Doctor who Series 10; He has been away for a while but he is back! Contains spoilers.

[polishgenius]

10 hours ago, red snow said:

 

Maybe a "resolution" could be in grabbing his wife from the timestream prior to episode 1 and letting her spend months/years with Graham somewhere secluded before returning her to her fate.

I wouldn't like that. Too Moffatt in the bad way. If they're going to do a story about dealing with grief, do it in a manner people can relate to and kids might learn something useful from.

 

I did enjoy Yaz in this episode, like most people, but the one odd thing is that Chibnall has either ignored or forgotten that she's a police officer. There were so many things she could have arrested hotel dude for.

[red snow]

1 hour ago, polishgenius said:

I wouldn't like that. Too Moffatt in the bad way. If they're going to do a story about dealing with grief, do it in a manner people can relate to and kids might learn something useful from.

 

I did enjoy Yaz in this episode, like most people, but the one odd thing is that Chibnall has either ignored or forgotten that she's a police officer. There were so many things she could have arrested hotel dude for.

I agree, there's more real drama from death being permanent. I think it would be something that would be good to air between the doctor and the gang. Why do people have to die when there is access to a time machine? The Rosa parks episode has sort of set up the answer already.

[karaddin]

I gritted my teeth and blocked the screen for the spiders and got through it. Given I watched almost half the episode like that I still really liked it. I agree that they managed to really give Graham more depth in the episode and the grief feels like something real, a weight that he's carrying. The idea of getting to put your life on literal pause and having crazy adventures while you cope with that grief is quite the idea - when he finally gets back to his life he'll be much more capable of moving forward (although it will look bizarre to those who don't know what happened).

I know I have a lot more interest in this than others, but I was curious whether they'd go with the Doctor's orientation flipping and have her interested solely in men for this version but I'm happy to see that doesn't appear to be what they're doing - when Yaz's mum asked her if they were together her confused answer certainly doesn't rule out an interest and her earlier excitement about getting to go into Yaz's home seems more pointed when viewed after that scene. Yaz's wording of "spending more time with [the Doctor]" at the end of the episode as one of her reasons for sticking with the Doctor can also read that way.

The Hotel owner being a pointed dig at Trump while in universe hating Trump also landed really well for me, particularly some of the rants he went on really captured the entitlement and self absorption. The Doctor thinking he was Ed Sheeran also cracked me up even though I've managed to avoid knowing Ed Sheeran myself!

[john]

On 10/29/2018 at 5:36 PM, polishgenius said:

I did enjoy Yaz in this episode, like most people, but the one odd thing is that Chibnall has either ignored or forgotten that she's a police officer. There were so many things she could have arrested hotel dude for.

I had the same thought.  There was a guy pointing a gun at her head in a British hotel.  Im not sure probationers can actually arrest people but there should have been a line about it at least.

The episode was decent I thought, yeah, I could take or leave the spiders but the concentration on Yaz and, to a lesser extent, Graham was welcome. I always enjoyed that in the RTD era but Moffat clearly had no interest in it at all.

[Werthead]

That was a good one, but I was disappointed that there was no nod to Metebelis III. The Doctor having a line about "not being afraid of spiders, and they even killed me once!" might have been good. But yeah, I can see that Chibnall is trying to avoid being too self-referential at the moment.

ETA: Also, the Doctor has a sister?!?

[williamjm]

On 10/29/2018 at 6:40 PM, red snow said:

I agree, there's more real drama from death being permanent. I think it would be something that would be good to air between the doctor and the gang. Why do people have to die when there is access to a time machine? The Rosa parks episode has sort of set up the answer already.

It would make sense for Graham to ask the question, but I hope they don't base an episode around it because it would seem a bit redundant - the episode with Rose's Dad covered the topic well enough.

3 hours ago, john said:

I had the same thought.  There was a guy pointing a gun at her head in a British hotel.  Im not sure probationers can actually arrest people but there should have been a line about it at least.

In the circumstances I think what she should be doing is calling in her colleagues for backup, but this doesn't seem to be something she even considers.

Overall I thought it was a good episode although I agree it was more for the character development rather than the main plot. I did think the ending was a bit odd, while the anti-gun message is a good thing overall I'm not sure the argument that it was kinder to let the spiders die a slow death of asphyxiation and/or starvation really made sense.

[Werthead]

I guess no-one wanted to discuss the episode with Nibble from Futurama and Kai from Lexx in it for no immediately discernible reason? I actually quite liked the episode but the monster really let it down.

This week's was a lot better, but I wonder if they should have just made it a straight-up historical and dropped the aliens altogether? They didn't add much and were just there to pad the story out a bit. The Partition of India was a huge, epic event and they could have gotten a bit more of a story out of it, although I get they wanted to boil it down to the essentials (neighbours being arbitrarily told they're now in different countries and must now be enemies, Britain's involvement in the Partition not being one of our finest hours of diplomacy or statehood).

