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Post by mrperson on Jun 26, 2017 14:39:44 GMT
Mmmm, well the death's of Amy, Rory & Clara are not dramatic deaths are they. They are off screen deaths & don't have the shock or immediate impact of a companion dying straight away. Pretty obvious therefore that there is a difference, even if it is just in dramatic narrative terms. Anyway, as this is also going to be the last appearance of Missy will we see her regenerating? That would be interesting. All three definitely had that 'immediate impact' for me. Especially Amy and Rory's deaths. That doesn't make the distinction that multiple people have overly-patiently explained to you incorrect.
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Post by dalekbuster523finish on Jun 26, 2017 14:58:19 GMT
All three definitely had that 'immediate impact' for me. Especially Amy and Rory's deaths. That doesn't make the distinction that multiple people have overly-patiently explained to you incorrect. Never said it did, but it seems a daft distinction to me.
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Post by mrperson on Jun 26, 2017 15:25:15 GMT
(Final gripe: the 'Doctor's gender' nonsense in the conversation about the time the Doctor and the Master were friends at the Academy. Maybe the Doctor does become female in the future, but about the past there is no doubt; the First Doctor described himself as 'The Original'. And Mr. Hartnell was a bloke!) I appreciate how Moffat made a habit of aging the character. I found it rather odd to hear Tennant announce he's 903 in one season then 904 the next. I do not appreciate the pointless retcon suggestion that actually, the Doctor had all sorts of regenerations before he (we/the show) started counting. He already got around the 12-regeneration rule for the Doctor and there's no need to get around it for anyone else. (Especially when the 12-regeneration rule still seems to be around even under Moffat; recall the general). ______________ (non-responsive) Anyway, I did generally enjoy the episode, but the above and a few other things irked me. I really did not need an alternative-origin for the Cybermen. The Tenth Planet, among others, covered it. Spare Parts did an outstanding job visualizing it. Now this episode comes along and tells us to forget all that, accept that it happened on a spaceship near a black hole instead. And then...the actual mechanism of the origin. This is one of those sci-fi ideas that is questionable at best. The ship probably would have been ripped apart by the tidal forces pretty quickly (however, this depends on the size of the black hole), ie: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaghettificationThere would also be an accretion disk of superhot matter around the hole, which would emit tons of X-rays. And if all those problems were surmounted and time really were moving faster towards the 'top' of the rocket due to time-dialation, then the top of the rocket would be moving away from the black hole much faster than the bottom of the rock. I don't see how it would fail to fly itself apart. (But really, again, the notion of a structure strong enough to remain intact long enough to experience severe time dialation is rather absurd). But, I suppose the show does lean a lot more towards sci-fantasy these days.
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Post by mrperson on Jun 26, 2017 15:35:35 GMT
Amy wasn't killed off though. Yes she is dead. So are Vickie and Jamie but you can't say they were killed off. They just lived their lives in the past. The only difference is the Doctor didn't find their graves in the future and mope over them as if he'd forgotten what time travel meant. Amy was killed off. She was killed by a Weeping Angel sending her back in time to join her husband in the past. "Never said it did" One of many examples of you doing just that. Someone explains a difference between a character dying on screen (being killed off) and a character living another fifty years off-screen. You don't actually try to explain why you think being shot dead at thirty is exactly the same as being transported to the past at 30 then living another fifty years. You just repeat that the character was "killed off".
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Post by mrperson on Jun 26, 2017 15:37:09 GMT
I'd laugh if Missy turned out to be basically The Master's own personal River Song. Fandom would have a conniption. The Monk, errr, The Nun?
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Post by theotherjosh on Jun 26, 2017 15:47:57 GMT
I'd laugh if Missy turned out to be basically The Master's own personal River Song. Fandom would have a conniption. The Monk, errr, The Nun? Gareth Roberts' version of Shada had a reference to a renegade Time Lady named The Interfering Nun. It still cracks me up.
