Doctor Who

Who, Nardole or the Doctor?

edited 20th May '17 7:37:00 PM by Wackd

Maybe you'd be less disappointed if you stopped expecting things to be Carmen Sandiego movies.

Ah deception. Sort of a clever episode but if the computer is that bad at random numbers then the world probably wouldn't work as well as the real one. Even our computers could do better at appearing random.

And of course, saving the Master doesn't get much more explicit than this.

Our computers have never had to simulate realistic dialogue for eight billion people.

edited 20th May '17 7:43:08 PM by Wackd

Maybe you'd be less disappointed if you stopped expecting things to be Carmen Sandiego movies.

x3The Doctor.

Never trust anyone who uses "degenerate" as an insult.

Right. I missed the earlier showing because I was watching NXT Takeover.

Catching the later airing.

So it is Missy in the Vault. And it sounds like they either went through with it and she somehow survived and was sealed in, or she managed to cut a deal.

edited 20th May '17 11:12:35 PM by HandsomeRob

One Strip! One Strip!

Well, that episode was...umm...

I dunno what I think of it, actually. I kinda liked the previous ones this season better. Hm. Wait for next week I guess?

Everybody's all "Jerry's old and feeble" till they see him run down a skyscraper and hijack a helicopter mid-flight.

I thought it was okay. It was like 90% buildup though, but since it's the first of a three-parter, that's okay. I really like the concept, it's really disturbing when you think about it.

I have seen people say it was really confusing, but it really wasn't. A big chunk of the episode is just flashback without being really obvious about it, at least at first.

Not Three Laws compliant.

Yeah, I feel like it's quite a large part reveals, and setup for the season arc.

Not complicated at all and far less interesting on rewatch.

I find it fascinating on rewatch

Holy fucking shit, this episode was absolutely amazing! The buildup was handled perfectly, slowly rising tension, everything ties into the central mystery, and the payoff actually makes sense! Pretty much everything is properly foreshadowed, and it all comes together in one thoroughly gripping story.

Doctor Who is typically the kind of show that's too schlocky to handle the implementation of actual scientific/philosophical concepts like this with any kind of subtlety, but I have to say, they pulled it off perfectly.

& Oh no, it's not complicated at all. If you're at all familiar with the concept, the instant it clicks with you, you understand it immediately. That's a big part of what makes the reveal so effective, is that you know exactly what this is and what it's implications are.

edited 21st May '17 7:53:48 AM by Gault

yey

I am curious about something though. Semi here.

Okay, so these aliens have this massive simulation to study the Earth in order to conquer it. They're clearly extremely advanced, and they reference multiple simulations and the one simulation has apparently been running for thousands of years (internally at least, it might be on fast-forward compared to everything else). At the very least, they've certainly known a lot about Earth for millennia. Why didn't they try invading before?

My theory is the Silence. The Silence had been around on Earth (allegedly) since pre-history fiddling with things. If the Prophets of Truth didn't know the Silence were there (if the Silence's abilities worked on them) the Prophets' simulations would have failed to line up with reality repeatedly and they wouldn't have known why...until 1969 when the distortion suddenly vanished. So they would have spent a few decades trying to see if the distortion would come back...and then everything gets jumpstarted by the warning in this episode.

I know the show probably won't bother covering the timeline, but it's an interesting theory.

Not Three Laws compliant.

So if I'm understanding it right the entire episode, aside from the flashbacks with Missy, was the Doctor watching a video that outlined what happened in the computer simulation?

Since right before the opening sequence, yes.

You fell victim to one of the classic blunders!

Yes, I agree. This was a great episode thematics-wise, on the par with Blink. They took a real Science Fiction concept (with capital S and F), and handled it seriously, and did it well. No your regular "if you cross the timestreams, err... uurmm... screaming time dragons arrive out from the crack in the sky and wreck arrow around the city" or other "there's a boggart from outer space in the closet/Thames/wooden planks of the haunted house/about to conquer the Earth, the Doctor must dispose of it" or "welcome to the future of humanity, in today's episode the future humans are once again being stupid with robots/guns/other humans/all of above and the Doctor must teach them a lesson".

Of course, the part where everyone says aloud the same random numbers is a bit of shortcut ... but necessary one to make the episode work. And plausible.

If you give a pseudo-random number generator same seed, it will repeat the same numbers. This has nothing to do with the abilities of the computers; it's often desirable, even (I do this on daily basis with homework while testing algorithms and especially homework so that my numerical computation results are reproducible).

