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

Wow, the tone of it is totally different to, say, the first episode last year. Got completely lost in it from beginning to end, aside from a little yawn during River's speech to Rory.

The 'spoilers' thing that River says is a bit tired getting.

there's no way they can fit all that in the next episode.

I felt like that during her first appearance. I feel like I might have mentioned it.

yay turns out my tivo is a moron, Who showing at 6pm, not midnight as first thought! again I say Woooooooooooooooo!!!'

i have a real chip on my shoulder about moffat's timey-wimey business, i was v. upset at the shenanigans w/old and young versions coexisting in the christmas special. my sister watched this episode without me and came back and said "so yeah you're not going to like this."

I don't remember anything egregiously paradoxical or handwavy in the xmas special. Not that that means anything, with my memory. But River going on about how they're moving in different directions - I just can't be fucked to expend the intellectual effort to figure out if that makes conceptual sense or not.

Aliens in this ep though: scariest looking Greys ever. That bathroom scene, Jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesus they didn't really hold back on the fear factor there.

otm that was probably the creepiest thing i've ever seen in DW. why have the Silent actually be able to speak tho? seems to devalue their concept...

appreciated that moffat had river explain about paradox problems to amy and rory as a way of re-assurance that he was still respecting that kind of thing to some extent, re-establishing the rules (only the doctor can fuck around with spacetime, save himself etc.).

liked the easter island reference (re smith's head shape).

it was probably the most gorgeous episode they've ever done esp. the (groom?) lake scenes, astronaut in the water etc. amazing lighting.

hoping more battlestar galactica bit players show up (romo lampkin!).

but didn't get amy's 'btw i'm preganant' bit at all tho, and the cliffhanger was shit (as they usually are).

Moffatt's one of the few Who writers to actually use time travel and its implications for the plot. (Blink is incredible for me due to the pretzel of the story, not so much the Angels, which are also great.) Most Who stuff is very linear and just uses time travel to appear in an exotic location inevitably featuring an incongruous monster. So for me all this meeting-before-we-met stuff is a gas.

Was thinking for a minute that Amy's pregnant with River who's the Doctor's daughter and also his assassin, but then I remembered the constant flirting (handcuffs conversation with Tennant/'I'm a screamer' etc). Didn't Amy and the Dr make out at some point though? Could have sworn that happened last season but I can't remember when. The nausea came up after she'd first seen the greys though, so the pregnancy may be Amy's subconscious trying to rationalize her experience.

Ahh hah hah I totally missed the Easter Island bit, that's awesome

btw the Laurel and Hardy is Flying Deuces

the (groom?) lake scenes

Oh that would've been utterly brilliant! Unfortunately Groom Lake is actually a salt flat and not a real lake... it just looks like one from above.

Yeah I'm sort of thinking along the same lines as Brakhage but can't get out of it...what if Amy AND River are pregnant. And somehow they're...the same? Daughter/mother? Idk, just making stuff up. But great first part, always love Romo Lampkin showing up in my favorite shows. Those Greys are aaaaaggh under the bedcovers scary as all get out.

They had beefy phallic aye-aye type middle fingers. Yucko!

And the little eyes set waaaay back... ew *shudder*

Didn't Amy and the Dr make out at some point though? Could have sworn that happened last season but I can't remember when.

Amy tried to bone him, he got flustered, retrieved Rory

I thought it was fantastic. Bring on the timey-wimey stuff I say - it's a show about a time traveller after all. Of course there's always the danger that the Moff is writing himself into a timey-wimey corner, but the first episode is supposed to be confounding, throwing all these major plot points at us and having us scratching our heads and gasping for more. Seriously creepy too. The Silence are horribly scary. Their pallid, moist flesh. The hands! Argh! The way they cross their hands over their chest while resting! Yikes! When they killed the woman in the bathroom I was genuinely shocked. Really nasty stuff. I don't think the Silence is a ref to their speech - after all, we've been hearing 'silence will fall' since the last season. I guess 'the silence' is their evil plan for domination. So now we know who was trying to make a Tardis in the Lodger. Now they're back in 1969, with a very old Tardis console underground, so there must be some timey-wimey shenanigans going on from The Silence too. They're messing with the rules too. And who is the astronaut? What's her connection to the Silence? Is she a good guy perhaps? Maybe she killed future-Doctor because of what Amy has done? And how will they get out of the Doctor's death? Brilliant opener - thrills, chills and so many questions.