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Post by mrperson on Jun 26, 2017 15:49:55 GMT
The episode hasn't aired here yet but I've been seeing some people saying this contradicts Spare Sparts. This episode does not actually take place on Mondas correct? So if it does not then we can not possibly say it contradicts Spare Parts. As I see it, it doesn't contradict Spare Parts, rather works alongside it. I wn't say anymore as you haven't seen it. I'd hate to spoil it for you! I dunno. The Tenth Planet, Spare Parts, etc, had them quite clearly originating on Mondas. This had them quite clearly originating on a space ship from Mondas. These are the very same models shown in The Tenth Planet, just brushed up for higher quality filming techniques. Is this just what Mondassians like to do in response to an environmental threat, and the Doctor just never found out about it? Then it should have happened any number of places. I suppose there are other cyborg creatures in-universe, but still, the Cybermen have been rather iconic. And again, it's the exact same model used as in Tenth Planet. Even with convergent evolution in life, we don't end up with two creatures that look exactly the same - they just share whatever useful trait helped them evolve. Ie, the two succulents here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergent_evolutionFurther, they were adapting to a freezing planet on Mondas whereas here they were adapting to a polluted bottom layer of the ship (which raises its own questions). Perhaps someone might think it logical to remove emotions if one believes one's species will be forever consigned to live on an otherwise lifeless frozen rock. But would they feel the same if the idea is simply to be able to temporarily survive some pollution as one struggles to the nose of the ship? Wouldn't you instead just focus on developing really good air filters and long-lasting oxygen tanks? Slowly deploying stores of oxygen farther and farther up? etc. It doesn't make any sense to go "well, there's a lot of pollution we'll have to walk through. Better rip our organs, our emotions, and everything but logic out to walk through it". If Moffat had a history of showing more respect towards continuity across the entire show, I might be inclined to believe that this really was supposed to be an unbelievably unlikely coincidence where Mondassians on a polluted ship not only embraced the same solution as Mondassians on a freezing world, but separately came up with the exact same design for dealing with these two very different environmental problems. However, I suspect he just wanted to have *his* own origin story, perhaps even betting most viewers would simply treat it as the only origin story because they haven't seen The Tenth Planet.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 26, 2017 15:58:32 GMT
As I see it, it doesn't contradict Spare Parts, rather works alongside it. I wn't say anymore as you haven't seen it. I'd hate to spoil it for you! I dunno. The Tenth Planet, Spare Parts, etc, had them quite clearly originating on Mondas. This had them quite clearly originating on a space ship from Mondas. These are the very same models shown in The Tenth Planet, just brushed up for higher quality filming techniques. Is this just what Mondassians like to do in response to an environmental threat, and the Doctor just never found out about it? Then it should have happened any number of places. I suppose there are other cyborg creatures in-universe, but still, the Cybermen have been rather iconic. And again, it's the exact same model used as in Tenth Planet. Even with convergent evolution in life, we don't end up with two creatures that look exactly the same - they just share whatever useful trait helped them evolve. Ie, the two succulents here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergent_evolutionFurther, they were adapting to a freezing planet on Mondas whereas here they were adapting to a polluted bottom layer of the ship (which raises its own questions). Perhaps someone might think it logical to remove emotions if one believes one's species will be forever consigned to live on an otherwise lifeless frozen rock. But would they feel the same if the idea is simply to be able to temporarily survive some pollution as one struggles to the nose of the ship? Wouldn't you instead just focus on developing really good air filters and long-lasting oxygen tanks? Slowly deploying stores of oxygen farther and farther up? etc. It doesn't make any sense to go "well, there's a lot of pollution we'll have to walk through. Better rip our organs, our emotions, and everything but logic out to walk through it". If Moffat had a history of showing more respect towards continuity across the entire show, I might be inclined to believe that this really was supposed to be an unbelievably unlikely coincidence where Mondassians on a polluted ship not only embraced the same solution as Mondassians on a freezing world, but separately came up with the exact same design for dealing with these two very different environmental problems. However, I suspect he just wanted to have *his* own origin story, perhaps even betting most viewers would simply treat it as the only origin story because they haven't seen The Tenth Planet. No I really believe these are just paralleling what happened on Mondas. I can't see this ship escaping the black hole and delivering a cyberarmy to Mondas but we'll see.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 26, 2017 16:01:54 GMT
Well, casual fans are still fans - don't confuse them with people who have zero interest. I know at least two people who haven't watched the past two series live at all waiting months to catch up but when they heard Simm was coming back? They want to see his eps ASAP because he was in it when they DID like watching Who regularly. That's the effect DB is referring to. Fair enough Cheers Tony Ooh look, this is how conversation works. One person makes a point. Another disagrees and says why. The original poster ACKNOWLEDGES THE VALIDITY of the other persons response. That's what I love about most of the debate on this forum. Reasonable people making sense
