New Doctor Who

[Up Chuck]

I watched them fairly recently. Go into detail at will! We're in a Doctor Who thread on a wrestling forum, there's no point shying away from nitpicking and obsessiveness at this point.

[Herne's Son]

Ok then

 

Curse of the Black Spot

 

The ghost women/mermaid/alien doctor thing takes all the people off the boat once they get cut, we then find out she is in fact a Doctor and is attempting to heal people, but how did they get sick? In addition everyone seems to be on life support and cannot leave but Rory can as long as Amy brings him back by performing CPR, so he is now cured? The illness just vanished? Then we see at the end when the space ship takes off all the crew are up and moving about again, so have they now been cured as well? and if so why not let them go back to there own ship?

 

The Doctors Wife

 

The Doc and friends arrive on a scrap yard planet where he meets a woman who claims to be the Tardis, exactly how did the Tardis end up in the form of a woman?? and what was with all the voices of Timelords the Doctor heard, then they go and build a new Tardis in like a few minutes and the woman disolves back to the Tardis which was always there anyway.

 

I am not slating the show, I have enjoyed all 4 episodes so far but these things bugged me, maybe I missed it when it was all explained in the episode, I know Matt Smith's Doctor does tend to explain stuff super fast sometimes.

 

Also does anyone else find River Song slightly annoying?

[Vamp]

I'll tell you what really fucks me off about 'The Black Spot', and that's how they completely shit on the ending in 'A Good Man Goes to War'. The boy will die if he leaves the ship, so he's wired in and he gets to have adventures with his pirate dad who can fly it around for the already bollocky (but acceptable given the style of the show) reason for space ships being like sailing ships. And then suddenly the kid appears, no longer wired into the ship's console, and seemingly able to leave the ship and wander about. If you're bringing back past characters it's as a nce moment for the long term viewers, which is cutesy and nice but then to shit on the original point just seems stupid.

[Up Chuck]

Advance warning: when typing this out, it sounded chatty and friendly, rather than obnoxious and preachy, but I realise it could be read either way. Please try to imagine the former tone. Also, I'll go into much more detail than is strictly necessary just to make sure I've explained everything (and partly because I fucking love writing about this stuff).

 

Ok then

 

Curse of the Black Spot

 

The ghost women/mermaid/alien doctor thing takes all the people off the boat once they get cut, we then find out she is in fact a Doctor and is attempting to heal people, but how did they get sick?

 

She wasn't programmed to deal with human sickness, so she reacted overzealously to every tiny injury the crew received to be on the safe side.

 

In addition everyone seems to be on life support and cannot leave but Rory can as long as Amy brings him back by performing CPR, so he is now cured? The illness just vanished?

 

They can't leave because the Siren/doctor thing won't let them be taken away. They're not actually that ill, she's just anaesthetised them because she can't work out exactly how ill they are, and the ones that were actually ill were able to be cured by advanced alien technology once she'd had them there for a while. Rory, on the other hand, was drowning before she rescued him, so needed to be revived. The CPR stuff was stupid and not how CPR works at all, and as a former St John's Ambulance cadet it really bothered me, but the only problem was that he'd been briefly underwater and possibly inhaled a bit of water, so hollywood-style miracle CPR was able to fix that. Not an entirely watertight turn of events, but not entirely illogical.

 

Then we see at the end when the space ship takes off all the crew are up and moving about again, so have they now been cured as well? and if so why not let them go back to there own ship?

 

As above - most of them just had a cut on the finger and were being over-cared for because the siren didn't know what else to do. The kid with the cough must have had something that was easily cured. That is a little bit inconsistent, I'll grant, but not way out there in terms of believability.

 

EDIT: Stuff about this below with Vamp's point. I forgot some stuff.

 

The Doctors Wife

 

The Doc and friends arrive on a scrap yard planet where he meets a woman who claims to be the Tardis, exactly how did the Tardis end up in the form of a woman??

