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

Next week's looks much more straightforward but still fun though, who's writing it? Surely they can't fuck up a pirate episode

Steve Thompson, who doesn't seem to have done much before. Although he wrote the second episode of Sherlock, which was the weakest of the three imo.

I had actually considered the Time Babby as The Master, but I think the Moff is keeping the lid on that character for the time being. It could be an interesting move to bring back the TIme Lords, but not so soon after the massive damp squib of the Rusty finale. First half was like OMG IT'S THE TIMELORDS WHOA! then come the second episode they're dispatched with easily enough and it's 20 minutes of sentimentality.

I do know Corden is coming back. I don't think that's any big secret. But not until the second half of this season. The Frances Barber character is being revealed quite soon I think, but who she is, good/bad/whatever I know not.

I have a friend who's being a bit grumpy about the whole enterprise. Feels Moffat is throwing in too many unanswered questions and plot points at the expense of story and emotional engagement. I can sympathise with that up to a point - there's a danger it could all get a bit too clever - but it's early days yet. Plus I'm really intrigued by TIME BABBY!!!

Sorry if I'm being a bit spoilerific - I'm a little tipsy.

I do know Corden is coming back.

Arrrrrrrrrgh fuck off.

Hey, I'm just the messenger! :) This was widely trailed well before the season started. As insufferable as I find him when he's being himself, he was fine in The Lodger. I guess the Clown we saw in the season trailer has something to do with the clown in the painting in Craig's hallway in The Lodger... Maybe some connection to the Silence? Or perhaps Craig has a particularly unlucky flat in that it's hosted two baddies.

That Cordon reveal would have had aldo hung, drawn and quartered.

I really enjoyed the creepy forget-what-I-just-saw concept of the Silents. Creepy enough to have me seeing them where they weren't, such as hanging upside down on the wall pretending to be a woman in a white dress.

http://i53.tinypic.com/17be4y.jpg

Hey, I'm just the messenger! :)

So fucking don't be.

This was widely trailed well before the season started.

...no it fucking wasn't. We* literally did not get any in-series promotional material in-house until four days before UK TX of the first ep (10 days before ours) and have not shown anything beyond week-to-week trails

*ie ʞɹ0ʍ ʇɐ

To be fair, my 'fuck off' was at the presence of Corden, not at the spoiler. I don't really mind as long as it's not an explicit plot reveal.

cordren is the time babby. also, why do british people hate him? who is he?

He's a deeply unfunny and obnoxious 'comedian'.

he was good in his dr who ep though

He had a beef with Capt. Picard, yeah?

He's a perfectly fine actor, possibly even good. But he's been everywhere for the last few years, which would make everyone sick of him even if his public persona wasn't a loutish, thick, ladsy gobshite. And it is. So everyone really hates him.

He's a perfectly fine actor, possibly even good.

Also a v. good writer (co-wrote Gavin and Stacey). I think the hate is disproportionate, but then again I don't pay much attention to his laddish gobshitery (he was a bit rude to Patrick Stewart and a bit rude to um, her that won the Mercury Music Prize - Speech Debelle, was it?), and only really watch him in things he's acting in rather than being himself. His presence doesn't stop me watching things (see also over-reaction to initial introduction of Catherine Tate, a very good character actress with a terrible TV sketch show), but I had no idea he was coming back and feel a little spoiled now. I don't think I'd even have considered the connections to The Lodger had it not been brought up in this thread, tbh.

btw, I do read a lot of internets and watch a lot of telly and read a few newspapers, so it's not like I'm hermetically sealed off from news and deliberately-placed spoilers. But the return of Corden is news to me.

I would have figured Frances Barber to be famous enough not to be throwaway "woman with eyepatch" to assume she'd be back at some point.

I was thinking River was in the suit but surely she would have remembered that whole setting and wouldn't have been as shocked as Amy and Rory, so now I don't know who it was.

My guess is that it was River Song in the suit, and that she was deliberately missing when she shot the astronaut?

