Doctor Who

I'd be watching it right now, but Iplayer keeps dicking me around.

Well that was... that was... um...

I need to watch it again, with subtitles. Why must they talk so fast? I cried a bit at the end by the way. And I knew it was coming.

Also kiss. It'll be interesting to see what Tumblr makes of that.

Between Jenny and Madame Vastra? I mean, they're a married couple, aren't they?

I liked it. I think at least partly because my old dad complains he can never follow it, for once it didn't seem to give him trouble.

I could see it feeling slow-paced, but I liked how different it felt from expectations.

Missy in Heaven. No idea.

edited 23rd Aug '14 1:26:54 PM by occono

Clearly up to something. So sickly sweet Mary Poppins that it reads as totally insincere, but what she's up to is clearly the big season arc. Nefarious or not, who knows yet?

I didn't see any of that last ten minutes coming. None of it. And I'm still pretty shell shocked at the whole thing.

I was applauding at the end though. Real claps and everything.

Worth waiting for.

It was a really slow pace to the first act; it was just Clara milling about Patanoster Lane while The Doctor wondered about London, but it was worth while for the vale scene which really did perfectly address the Whoufflé chemistry with a surprisingly large amount of maturity and respect to all the characters involved.

Once they got to that restaurant though everything kicked into proper Moffat high gear; delightful little logic puzzles with some proper tension even if the scenes themselves look quiet.

The villain was absolutely brilliant and brilliantly creepy in his movements and delivery of lines, and better yet the special effect of making him appear hollow was startlingly effective.

Clara has always been a character who has tremendously had The Doctor's back, so I was glad to see the idea of her distrusting the Doctor came from insecurity rather than from a sudden lack of faith.

The woman from the shop has come up again, glad to see the Impossible Girl mystery is more than it first seemed. I'm sure The Doctor has learnt by now that when faced with a mystery the thing to do now is not delay and start investigating obvious leads again! Lest we have a Pandorica, Quantum Pregnancy, Space Suit Orphan. Oh wait, Daleks are more interesting I guess.

I also found it interesting that Twelve didn't have faith that he'd live to find Gallifrey; possibly because he's just aborted an opportunity to save it.

The Paternoster Gang all had a lot more focus on them than ever before here; I found Vastra's surprisingly potent awareness of what people might think really interesting and a meaty component to her character we've not had before. Jenny benefits from this too, if only because she stands out in comparison as just being blissfully in love and far more free of doubt. Strax perhaps was done a disservice as he is on a road of flanderization; in A Good Man and The Snowmen he was an expert strategist, and a perfect physician; but unequipped for anything else. So I was sad to see him mistake an eye for a mouth.

And finally, Missy. She appears really strait forward to be the Archetypal Moffat Woman, which has me instantly certain she's going to turn out to be a massive subversion to that. All that can be said on her right now is that we have seen of her what Moffat has decided to let us, which means there was probably more reason to showing us her than to simply get us excited.

She very much has a Master feel to her though.

City of the Saved: Origins

Yes, that's it! I'm in shock. First Korra yesterday now this...

I'm sort of meh about the opening music. May be it'll grow on me? (Is that it goes? You English speakers and your manners of speech. I mix them up a lot.)

There is some chatter that Missy is The Rani. She could well be.

edited 23rd Aug '14 1:39:06 PM by TamH70

Nah, Missy's a bit too sickly sweet for that, I think.

Well, comments on that.

First of all, deciding to watch the last ten minutes of Tumble before it was a bad idea. Who thought that "not-really-celebrity gymnastics" was a good show idea?

The Paternoster gang were quite good again, although Jenny and Vastra seemed to spend most of the episode pointing out how incredibly homosexual they were, which I guess is better than everyone being straight.

Too early to really tell but I'm liking Capaldi so far.

Missy in Heaven is curious but I can't help but think of her as Miss Pickwell from Bad Education.

The new clockwork robots are good too, although a bit boring.

Someone on the other page suggested Missy was actually the Master, which is a theory I've seen several other people propose independently. She's got the kind of flip manicness that the Simm!Master had, is so nice that she seems fake, and it'd be an interesting payoff to the female!Doctor media stuff. Plus Moffat did it in that comedy special years back. And then Missy could be short for Mistress

I'd honestly prefer that to Missy as the Rani. Ludicrously complicated schemes to troll the Doctor is more the Master's idea of fun that the Rani's scientific experimenting.

edited 23rd Aug '14 1:46:11 PM by Drakyndra

The Curse of Fatal Death?

asdasfdeea [[ ]] thingys

edited 23rd Aug '14 1:46:21 PM by blancaleona

Female Master would make me really happy, possibly even more so than female Doctor.

I cannot see the Master taking becoming a woman well at all. In the classic series he mostly condescended to them and in the new series he's an out-and-out raging misogynist. He'd be friggin' pissed.

a bit Only one thing wrong with that. The Master, in all of his incarnations, in all the time he was onscreen, never once called the Doctor his boyfriend. Missy explicitly did. There is something more than the obvious "oh yeah, this is totes the Master back again" going on here. Besides, Missy was too buttoned up in her craziness. The Simm!Master was insane at the end of his last appearance and not in a "let's go dancing in front of a robot's ghost" way either.

Well, it's a new regeneration, so some aspects of personality are going to change.

I think it's a great theory, and will be sticking with it for now.

In other news, I'm really liking Clara.

To say nothing of the Unfortunate Implications of only making the Doctor/Master quasi-romance thing text once one of them is a woman.

Why doesn't the Doctor have any crazy ex-boyfriends? Or hell, boyfriends at all? I mean, if he's bisexual heteroromantic, fine, but it really comes off as more "the Doctor's only bi when we can get a good joke out of it."

edited 23rd Aug '14 1:51:30 PM by Wackd

I believe that is EXACTLY why they introduced that possibility.

That was pretty great; I think the slower pace is a good direction for the show to go in, it leaves room for things to breathe. The pace has been a problem imtermittently since the revival, and lack of breathing-space has crapped up the last two series especially.

The only problems I had with the episode were the already-established relationships (Clara-Doctor especially, but I've never been sold on the Poternaster Gang either), but I think I'll just take the Thor 2 approach and pretend that they were set up well. The Vastra/Jenny relationship is still fucking dodgy, though; maybe worse now that it's been acknowledged on-screen.

Capaldi was good. The ambiguity at the climax was pretty great, only slightly ruined by evil mary poppins pointimg it out at the end. The Matt Smith bit was excellent, and not something that would have happened under rtd. Possibly Smith's best performance.

Um... fear of.. the moral guardians???

Sorry, I got nothing.

HAHA evil mary poppins. I'm calling her that now

edited 23rd Aug '14 2:01:52 PM by blancaleona

That's the thing. Everyone is assuming that Missy is EVULLL!!! What if she isn't? We don't know yet. It's obvious that she is, or else everyone else on the internet that's talking about her wouldn't be saying so but what if it's too bloody obvious and just another Moffat red herring? No-one who hasn't seen the preview or the leaked episode saw Smith coming, did they? He kept that extremely well hidden. Maybe he's doing the same for Missy, only just hiding her in plain sight?

"We will not melt him with acid." - Oh, you!