 

Yeah, give this one another and make sure nobody talks over anything, because that's explained pretty clearly. House, the living planet thing, had to drain the Tardis Matrix (basically the soul of the Tardis) so he could eat it. In his lengthy existence at the edge of the universe, he'd developed some technology capable of sucking the souls out of Tardises and placing it in a living receptacle so it had somewhere to go.

 

and what was with all the voices of Timelords the Doctor heard

 

That was a Time Lord messaging service (voice messages in little cubes, previously seen in a Patrick Troughton episode from 1969) - they were distress calls from the Time Lords whose Tardises House had previously drained and eaten. They'd all died there.

 

then they go and build a new Tardis in like a few minutes

 

I took that it took them a few hours or so. If your point was "why didn't the other Time Lords trapped there do that", then it's one of the entire show's key points that the Doctor is a maverick outside-the-box-thinker even among his own species.

 

and the woman disolves back to the Tardis which was always there anyway.

 

House filled up the now-empty Tardis with his own consciousness and decided to go for broke and try to get back to the main part of the universe. Idris was a human who couldn't physically exist for too long with a Tardis' soul inside her, and she died (for the second time - her original human soul died before the opening credits). As she died, the Tardis recognised its own soul being inside it, and managed to re-absorb it, ousting House's consciousness and killing it. The image of her projected afterwards where she says goodbye (or, indeed, hello) to the Doctor is just the Tardis' soul attempting to talk to the Doctor one last time - because the Tardis alive, and it has feelings, and loves the Doctor, and wants to talk to him. The projected image is nothing new, either - the Tardis has done that a bunch of times since the revival (and possibly before - evidence of that is very welcome if anyone knows of any).

 

I am not slating the show, I have enjoyed all 4 episodes so far but these things bugged me, maybe I missed it when it was all explained in the episode,

 

Didn't come across like you were. Everyone misses stuff on TV now and again, especially when...

 

Matt Smith's Doctor does tend to explain stuff super fast sometimes.

 

Yep. You really have to listen hard sometimes. I usually watch it on my own so I catch everything, and so my family doesn't disown me when I squeal with glee at the bits I really like.

 

Also does anyone else find River Song slightly annoying?

 

From time to time, but mostly I love the interactions between her and the Doctor, and I think from a conceptual standpoint, she's one of the most interesting DW characters there's ever been.

 

I hope I've cleared up the stuff that was bugging you. If it happens again, I'll have a go at explaining it, because I love series 6, but I totally see how people could miss things like that. I did so myself on a couple of episodes, and they only properly made sense when I re-watched them (Let's Kill Hitler was a big one for that, because it was fucking non-stop twists and turns, and I was watching it with three other noisy people).

 

EDIT: Oh god more stuff

 

QUOTE FROM VAMP, I HAVE USED TOO MANY QUOTE TAGS

I'll tell you what really fucks me off about 'The Black Spot', and that's how they completely shit on the ending in 'A Good Man Goes to War'. The boy will die if he leaves the ship, so he's wired in and he gets to have adventures with his pirate dad who can fly it around for the already bollocky (but acceptable given the style of the show) reason for space ships being like sailing ships. And then suddenly the kid appears, no longer wired into the ship's console, and seemingly able to leave the ship and wander about. If you're bringing back past characters it's as a nce moment for the long term viewers, which is cutesy and nice but then to shit on the original point just seems stupid.

END OF QUOTE

 

D'you know, I hadn't thought of that before (as evidenced by the fact that I forgot he couldn't leave the ship in my explanation above), and I agree. I loved that moment where they popped up in AGMGTW, but you're totally right. The only explanation I could venture is that he'd been on the ship long enough and had been cured, or that the Sontaran nurse (another brilliant idea) had cured him somehow. But you're right, that was a tad sloppy.

Edited August 8, 2012 by opcws

[iamtheman]

turns out that monopoly board was an early draft. BBC got wind with lots of complaints on twitter that colin baker was being unfairly pushed to the back. heres the real one. admittedly with not as good a view.