However my theory that River Song is a future regeneration of the Doctor is pretty much shot now they've snogged.

Jeezo, sorry I spoke! But then some people think that an episode's title is a spoiler. I thought the Corden thing was quite widely known. They announced a whole bunch of actors who were going to appear in this season. I suppose it's a bit different because we know who Corden's character is, but even then, it hardly ruins everything does it?

re spoilers: seems to me that the rule of thumb with this particular DW thread is if it hasn't aired yet, don't mention it. don't know why but people do get so worked up.

i mean, complaining about others talking abt the "next week on Doctor Who" part? people do leave their TVs on more than 10 seconds after the credits roll you know.

I thought the Corden thing was quite widely known.

Aldo (rightly imo) thought some stuff was quite widely known.

There is more to the Corden stuff that I think is interesting and that I think is quite widely known but this is probably no place for it. We should really have a separate "anything goes" thread that the spoiler wary can ignore.

the "Next Time"s being before the credits is the most infuriating thing about them

Surely the spoiler rule was established when the various territories showing Who were not *quite* so synched up? I can't be the only one supplementing this thread with io9 sneak peeks.

Suzy, there was even a poll which supported this kind of hard-line approach to spoilers. I wuz robbed, obv.

POLL: What constitues a "spoiler"? JimD and aldo disagree. Take sides here!

I've stuck by it, which is why I haven't been about that much - I'd rather wait till the series is over now. Corden's been known for a very long time, but I didn't actually think it had been announced in public?

that poll SUUUCKS

did you like DOTM aldo?

That poll SUUUCKS because only a handful of people voted in it! I certainly didn't and I would +1 the aldo stance.

Also three years ago US and UK did not get their Who the same day.

also 2 years ago, and 1 year ago, US did not get their Who on the same day.

Poll was in 2008, hence 'three years ago' caveat. ANYWAY maybe we should do a re-run?

maybe clean up the definitions a little too; you've got some tl;dr going on, i suspect

What?

actual TX sync isn't really the issue tho right? esp. given how rare it is. people usually avoid threads until they've seen the latest episode of a show (as i did with the Lost and BGalactica threads - spoilers seem to matter much more with SF huh?).

Corden spoiler is more of an issue because it indicates that the events of The Lodger will be addressed...but I would've thought people were expecting that anyway esp. after seeing the DIY TARDIS interior in the new episodes.

'Next week' reveals are what the makers want you to know ie mild/reasonable spoilers. I agree it shouldn't come before the credits tho.

I thought the first two-parter was OK, but suffered from Too Many Questions syndrome - Moff has built a plot that has mystery on mystery on mystery and there's a real danger that he can't resolve it all without having an ep which is just River Explains It All. She annoyed me from the outset with her smug "spoilers" line, but the ire grows as the weeks pass and she becomes more involved in the Audrey Neffinger plot (not spoilery, as I have no idea whether that's true but it certainly looks like where it's going).

Didn't like the shootout at the end, especially River shooting the Silent that she wasn't looking at.

Time Babby has the potential to be the worst plot ever, to be honest. Much as I hated Rusty, it looks like it negates his whole DoctorDonna plot.

At the end of the day, I don't like wibbly wobbly lumpy bumpy etc. It smacks to me of lazy writing and is just as much of a Deus Ex Machina as Rusty's Big Red Reset Button. And to be honest when this episode featured disembodied moving space suits, a small girl looking for her mummy, writing from another time appearing on walls and monsters that changed position when you weren't looking at them I felt like teaching the Moff's pony another trick myself.

I'm enjoying it far more than the Rusty era though, especially now Amy has stopped being Dommy P.

Amy is much better in this series yeah.

Time Babby has the potential to be the worst plot ever, to be honest.