Lots of teachers in schools having to research up on the topic tonight ahead of potentially awkward questions in school tomorrow, which frankly is one of the things I think Doctor Who should do.

[mormont]

OK, now that was a better episode even than 'Rosa'.

Wonderful choice for Armistice Day, and this time the Doctor and her companions don't get inserted into the scene: they witness it, but that's all. There's a step back at the end, as it should be. And the moment is no less powerful for being unknown rather than famous.

I'm not sure that the intent was to necessarily present partition as an unmitigated evil, but it can easily be read that way. The message is very much 'division is bad' and it's hard to present that message with any nuance or qualification in a one-off episode. And we're dealing with history some of those watching would have lived through. So I feel like there's a bravery in the writers deciding to stick to the simple message.

The scene with the holographic heads at the end was terrific. The aliens' presence gives us that, and honestly, I don't see how you can do the story without them. The confrontation at the end isn't enough on its own. You could write up some more mundane plotline, but this is Who.

[Which Tyler]

It's almost back to the origins of Doctor Who - switching between simple adventure stories, and educational, historical episodes - I'm loving the new direction

[john]

I did think the previous episode was fine.  It had a good idea of the Doctor meeting another doctor and him having to explain to her the selfishness of a lot of her actions.

However, this weeks ep was great. More deftly done than Rosa (not that that one was poorly done by any means) and entertaining as well as being meaningful.  I kind of agree with Wert that it would be nice to have a purely historical episode but it would’ve been difficult to lose the aliens here, they would’ve had to have the Doctor explaining the value of witnessing deaths and it probably works better with her as an observer caught up in events.

[Joey Crows]

Enjoying the new season, but I'm still waiting for more depth from the new Doctor. Not sure what the defining characteristic of her personality is yet. The companions however are fleshed out nicely. Interested to see where this will lead.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Just now, Joey Crows said:

Enjoying the new season, but I'm still waiting for more depth from the new Doctor. Not sure what the defining characteristic of her personality is yet. The companions however are fleshed out nicely. Interested to see where this will lead.

Isn't she basically a female version of Ten(nant) [yes, I just did that]. I really think for most parts you could put his Doctor in Whittaker's Doctor's position without changing too much of the dialogue.

That's not meant as criticism of Whittaker, after over 50 years it's pretty hard to recreate a role without getting compared to the predecessors (I mean Smith modeled his Doctor after Troughton's) , and Tennant's Doctor is a pretty sound choice anyway.

[mormont]

I don't see her as a version of Tennant at all, really. There's a good deal more inquisitiveness. The Doctor, in this incarnation, seems to be upbeat, open, curious, and enjoying life. I like her a lot.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

I enjoy her Doctor, too. That's why I said, it was not intended as a criticism or anything. I am not sure, she is a lot more inquisitive or curious than Tennant's Doctor in likesay Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead. I think curiosity is the one key trait pretty much all the Doctor incarnation had in common (to different degrees). The more upbeat, I can agree with.

[Which Tyler]

She's completely unlike Tennant - no way he could go this long without using his screwdriver as a weapon!

[Jaxom 1974]

1 hour ago, mormont said:

I don't see her as a version of Tennant at all, really. There's a good deal more inquisitiveness. The Doctor, in this incarnation, seems to be upbeat, open, curious, and enjoying life. I like her a lot.

Sometimes I feel like she's a more upbeat version of Capaldi's Doctor...

But I like her.  I like how they're working with the multiple companions.  I like a lot of the stories, though it sometimes feels like an entirely new show (which I suppose it is) and there's so little connection to the past, which I realize isn't always a good thing to do.  For all the hemming and hawing over the Tardis initially, it really isn't seen much.  

Truly that isn't meant as critical.  The show has been great this season.

[mormont]

If we want to make comparisons to recent incarnations, I see quite a bit of Matt Smith's Doctor in the way Jodie Whittaker plays her - there's an innocence to it, even a bit of his playfulness.

[williamjm]

I mostly liked the most recent episode, It Takes You Away. It did build up a sinister atmosphere at times, and I liked the blind girl and how she managed to figure out that she was being lied to. Tying it into the fairy tale the Doctor was told as a child did feel unnecessary, I think the episode didn't need that much detail. The frog was also a bit silly.

[mormont]

The episode had a lot of emotional impact, and I liked the message: that sometimes you just need to move on, whether from loss or from something that doesn't work, and doing that doesn't devalue what you had. 

The flesh moths were a bit superfluous but it's traditional in Who to have some mild peril inserted like that. 

[karaddin]

On 12/3/2018 at 8:31 PM, mormont said:

The episode had a lot of emotional impact, and I liked the message: that sometimes you just need to move on, whether from loss or from something that doesn't work, and doing that doesn't devalue what you had. 

The flesh moths were a bit superfluous but it's traditional in Who to have some mild peril inserted like that. 

Yeah I had a really strong emotional response to this one. Not just them seeing their lost ones, but the idea of a sentient universe that wants nothing but company which can never know anything but solitude is a deeply sad idea.