I really liked this. Damn.

i fucking love the timey-wimey bullshit tbh.

also the sauciness.

also when the doctor's all like 'no i'm not going why would i go to 1969 on the mysterious word of someone you won't tell me about' and this little smile breaks through because obviously he's totally excited by the idea, oh his ridiculous face

(ps i totally assumed that when the kid was saying 'spaceman' she meant 'alien' bcz in 1969 the word 'spaceman' maybe didn't have a fixed meaning yet?)

I like River when she's being all Carry On Up The Tardis but the "spoilers" thing is kind of annoying.

Really enjoyed that, feels like Moffat correctly identified that the first episode of a series is usually kind of weak and just decided to go all out from the start. Also those aliens are very very creepy indeed, excellent work there. Felt like a bit of an amalgam of Moffat-bits (timey wimey, scary spacesuit, disembodied child voice, aliens you can't turn your back on) but I love all those elements so who cares.

Also I like the entourage feel now, there's just more possibility with four main characters rather than two. Hope they stick with it for the course of the season.

Doctor-death is so obviously Moff appearing to paint himself into a corner that it can't actually be that, although I suspect we won't know the conclusion to this story until right at the end of the series.

Also one of the many reasons I prefer Moff to Rusty is that he understands the value of an overarching mystery running through the series, which Rusty was never very good at and just ended up building anticipation by ramping up the blockbuster value instead.

I seems to me that The Doctor has engineered his own death so as to resolve some kind of timey-wimey paradox that will be revealed later. He seemed to know he was going to die. He needs his companions and past-self to save the day.
There's also the notion that River Song is the astronaut, which is intriguing but maybe a bit obvious. If she is, then she'd be crossing her own timeline surely? But then it is an 'impossible' astronaut...
As Matt DC says, the mystery is part of the fun.

Fucking loved this but then I really do love the timey-wimey shenanigans.

I like how the show has really come into its own under Moff - it feels different somehow from the Rusty era. Like I just can't imagine Rose or Martha or Captain Jack falling in with this lot, though I can't say why exactly.

Someone elsewhere has said Rusty makes Michael Bay films whereas The Moff makes Inception. Hard to disagree.

The 'spoilers' thing that River says is a bit tired getting.

I thought this until this episode, because this was the first time we've been in on the secret she's keeping by saying it, and the magnitude of some of the things she must be hiding behind the cutesy "spoilers" tag became apparent.

Loved the memory-wiping alien guys.

This was the first Who I've actually ever watched, so I can't really judge how good an episode it was, but it kind of had everything to entice a newbie.

it feels different somehow from the Rusty era. Like I just can't imagine Rose or Martha or Captain Jack falling in with this lot, though I can't say why exactly.

yeah i couldn't help but think back to 'New Earth' (ergh) and how this is just several levels up in every way but it's not a fair comparison really.

slight fear that things could end up a bit too 'the astronaut comes out of the lake because i saw it come out of the lake' re explanations if you know what i mean. doesn't seem like it can just be someone the Doctor knows (inc. himself) in any meaningful sense (nor actually a child in a suit obv).

they're not going to explain why the silence wear suits (or how they get them on) are they? good cos that's not necessary really. definitely not...

most interesting thing about 'next week': markings on faces...curious because 'the impossible astronaut' already a play/ref on 'the impossible planet' but doubt there's any connection really.

Got setup I thought - everyone's got secrets from one another, except Rory who's kind of bottom of the food chain.

I wonder if the Silences are actually mutated FBI agents? I like the idea of there being a Nixon alien conspiracy, even if the Americans were all a bit rubbish.

Good work of Matt Smith's Doctor to make it through 200 years without regenerating though.

The end reminds me of the story my friend's dad would tell us over and over, about when he shot a child in Vietnam who had jumped up & surprised him.

