait all night and into the next day (which she probably is, anyway), and that she was doing the thing that people do when they dream something noisy because there's a car alarm going off 100 yards from their house.

just watched that eleventh hour scene again and the clock shows roughly 8.30, 9 and 9.30 in order when shown so seems like normal time progression and the Doctor just spend an hour getting from apples to fish custard.

Think James is otm about Doctor going away and then another time line version of him coming back to comfort Amy once more and do his 'you must remember' speech. Because he clearly disappears with River Song and the Bashing Bishop, and he's presumably deliberately not shown coming back. Perhaps there'll be an episode where all the little aspects (the jacket, the clock, the ducks).

Just wondering whether this Pandora's box thing is the place beyond the crack, where the daleks went, where the weeping angels went, where the ducks went (and also all memory of these things).

It's brilliant that Moffat and his writing team have managed to expand the conceptual time trickery of Blink over a whole series, and equally brilliant the attention to detail (which gives depth and interesting little hooks out). RTD's stuff, later on, felt very frothy, but perhaps without as much substance - this series so far has been very much the opposite. Really is some of the best tv I've seen in a while. Love that it's essentially a children's programme as well - such imagination and conceptual mind-bending!

The angels have always fed off time energy though, even in Blink, so it stands to reason they'd be feasting off the crack, all the years ppl might have has.

Love all the theories that are coming out now, this hasn't happened since Bad Wolf and certainly not to this extent.

Agree (especially since Bad Wolf felt a bit cack-handed and simplistic).

Aaand if you don't mind I'll just finish that sentence that I absent-mindedly finished mid flow -

Perhaps there'll be an episode where all the little aspects (the jacket, the clock, the ducks) are tied together, almost as a seperate adventure, following interventionist doctor in his travels through the episodes.

I've not read it... But there is a Steven Moffat Doctor Who short story called "Continuity Errors" that might have some bearing on all of this. All I know about it is the title (and the fact that it's allegedly brilliant) but from title alone it would seem fairly relevant. And he has semi-adapted one of his own short stories for tv before (see "Blink" for instance)

so it stands to reason they'd be feasting off the crack

Fnarr etc

Angels: just a bunch of crackwhores...

Amy not really fully trusting the Doctor is the best thing about their dynamic, and you can't really blame her given he kept disappearing for five year intervals. Really so stoked to see where this going though - best nu-Who season yet certainly.

though dr-river seem to be having a relationship 'simply' in reverse, the premise of amy's choice does suggest that dr-amy is more tangled (timey-wimey). and judging by his non-who stories, we know how moffat likes to play formal plot games w interlinking characters/events.

if ducks that had been in the pond had never been born, then nobody would have ever referred to the pond as a duck pond too.

maybe only Amy called it the duck pond.

Right, I've just ordered this:

http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Decalog_3:_Consequences

so, wait, did i understand this right - did Amy Pond somehow hijack the time-warping past-erasing magic of the crack in her wall (and then carry it around with her thoughout time) because she doesn't want tomorrow's wedding to happen yet? and so the Doctor has decided to take her and her fiancé on a romantic holiday to Venice so she can reconcile herself to the fact that she's getting married and so stop screwing time up (and hitting on him)?

I'd imagine the crack is something bigger than whether or not Amy wants to get married the next day...

I thought this was great! Very little Facebook style acting from Amy Pond and I was pleased to note that in some circles "sort you out" appears to mean "give you a right good rogering".

I also thought Matt Smith was very very good. It occurred to me this time that age gives him a valuable ambiguity as a romantic lead - a little too young for Song, a little too old for Amy, so always maybe/maybe not just out of reach

(Very funny meta joke as well with "I've given a lot of thought about WHO I want...")

Yes, the whole thing avoided the whole misty-eyed, wobbly lip stuff that bedeviled Tennant, Martha, Rose - avoiding the wolf whistles and stamping from the teenage boys at the back as it were.

Facebook, Myspace, settle on one pejorative, Tracer!!!

wait... avoiding the wolf whistles?

I think the reason Tracer enjoyed that scene so much was because it was like Hattie Jacques attempting to seduce Kenneth Richards, except young and sexy and with time travel.

It was like Hattie Jacques attempting to seduce Keith Richards.

xp i have no idea who those people are, but i agree with tracer, good pt. about him being just the "wrong" age. and it is very nice to to have a female romantic lead who isn't so sheepish about what she wants... wolf whistle.

Kenneth Williams...

avoiding the wolf whistles?

The Bad Wolf whistles.

Facebook, Myspace, settle on one pejorative, Tracer

Which website would represent good acting?