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Post by mrperson on Jun 26, 2017 16:16:19 GMT
I dunno. The Tenth Planet, Spare Parts, etc, had them quite clearly originating on Mondas. This had them quite clearly originating on a space ship from Mondas. These are the very same models shown in The Tenth Planet, just brushed up for higher quality filming techniques. Is this just what Mondassians like to do in response to an environmental threat, and the Doctor just never found out about it? Then it should have happened any number of places. I suppose there are other cyborg creatures in-universe, but still, the Cybermen have been rather iconic. And again, it's the exact same model used as in Tenth Planet. Even with convergent evolution in life, we don't end up with two creatures that look exactly the same - they just share whatever useful trait helped them evolve. Ie, the two succulents here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergent_evolutionFurther, they were adapting to a freezing planet on Mondas whereas here they were adapting to a polluted bottom layer of the ship (which raises its own questions). Perhaps someone might think it logical to remove emotions if one believes one's species will be forever consigned to live on an otherwise lifeless frozen rock. But would they feel the same if the idea is simply to be able to temporarily survive some pollution as one struggles to the nose of the ship? Wouldn't you instead just focus on developing really good air filters and long-lasting oxygen tanks? Slowly deploying stores of oxygen farther and farther up? etc. It doesn't make any sense to go "well, there's a lot of pollution we'll have to walk through. Better rip our organs, our emotions, and everything but logic out to walk through it". If Moffat had a history of showing more respect towards continuity across the entire show, I might be inclined to believe that this really was supposed to be an unbelievably unlikely coincidence where Mondassians on a polluted ship not only embraced the same solution as Mondassians on a freezing world, but separately came up with the exact same design for dealing with these two very different environmental problems. However, I suspect he just wanted to have *his* own origin story, perhaps even betting most viewers would simply treat it as the only origin story because they haven't seen The Tenth Planet. No I really believe these are just paralleling what happened on Mondas. I can't see this ship escaping the black hole and delivering a cyberarmy to Mondas but we'll see. Well, I'd add one more point, from near the very end of the episode, which I just checked:
Missy: Wrong name, for a start.
Cyber-Bill: I waited.
Missy: This is not an Exodus (goes and stands by Cyber-Bill), is it? More of a beginning, really. Isn't it?
Cyber-Bill: I waited.
Master: In fact, do you know what I'd call it? (Walks over to the other side of Cyber-Bill) I'd call it a genesis
Missy: You've met the ex (nods toward Master)
Master: Specifically, the genesis of the cybermen.
Cyber-Bill: I waited for you.
Make of that what you will. Master/Missy seem to think it is *the* start of the Cybermen. Of course, they could be trying to rewrite history so that it becomes the new origin (with them in control of the rewritten Cyber race, being the most likely scheme).
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Post by mrperson on Jun 26, 2017 16:18:35 GMT
I suppose there's one further question: even when Missy is alone, she seems not to understand what's going on. So, what happened that she forgot having been there, meeting herself, etc? Did she have to give herself amnesia so she would play it straight?
Or is she in fact, The Nun?
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Post by mrperson on Jun 26, 2017 17:43:37 GMT
So...I took a break from work and watched this again.
What, exactly is this ship? Towards the beginning, we find out it's a colony ship (that is, if the opening flyby didn't give it away). It's going somewhere to pick up colonists. Later, Missy reads the computer in the hospital. The ship is from Mondas. So why would a ship from Mondas (1) be going anywhere without colonists, aka, people escaping Mondas to avoid its future fate, (2) end up anywhere near a black hole?
Something that large would presumably be built in space. If it's indeed from Mondas, one would expect it to be built somewhere in the general vicinity of Mondas. No? I find it a bit odd that this colony ship from Mondas is in some other corner of the galaxy/universe. (We don't appear to have any black holes on our doorstep, for one thing).
That aside.....
If I had to guess at a theory of the overall plot of the two-parter, it would be this: originally, Mondassians sought to escape their dying world. They sent this ship off and never found out what happened. The events of Spare Parts/The Tenth Planet occurred. At some future point, the Master finds out about the disappearing colony ship and decides to investigate, to see if he can turn it to his benefit somehow. This episode happens.
Now, consider that the Master repeatedly lies to Bill about "dangers" in the upper floors. It sounds like a well-rehearsed story. Bill calls him on it. There are lifts, etc. Now, despite previously explaining time dialation to Bill, he then says it is these "dangers" and NOT time dialation are why the expedition to Floor 507 never came back. She doesn't seem to catch him on it but soon her heart goes off.
Possible plot/idea: the Master has been lying to everyone. Perhaps he engineered the deaths of some people who tried to explore a few floors above, knowing that anyone who generally goes further along the ship won't be back in anyone's lifetime on his level. Perhaps he maneuvered the ship into the black hole's vicinity so that all this could happen. He stayed down there, spreading lies about the need for conversion, pushing the society towards it, providing (one way or another) all the surgical implant ideas could come from him, ripped off from the original Mondassian cybermen.