Haha you're just masochistically wishing it to be shit at this point aren't you?

mysteries remaining (or things i just don't understand)

1) time baby in amy not really preggers but kind of sort of
2) who was in the spacesuit
3) why does the doctor die / what's going on with the doctor dying – which is really part of question 2)
4) the crappy TARDIS from the Lodger
5) who /is/ Amy Pond, and how do you know it's a duckpond if there are no ducks? also where were her parents
6) regenerating little girl
7) other things i missed?

It's a duck pond if you duck witches in it as well.

7) WHY ARE THE SILENCE WEARING SUITS (what did they wear before they got humans to invent suits?)

re 5) her parents and the ducks (and the Daleks) were de-existed by the crack and its terribly selective approach to such things

Maybe the Silence just like to look cool?

You never know when there's going to be a lady Silence around.

they all look alike to me /racist

i feel like there is still a big mystery about little amelia pond,...?

However my theory that River Song is a future regeneration of the Doctor is pretty much shot now they've snogged.

If Rusty was still in charge, I'd say that The Doctor and River snogging would be confirmation that River is a future regeneration of the Doctor.

campy wampy

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Media/Pix/pictures/2011/5/4/1304514782556/The-Silence-007.jpg

Humans wear suits because the Silence made them invent them and think they looked smart. (wld love to see various Silence in other countries wearing eg dashikis before the end of the year btw)

the crack and its terribly selective approach to such things

EVERYTHING in the universe disappeared eventually (except for the museum), just bit by bit and FASTER AND FASTER as it got closer to the collapse point. The Doctor doesn't notice the ducks are missing until the main body of The Eleventh Hour, which takes place less than 12 hours before the TARDISplosion. At this point they might have been gone from the village for forty years, and the locals still called it a duckpond out of inertia, though no-one remembered when they'd disappeared; but most likely they'd disappeared only hours or days or weeks before, and peoples' memories of ducks being there were all gone, but the memory of calling it a duckpond wasn't.

Surely the spoiler rule was established when the various territories showing Who were not *quite* so synched up?

totally on board with not discussing spoilery stuff until after it's been TXed in Australia / printed in the Australian Radio Times / the guest stars have done Australian breakfast telly / trailers have run on the Australian BBC! great suggestion.

Ha, I totally agree with everything also just said.

uh aldo.

not also.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_DWmfx0Iz3Zc/SxZj3-9TbTI/AAAAAAAAAok/VIsGsnY3oc4/s400/dmlrd1.jpg

Just remembered who the Silence remind me of - Doomlord from the Eagle comic in the 1980s ("Oh no - it's DOOMLORD!").

http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lkj9d2Q7Oc1qeahkio1_400.gif

Been away, came back and watched a bumper two episode series opening special. Loved it obviously. Yes, found myself thinking 'come on, you're not going to be able to do all this'. But I don't really mind, not too much anyway. Reminds of those batshit Philip K Dick novels where he just piles mind-bending insanity upon mind-bending insanity

As with PKD The options out of these sorts of things tend to be semi-mystical solutions I suppose, but then I thought he handled it pretty well in the first series, and more importantly, I f'ing love it all and find it really really entertaining.

Thought all the River/Amy/Rory stuff was ace. Thought the Doctor performance was about right - liked his insecurity about not knowing what's going on, sudden bursts of cheerfulness and almost gloomy contemplation working quite well w/r/t this.

I'm putting my money on the time child being River (Doctor's known her from the beginning of her life, right?). Oh but yeah, Schrodinger's baby thing - two time streams? One where River conceives, one where Amy conceives? Ok must stop this now - all been covered upthread anyway. But yes, loved it. Fecund, gloriously fun stuff.

Also three years ago US and UK did not get their Who the same day.

― a modest broposal (suzy), Wednesday, 4 May 2011 21:51 (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

also 2 years ago, and 1 year ago, US did not get their Who on the same day.

― ignore the man behind the parentheses (remy bean), Wednesday, 4 May 2011 22:21 (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

also 2 years ago, and 1 year ago, and this year, Australia did not get its Who on the same day. Also, 229 other countries.