Now, the slightly unrealistic part is this: nothing says that two simulated persons would run the RNG with the exactly same seed. Or rather, the whole universe would have been started with the same set of parameters (including the seed), and so each random number generated in the system in general would be fully deterministic, but the each random number output said aloud by the different simulated persons the system wouldn't necessarily be the same. (And with this comes to the philosophical part of it, how can you really know if you live in a good enough simulation. Well, if you notice that your hand pixellates away when you stick it out of the boundaries of the sim, there's your answer... Eliezer Yudkowsky and Elon Musk would be very happy if they could do this in real life.)

Same thing goes for the idea that you could "email" stuff out of simulation. Now, this is easily handwaved away as Doctor being such a pro that he could magically hack the OS to do it after he noticed it's running a simulation.

But the way they did it is plausible enough and close enough ( someone actually bothered to read at least a little bit about pseudo-RN Gs! I'm so happy!) to get the concept to work in one TV episode and not in a 60-page long philosophical essay.

I also liked how the actual execution of the episode unfolded. Now that Doctor is blind, he relatively helpless in many situations where he normally could beat the baddies in leisurely, allons-y "shoot with sonic screwdriver at everything" way he usually has done in the modern Who. This compels the writers to be a bit more inventive than usual, and it's easier to imagine there's real suspense.

And Nardole got some backstory as well, explaining why he is sticking around. The comedy wasn't exactly bad, either. "Why the Pope is in my bedroom!"

edited 21st May '17 11:03:27 AM by maus42

That was pretty trippy man.

Speaking of Missy...

Doc. You know what she's done. She's killed millions time and time again. And now the other time lords are back. You have no excuse to not just kill her anymore. Every time you opt to protect her, you essentially allow her to cause more suffering. It's really selfish.

On a different note, now I get the logic behind Simm-aster coming back.

Ten was willing to play guardian to the master for eternity if necessary until he reforms. 12 isn't performing that exact act, but the idea of watching over Missy is the same.

One Strip! One Strip!

@Random Number stuff: One thing that bugged me about this episode is why they were using the same generator. We can simulate different random numbers and store them as separate variables with current tech. You're telling me this hyper advanced simulation has both Bill and Nardole using the same random number generator?

Yes, it is a bit silly idea if you poke it too hard, but I like the fact they actually bothered to come up with it.

Eh, personally I don't get too worked up if the scientific stuff is wonky - I don't think that's really the point.

Of course, I'm not a scientist.

Oh God! Natural light!

I'm not too bothered by it. It's just a weird way to demonstrate it's a simulation. Like, it's obvious someone looked at stuff about computer programming to come up with that. However their explanation doesn't fully make sense even with current tech.

Of course this could be foreshadowing the fact that the simulation is imperfect which will directly play into the downfall of whatever alien threat we're dealing with. If that's what they're doing it's not quite as weird.

edited 21st May '17 11:54:14 AM by Kostya

Soo....these aliens pick now to try to take over the Earth (once again raising the question of why anyone would want to conquer the Earth; I mean, if the want resources, there are 7 other planets, one extra planetary object, and dozens of moons free for the mining in our solar system alone). Wouldn't it have been loads easier for aliens to conquer the Earth 1000 years ago? or even 100 years ago?

Also, I may have missed it, but who wrote Veritas? And why did they write it?

Yeah, that confused me too. And why did we spend most of the episode dealing with something that by the very nature of it can't exist outside of the simulation?

edited 21st May '17 3:35:32 PM by Murataku

Everybody's all "Jerry's old and feeble" till they see him run down a skyscraper and hijack a helicopter mid-flight.

The simulation includes all of earth's history- at some point during said simulated history, somebody was smart enough to figure out what was going on, and then they wrote it down.

edited 21st May '17 5:36:06 PM by Gilphon

It is a little unclear whether or not they literally ran the simulation through all of Earth's history, or if it has constantly altering parameters to line up with the real Earth.

Not Three Laws compliant.

I'm curious as to how long they've been running this simulation, as well as where they got all of the data for it, especially stuff related to the Doctor.

I have a feeling we'll get answers related to at least some of these questions over the next couple of episodes, though.

Oh God! Natural light!

While I am sure my feelings will change after seeing the next 2 parts, at the moment I barely care about the main plot of the episode. The flashbacks, on the other hand, I absolutely loved.