(Also, consider, the Master stops just short of explicitly telling Missy that he converted Bill).
The goal being some sort of typical scheme involving building himself a Cyber army on a ship that was otherwise known to disappear from history. [Edit: Or, he did all that just so he could have Bill converted, just to try to knock Missy off any potential course of redemption. He was concerned about his future, after all].
Resolution: Stuff happens. The Doctor stops him. The Master-inspired fake Mondassian cybermen never break out into the universe. Meanwhile, the *actual* Mondassian originals could still have their Spare Parts/Tenth Planet origin and their history would be unchanged.
At least, this strikes me as more plausible than the exact same cyber model being designed in very different circumstances in a massive set of coincidences. It also gives the Master as a reason for being there. And if it's resolved without the Master's cybermen escaping, then original in-universe history won't be disturbed.
Anyway, I think I'd much prefer some variant of this. I'd think it better than having an original genesis and an unexplained alternate/replacement Moffat genesis to contend with.
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Post by christmastrenzalore on Jun 26, 2017 17:45:31 GMT
I see it more as: The Cyber-fad died down on Mondas after they developed space travel technology, and had been long since decommissioned by the time of this story. By sheer cruel fate, they find themselves stuck in another in another near death situation, and have to dredge those old designs back out of storage, slowly redeveloping the technology. That's how I've chosen to look at it right now, but we'll see how things play out next week.
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Post by mrperson on Jun 26, 2017 18:32:24 GMT
I see it more as: The Cyber-fad died down on Mondas after they developed space travel technology, and had been long since decommissioned by the time of this story. By sheer cruel fate, they find themselves stuck in another in another near death situation, and have to dredge those old designs back out of storage, slowly redeveloping the technology. That's how I've chosen to look at it right now, but we'll see how things play out next week. As in, this is the real origin and there never was a real Mondas origin? I don't mean to keep on about it for the sake of keeping on about it, but it still seems to me that it would be a big retcon if either that is true, or if there were two origins and we just never heard about this one (unless, as I have said, the Doctor stops this one in its tracks). In fact, if there were two origins, one would expand that point to be mentioned at some point where a Cyberman is trying to explain the logic of conversion - see, we thought of it separately in two different places! And if this is supposed to be the real origin, it's contrary to Spare Parts** and all explanations given by in-universe* Cybermen, where the origin conversions happened on Mondas and they spread out from there. Eventually, they flew their Cyber-converted planet back to our solar system for the events of The Tenth Planet. It would also raise the question of what happened to these Mondassians who changed their minds and gave up conversion. I suppose the ship-origin cybermen would have had to fly back to Mondas after escaping the black hole, converted everyone on Mondas, then flown the planet back to Sol for Tenth Planet to happen. Moreover, somewhere along the way they'd have had to find a need to make every think that actually the conversions happened slowly over time on Mondas, not on a lost colony ship. Anyway, I'll try to let it rest..... *aka, not parallel universe Cybus cybermen. ** At the end, Zheng's line "Doctorman Allen, we begin again." makes pretty clear that Zheng isn't going to let Allen proceed with partial conversion reversals
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Post by Deleted on Jun 26, 2017 18:48:31 GMT
As I see it, it doesn't contradict Spare Parts, rather works alongside it. I wn't say anymore as you haven't seen it. I'd hate to spoil it for you! I dunno. The Tenth Planet, Spare Parts, etc, had them quite clearly originating on Mondas. This had them quite clearly originating on a space ship from Mondas. These are the very same models shown in The Tenth Planet, just brushed up for higher quality filming techniques. Is this just what Mondassians like to do in response to an environmental threat, and the Doctor just never found out about it? Then it should have happened any number of places. I suppose there are other cyborg creatures in-universe, but still, the Cybermen have been rather iconic. And again, it's the exact same model used as in Tenth Planet. Even with convergent evolution in life, we don't end up with two creatures that look exactly the same - they just share whatever useful trait helped them evolve. Ie, the two succulents here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergent_evolutionFurther, they were adapting to a freezing planet on Mondas whereas here they were adapting to a polluted bottom layer of the ship (which raises its own questions). Perhaps someone might think it logical to remove emotions if one believes one's species will be forever consigned to live on an otherwise lifeless frozen rock. But would they feel the same if the idea is simply to be able to temporarily survive some pollution as one struggles to the nose of the ship? Wouldn't you instead just focus on developing really good air filters and long-lasting oxygen tanks? Slowly deploying stores of oxygen farther and farther up? etc. It doesn't make any sense to go "well, there's a lot of pollution we'll have to walk through. Better rip our organs, our emotions, and everything but logic out to walk through it". If Moffat had a history of showing more respect towards continuity across the entire show, I might be inclined to believe that this really was supposed to be an unbelievably unlikely coincidence where Mondassians on a polluted ship not only embraced the same solution as Mondassians on a freezing world, but separately came up with the exact same design for dealing with these two very different environmental problems. However, I suspect he just wanted to have *his* own origin story, perhaps even betting most viewers would simply treat it as the only origin story because they haven't seen The Tenth Planet. The science bit that annoyed me was "reverse thrust". Seriously no such thing. If a ship that shape with one big engine at the end was going to use any sort of thrust to escape a black hole, they would turn the ship round to point the big rocket at the thing they were trying to escape from.