Really enjoyed that. Shooting a kid in the head was a pretty dark "did they really just do that?" kind of cliffhanger. (Okay, she obviously won't turn out to be dead, but still.) There was a great swagger here that seemed much more confident than the last series, without being too self-congratulation-y in the RTD style.

loved the way Amy turned and shot and then screamed...wow Abbs, I cannot even imagine how harrowing for him to have done that irl. Jeez.

The episode featured aliens partly inspired by Edvard Munch's The Scream.

I enjoyed the episode.Story line is good, bad nixon impressions, USA alien conspiracy in-jokes and I also like the timey wimey stuff.
The tone of it is totally different,and it will be interesting to see that develop. However I did find it a bit arrogant at times. The sentiment felt like "aren't we clever at this?" and Dr Who is good, because it doesn't know it's good. I like Matt Smith as the Doctor a lot,but fear that Moffat and co. may start to parody itself. If that makes sense?

yeah if there's a criticism of Moffat, it's that he runs the risk of having too much plot and not enough character development. The River-Doctor burgeoning romance is potentially interesting (especially once we find out more about River in general) but they need to find some way to explore more of Amy and Rory's motivations rather than just having them running around doing what the plot tells them to do.

Good call, I like the character of River,a good strong female lead.Your so right about Amy and Rory, I am losing my fondness of them, and now with the pregnancy plot it feels a bit like Holby City at times. That might be a bit harsh but we need more of their motivations. Saying that, I liked the custard and fish reference. Felt warm and fuzzy.

Yeah I def agree with that. I also get nervous that the timey-wimey stuff could get overused, because I would imagine for a writer it could be a fairly addictive device. I dont love the meeting versions of selves stuff...but overall i do love the story and where it could lead

i get the feeling that the astronaut who kills the doctor is really amy. anybody else?

Timey wimey stuff works because it makes it more exciting, more stuff happens and larger adventures are covered in a small amount of time. I know what you mean by addictive but in previous episodes it can all go on a bit too much. I like fast pace doctor!

I'm not keen on meeting versions of selves stuff either, think it is a bit cheesy. I hope the astronaut is a new character, or something dark and sinister, or even better, part of a series long story arc (I bloody love them I do!)

I like River when she's being all Carry On Up The Tardis

love this

yeah, I had major out loud giggles over that

Also the girl in the spacesuit played Alex Kingston's daughter in Marchlands. She's an incredibly talented actor and hopefully gets to ~do something~ in next week's episode.

Have I seen her in something else? She looks so familar..

I liked the agent dude that was in battlestar galactica, I don't know his name but he definitely raised the bar acting wise.

ROMO LAMPKIN <3

not his real name, but honestly it kind of is

Have I seen her in something else? She looks so familar..

― VegemiteGrrl, Monday, 25 April 2011 08:09 (21 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3041653/ <-- I haven't so

Ahhh Romo Lampkin, cheers for that!

So I need to get a Stetson now?

I don't remember the Silence at all, apparently because I looked away? (Also, Moff seems to have nicked the idea from Mark Waid's Legion of Super Heroes.) Did we actually see them/were they explicitly referenced in The Pandorica Opens?

Anyway, thought the tone was terribly uneven -- big shadow of melancholy cast over half the characters, and then the usual Doctor-y hijinks, which didn't quite reach the level of wistfulness that it was going for -- so it was hard for me to settle in and just watch/enjoy/get scared by it.

I also love crazy timey wimey but none of the Moffet-era stories have really affected me much compared to his RTD-era episodes.

Also:

“There’s no question that Time Lords can die, there’s never been a question about that The Doctor’s is running from real death, he’s not running from the possibility of a new body, so if you kill him fast enough then yes he won’t regenerate. You know he’s going to die one day, he’s definitely out there, one of the creepy things about the doctor, is that it must occur to him as he wonders through all of space and time that his body’s in a grave somewhere. He really does die in that first scene and that really is him. He starts to regenerate and then gets shot during that regeneration cycle, so he doesn’t live forever and he’s not indestructible.”
— Steven Moffat