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Post by nucleusofswarm on Oct 28, 2018 20:56:20 GMT
I also really like how Graham's handled here: in conjunction with Bradley's performance, I like that his 'memories' of Grace don't magically give him answers on how to deal with things, or do some 'throwaway line that becomes life-affirming speech' schtick with her. It's rough, it's frustrating and I'm really intrigued with the idea of using TARDIS travel almost as grief therapy.
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Post by doctorkernow on Oct 28, 2018 21:26:04 GMT
I also really like how Graham's handled here: in conjunction with Bradley's performance, I like that his 'memories' of Grace don't magically give him answers on how to deal with things, or do some 'throwaway line that becomes life-affirming speech' schtick with her. It's rough, it's frustrating and I'm really intrigued with the idea of using TARDIS travel almost as grief therapy. Hello again. I agree, for me Bradley Walsh's Graham is a great companion. He underplays very much like Arthur Darvill's Rory. His face is very expressive and the character is very well-written with lots of layers. Last week's Rosa showed Bradley's less is more approach. He was distraught and angry that he caused Rora to be arrested and he could do nothing about it. He showed this by the look on his face. His reactions to losing Grace have been real and heartbreaking to watch. Typical man distracting himself from his grief by being chased by aliens and travelling through space in a wooden police box.
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Post by pazzer on Oct 28, 2018 21:55:08 GMT
Will start with the stuff I didn't like. I'm guessing it was a conscious choice but the sleeves on Frankies jacket been too long took me out of the story. As found it distracting. Tardis travelling though the tunnel of Christmas lights was too fast for me to really process and I don't think it really added anything.
Loved the opening and the promise of a spooky creepy episode. Even though it didn't turn out that way was still great. Was nice to meet Yaz's family and she finally feels like a real person. The scenes with Grace were really well done. While I was hoping Robertson would get eaten by a spider am glad he didn't.
Is getting better with every episode. 7/10
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Post by Deleted on Oct 28, 2018 22:01:41 GMT
Great fun. This season is really shaping up to show all the great & varied stories Dr. Who can do.
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Post by nucleusofswarm on Oct 28, 2018 22:10:46 GMT
In entertainment value, I enjoyed it more than Ghost Monument, hence the higher rating, but in structure and as a unified piece, it is weaker than GM, especially the wrap up.
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Post by shallacatop on Oct 28, 2018 22:18:04 GMT
My favourite of the series so far. I’ve enjoyed Jodie since the beginning, but she’s felt like one member of the ensemble in the first three episodes. It’s not a criticism, but in this one she properly took the lead and ran with it. A great confrontation with Robertson, perfect comic timing and lots of sparky dialogue.
Graham continues to be the highlight of the Doctor’s friends; his scenes with Grace were beautifully played by Bradley Walsh. I liked the subtle development between Graham and Ryan when talking about the letter. Ryan doing the shadow puppets behind the Doctor was hilarious! Yaz got her time in the spotlight and I like her family.
The TARDIS through the vortex at the beginning was stunning, if a little quick! The vortex being a network of Time tunnels is rather innovative; that would’ve been great as the title sequence.
A small point, but I liked that Yaz and Ryan realised they both lived very close together, as in real life the two locations are a minutes walk away. Shows that Sheffield has been consciously chosen as a location for the show and is very well thought out.
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Post by Bazoolium on Oct 28, 2018 23:02:17 GMT
It was alright. Characters are still fun and obviously where Chibbers wants to focus. I like that the arch plot is character based rather than Intergalactic Word Games like Moffat did.
Still don't understand the Doctor's aversion to guns. Why is locking spiders in a room to supposedly starve to death better than shooting them.
Very messy and vaugue ending, Chibnall seems to do this a lot. Torchwood's Countryside and The Power of Three also had a rushed ending.
Is this the first ever episode to not feature aliens other than the Doctor in New Who?
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Post by Audio Watchdog on Oct 28, 2018 23:55:53 GMT
I think it is far and away the best episode of Doctor Who Chris Chibnall has ever written. Proper scary with enough laughs, character development and plot to keep it moving. I enjoyed the final moments with the Doctor asking her mates to really think about what they were signing up for and when they all said yes the joy on Whittaker's face was infectious. I think the show is in a good place and getting stronger each week.
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Post by nucleusofswarm on Oct 29, 2018 0:27:08 GMT
Hey, the kid tried. That's what counts.
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Post by andrew on Oct 29, 2018 1:04:10 GMT
Hey, the kid tried. That's what counts. My arachnophobic wife flat-out refused to watch with me this week. Loving this series so far.
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Post by stcoop on Oct 29, 2018 2:07:21 GMT
So that's two out of four episodes where the villain gets away scot-free at the end. Which maybe more realistic for the crappy times we're living in but maybe not what we need from this series.
And was surprised to realise that they're not doing away with the 'Female Companion falls in love with the Doctor' trope after all.
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Post by charlesuirdhein on Oct 29, 2018 3:37:37 GMT
And was surprised to realise that they're not doing away with the 'Female Companion falls in love with the Doctor' trope after all. Not seeing that at all.
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Post by newt5996 on Oct 29, 2018 3:41:10 GMT
Kind of liked the insinuation that the villain wasn’t evil so much as misguided as well as really insecure. I like the Doctor wanting to give the mother spider a natural death, but shooting it kind of felt to me like a kindness as death by suffocation is more drawn out. Unless I missed something it seemed like he tried to have the waste in the mine be disposed of properly.