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Post by christmastrenzalore on Jun 26, 2017 19:09:14 GMT
I see it more as: The Cyber-fad died down on Mondas after they developed space travel technology, and had been long since decommissioned by the time of this story. By sheer cruel fate, they find themselves stuck in another in another near death situation, and have to dredge those old designs back out of storage, slowly redeveloping the technology. That's how I've chosen to look at it right now, but we'll see how things play out next week. As in, this is the real origin and there never was a real Mondas origin? I don't mean to keep on about it for the sake of keeping on about it, but it still seems to me that it would be a big retcon if either that is true, or if there were two origins and we just never heard about this one (unless, as I have said, the Doctor stops this one in its tracks). In fact, if there were two origins, one would expand that point to be mentioned at some point where a Cyberman is trying to explain the logic of conversion - see, we thought of it separately in two different places! And if this is supposed to be the real origin, it's contrary to Spare Parts** and all explanations given by in-universe* Cybermen, where the origin conversions happened on Mondas and they spread out from there. Eventually, they flew their Cyber-converted planet back to our solar system for the events of The Tenth Planet. It would also raise the question of what happened to these Mondassians who changed their minds and gave up conversion. I suppose the ship-origin cybermen would have had to fly back to Mondas after escaping the black hole, converted everyone on Mondas, then flown the planet back to Sol for Tenth Planet to happen. Moreover, somewhere along the way they'd have had to find a need to make every think that actually the conversions happened slowly over time on Mondas, not on a lost colony ship. What I mean is Spare Parts happens, but it does leave on a cliff-hanger of how things will proceed. People are aware of the danger conversion presents, but their situation isn't getting any better and the Cyber Leader is still around even if the Committee is gone. There's enough grey area for those events to lead into World Enough and Time, where space traversal technology has made the Cyber-men unnecessary, before a new survival situation causes a resurgence in the technology. Falling back onto the taboo technology that saved them long ago in the past. As I say, this does rely on the follow-through not adding additional complications.
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Post by ausir on Jun 26, 2017 20:41:47 GMT
I suppose there's one further question: even when Missy is alone, she seems not to understand what's going on. So, what happened that she forgot having been there, meeting herself, etc? Did she have to give herself amnesia so she would play it straight? Or is she in fact, The Nun? The Doctor explains in "The Day of the Doctor" that his earlier incarnations do not remember multi-Doctor adventures, only the latest one.
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Post by mrperson on Jun 26, 2017 20:46:24 GMT
I suppose there's one further question: even when Missy is alone, she seems not to understand what's going on. So, what happened that she forgot having been there, meeting herself, etc? Did she have to give herself amnesia so she would play it straight? Or is she in fact, The Nun? The Doctor explains in "The Day of the Doctor" that his earlier incarnations do not remember multi-Doctor adventures, only the latest one. Ah, true.... A different point occurs to me: there's also the business about one Timelord being able to recognize another, and she doesn't recognize him as one at all. I suppose the show has been more wishy-washy about that one.
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Post by ausir on Jun 26, 2017 20:56:15 GMT
Time Lords are able to recognize each other, but not necessarily under heavy disguises. The Doctor didn't always recognize the Master under his disguises in the classic episodes either.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 26, 2017 21:05:47 GMT
I suppose there's one further question: even when Missy is alone, she seems not to understand what's going on. So, what happened that she forgot having been there, meeting herself, etc? Did she have to give herself amnesia so she would play it straight? Or is she in fact, The Nun? The Doctor explains in "The Day of the Doctor" that his earlier incarnations do not remember multi-Doctor adventures, only the latest one. Yet the Master is there for well over a year, only a small portion of which he's in contact with Missy for.
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