Having just watched the first part again (in prep for the BBC3 repeat of part 2) I have to say I thought Karen Gillan was pretty good. The Ringu scene is the standout of the episode for many, and it's Gillan who really sells the tension.

perhaps the duck pond was not for ducks but for ducking witches and amy is some kind of time witch.

Not very insightful analysis although this was a great episode, awful awful music again though. I could do without hearing that choir hit sample ever again.

I love this way of retconning without having to deny that any of the rusty years ever happened, in fact selective bits of the rusty years could still be part of the timeline. Got to wonder what moffat wlll keep.

"Walk like you can see" was some bullshit imo. They can't move *when you are looking at them*, because of quantumy-wantumy stuff. Not when they think you are looking at them.

summary of Continuity Errors story for the curious: http://www.drwhoguide.com/who_dec3.htm

Yeah that was actually shit wasn't it. And then she just gets teleported anyway. It was set up to be a nice little reversal on the standard Angels thing. You can't open your eyes! Yet the Angels will kill you if you don't look at them!! Oh noes!!! Oh actually, just pretend you can see. Really poorly. And that will be enough. It didn't matter though, which is a sign of a Good Episode I guess.

She had to move past them to get into range to get beamed up, surely?

I thought the teleporter was broken, and River Song was trying to fix it which the Doctor thought was futile.

reminds me of some of the amusing dialogue bits in the beginning like "i absolutely trust him" (Smith had a great facial reaction to this) and "how impossible?" "a few minutes"

yeah the Doctor's lines ran this e.g. "I've thought about it / we'll all be killed - see, I've thought about it", "I'll do a thing", "Ha ha I got him to say comfy chairs" and so on.

Enjoyed this immensely... Def. like the relationship with Doctor & Amy. Didn't much like the way the story "yadda-yadda'd" its way through the difficult parts of the story... But it's a minor gripe against the great tension and building a pretty exciting story arc so quickly. Loved the forest/angels/Amelia scenes... The colors and contrasts looked fab! Liked snarky doctor. And loved the "sort you out" interplay. Ordinarily would be creped out by Doctor-makeout scene but that was pretty hilarious. Esp snapping suspenders on & off. Half expected his bowtie to start spinning, lol.

^ someone photoshop this

https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0By3KbtiGTysyNjA5YTMyODQtYjUxYS00M2ZlLTkxNjAtMmQ3OGMzMDQ4Yzgx&hl=en

https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0By3KbtiGTysyNjA5YTMyODQtYjUxYS00M2ZlLTkxNjAtMmQ3OGMzMDQ4Yzgx&hl=en

Sorry, have no idea how to embed that from Google docs

ha ha

needs moar Pond pulling on his braces though

Irritated by the angels never having to cover their eyes. In first ep, was happy to believe it was because their eyes were decayed and they were under strength or something. By end of this one, though, when the angels were in front of the raised shields, eyes open and all looking over each other's shoulders, there was too much suspension required - not of disbelief, but of things carefully explained in previous episodes and now just ignored. Not a patch on Blink, and nowhere near as scary.

Yes. Aldo, what are the insider sites saying about that?

wait... avoiding the wolf whistles?

Yeah, sorry, just to clarify - I remember my dad saying when he was young and they went to the cinema on a Saturday afternoon, all the teenage boys would wolf whistle and stamp their feet at the back whenever there was a 'soppy' scene. Presumably this was partly out of juvenile embarrassment at the idea of Love, perhaps also seeing their hero unmanned, but also a critical reaction to the interruption of action with sentiment. I think the crucial aspect tho is the soppiness - Tennant + Rose (and Martha) = soppy, Amy + MS = not soppy - in fact Matt Smith reacted much as a young lad would (assuming a lack of sexual precocity) = no wolf whistles, just perhaps a certain amount of sympathy and a 'Thank God the doctor got out of THAT one, far worse than the Angels imo'.

Of course, this ignoring the whole 1,000 year-old literary history, of action + love = romance, but, in the words of Spector v Rector by The Fall 'The hero was a strange man, those flowers take them away - they're only funeral decorations'.

Online community too busy convincing themselves the beach sequence was all about the Doctor having a crying wank over Rose Tyler, and gnashing their teeth that the Rusty era has been written away so deftly.

The ones that actually care are pointing out the inconsistency while the rest hand-wave it away in the name of good television.

LOL. How is beach sequence ever about that?

They all reckon when he says "time can be rewritten" and has a wistful look on his face is all about him working out how he can bring her back. Obsessed, I tell you. Good job I'm reading it so you don't have to.

"Wibbly wobbly timey wimey" has become a mantra to explain any plot holes.

i read some amazing bit of the internet yesterday where there was wailing and gnashing of teeth because beach sequence apparently automatically means erasing of whole Donna Noble story. Which I had not considered!