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Post by Tim Bradley on Oct 29, 2018 6:07:12 GMT
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Post by J.A. Prentice on Oct 29, 2018 6:25:03 GMT
In entertainment value, I enjoyed it more than Ghost Monument, hence the higher rating, but in structure and as a unified piece, it is weaker than GM, especially the wrap up. I agree. This episode was the opposite of Ghost Monument in a lot of ways. Ghost Monument had meh dialogue and felt rather flat but made coherent sense, while this had lots of snappy dialogue and fun scenes but fell apart the moment I thought about the plot. This was basically Dinosaurs on a Spaceship Chibnall. Which I don't mind, since it was fun, but I really wish he'd find a way to write Doctor Who episodes that were well thought out and entertaining. Also, four episodes in and I'm sick of the 13th Doctor's moralizing scenes. They're the worst kind of comic book ethics, where shooting spiders is bad but leaving them to die in a sealed-off room is OK. It's not rooted in any kind of morality. Every time it's happened so far, it feels forced, like Chibnall doesn't actually agree with what he's writing for the Doctor but thinks it's something he has to have the Doctor say because that's how Doctor Who works. I did love her feeling sympathy for the spiders, but it felt at odds with the plot, like Chibnall couldn't find a solution that actually made sense. Still, it was fun and Jodie continues to be excellent as the Doctor.
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Post by TimPendragon on Oct 29, 2018 6:49:52 GMT
In entertainment value, I enjoyed it more than Ghost Monument, hence the higher rating, but in structure and as a unified piece, it is weaker than GM, especially the wrap up. I agree. This episode was the opposite of Ghost Monument in a lot of ways. Ghost Monument had meh dialogue and felt rather flat but made coherent sense, while this had lots of snappy dialogue and fun scenes but fell apart the moment I thought about the plot. This was basically Dinosaurs on a Spaceship Chibnall. Which I don't mind, since it was fun, but I really wish he'd find a way to write Doctor Who episodes that were well thought out and entertaining. Also, four episodes in and I'm sick of the 13th Doctor's moralizing scenes. They're the worst kind of comic book ethics, where shooting spiders is bad but leaving them to die in a sealed-off room is OK. It's not rooted in any kind of morality. Every time it's happened so far, it feels forced, like Chibnall doesn't actually agree with what he's writing for the Doctor but thinks it's something he has to have the Doctor say because that's how Doctor Who works. I did love her feeling sympathy for the spiders, but it felt at odds with the plot, like Chibnall couldn't find a solution that actually made sense. Still, it was fun and Jodie continues to be excellent as the Doctor.
That pretty much sums up how I feel about this one. Thirteen's "sermonizing" was, I thought, fairly spot on in TGM and Rosa, but here, it didn't feel like it was written from a place of conviction, so it didn't carry well at all. That's on Chibbers, as far as I'm concerned, not Jodie.
Unless Noth's character returns later, I'm going to skip showing this to my mum. She's not missing anything, really, and she couldn't handle the spiders.
The best thing about this one was Graham, all around. Yaz' family are probably the most boring family of a companion since Martha's, unfortunately. Not much else going on honestly. Nothing "wrong," just nothing to grab me this time. Fingers crossed that next week will be more engaging.
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Post by TimPendragon on Oct 29, 2018 6:53:49 GMT
Is this the first ever episode to not feature aliens other than the Doctor in New Who? Technically, Silurians are not aliens, so: No, it’s not. (But in any reasonable sense, yeah, probably!) Where were the aliens in Rosa? Mr. Time Traveling White Supremacist was human, or at least strongly implied to be.
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Post by barnabaslives on Oct 29, 2018 7:53:31 GMT
This is somehow resisting my best efforts to find fault with it :-) The worst of it for me is that characters like Robertson in the Whoniverse means I cannot go there to escape from them for an hour or two anymore :-) but either my Subtext Detector has developed a serious fault in its fine settings, or he may actually be integral to the subtle poetry of things, which may on reflection prove to be admirably ample. I'm not really finished thinking it thought yet but it was definitely another very solid effort overall, and that's four in a row now.
Don't seem to have any issues with how the spiders ended up. Maybe I'm just not thinking of it but the more I try to imagine what would have better, the more I think The Doctor might have been forced to make the best of a no-win situation. I didn't seem to think the dialog was as "sparkly" in the first half, but I could have missed some gems for trying to watch with an agitated canine at the foot of the bed who was at some points holding a heated conversation with a distant anti-theft alarm. (I may just have to watch it again, Robertson and all - says some very good things about it that I would).
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Post by J.A. Prentice on Oct 29, 2018 7:56:25 GMT
Technically, Silurians are not aliens, so: No, it’s not. (But in any reasonable sense, yeah, probably!) Where were the aliens in Rosa? Mr. Time Traveling White Supremacist was human, or at least strongly implied to be. Also, forgettable as it is, don't forget The Lazarus Experiment.(Unless we count background involvement by the Master, but I think that's pushing it.)
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Post by Deleted on Oct 29, 2018 9:01:03 GMT
A great intense episode until the climax, shoving spiders in a panic room & erm that’s it no reversing the effects returning then back to normal size? The Doctor doesn’t want to kill them so would've been good have scene where The Doctor created a antidote & used the air vents to infect the spiders with it & return them to normal size, but instead we get nothing.
Robertson i think will be a recurring character who’ll be a pain in the Doctor’s arse, i can forsee a episode were in the near future he’s become president & caused chaos which the Doctor & companions will have to investigate.
I like the drama & emotion of the Chibnall era but when you invest your time in a long running tv show & do a episode about huge spiders at least give the audience a satisfactory pay off to the main plot.
3/5.
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