 

 

looks sweet. but why do they never change the corners for these special ones

Edited August 9, 2012 by iamtheman

[Herne's Son]

Thanks very much for your explanations, I appreciate the time it may of took for you to type it all out. I think I will be watching the remaining episodes alone and with no background noise from here out.

 

As for River Song I'm not sure it's the character that annoys me so much as the mystery of her, I feel it has been dragged out a little too long now, I would of quite liked it if it had just been left as it was at the end of Silence in the Library and the Forest of the Dead, although fans would of complained I think it would of been great if it was always left open like that, especially as she mentioned then the Doctor being so young and yet now she has adventures with an even younger Doctor.

Edited August 10, 2012 by Herne's Son

[Jaffa]

especially as she mentioned then the Doctor being so young and yet now she has adventures with an even younger Doctor.

Smith may look younger than Tennant but Smith's Doctor is older. I assume that the logic there is that River can see beyond his face and see his soul or something.

[Vamp]

especially as she mentioned then the Doctor being so young and yet now she has adventures with an even younger Doctor.

Smith may look younger than Tennant but Smith's Doctor is older. I assume that the logic there is that River can see beyond his face and see his soul or something.

 

 

Plus I guess Smith plays his Doctor older than David Tennant does. Well, sometimes anyway.

[GalaxyV.2]

Yeah that's how I saw it. Tennant's was like Hamlet in space, Smith's is very much like the old man in space. Young face but older. Its a credit to Smith that he's probably the only Doctor who you can genuinely believe is over 900 years old.

[Up Chuck]

Oh god yeah, I think that's one of Smith's strongest points. He just feels so old, not even in a human way. I find him genuinely believable as a 1000-year-old person.

 

RE River Song - I see your point, Herne's Son, and I want to tell you something, but I won't. Keep watching

[Vamp]

Yeah that's how I saw it. Tennant's was like Hamlet in space, Smith's is very much like the old man in space. Young face but older. Its a credit to Smith that he's probably the only Doctor who you can genuinely believe is over 900 years old.

 

I think that's a tad unfair on Tennant. I think Matt has his moments where he plays it older than Tennant did but there's certainly moments where Tennant feels ancient.

 

I think the other thing with the line, and actually probably a bigger factor, is that the confrontation with the Time Lords really ages the Doctor. He's still somewhat innocent until that point because he maintains a fantasy in his head that the Time Lords were perfect. He knows they weren't but he hides it from himself. Then as soon as they come back he reminds himself of what they turned into, and how he briefly almost turned into something similar (at the end of Waters of Mars) and that really ages him.

[Spyke]

To me, from the ninth doctor to the eleventh, it has been an excellent progression of the character's age. From the ninth stating "I'm getting old" to the tenth realizing he was not what he once was ("I am so old now. I used to have so much mercy"). I agree with Vamp that the end of time really hits the nail on the head as the doctor learns how old he is and it really shows. The reflection of his life is really hitting the character now, hence why in my view, the eleventh hates looking back (in particular with his last incarnation) so if I was a betting man I would say the 50th anniversary special is going to be about those two in particular (with flashes of his past) and how the eleventh has to let go what happened to him in his tenth end, for him / them to win the day.

[Herne's Son]

Just finished A Good Man Goes to War, what a cracking episode but I'm not sure on the River Song reveal, seems like something that was changed recently, I'm convinced when she was first introduced this was not the plan for her.

 

Also I may have missed it in older episodes but were the Sontaran nurse and the Silurian sword women/detective in previous episodes??

[Up Chuck]

Nah, they weren't. The actors have been spotted in costume filming for an upcoming episode, though (possibly not the same characters, they've both played other characters of the same species before). Side note - I thought the Sontaran nurse was one of the highlights of the episode. "I can produce magnificent quanities of lactic fluid!" is up there with my favourite lines in anything.

Edited August 13, 2012 by opcws

[Vamp]

Supposedly Captain Jack was originally scripted to return in that episode.