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My huge Doctor Who episode marathon.


The Friendly Dalek
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22 minutes ago, The Friendly Dalek said:

 

Although the focus is on Smith and Jones (see what I did there?:P)

 

If I wasn't on a mobile I would have posted a gif. However  "I  understood that reference" ;)

22 minutes ago, The Friendly Dalek said:

The makeshift TARDIS console doesn't look that good either. 

 

Afraid this suffered from the Blue Peter effect. Designed by a 12 year old so top marks for effort.  :clap:

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The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People- Much like the previous story, there are some interesting ideas on display here, but the execution really lets them down. 

The leads are good, and it's fun to see Matt Smith play both The Doctor and the Ganger version of The Doctor. The supporting cast are fine at best, but the vast majority of the characters are expendable, throw away characters with nothing memorable about them. The dialogue isn't great, so it's not entirely the actor's fault considering none of them were given great material. The only interesting one is Jennifer, played by Sarah Smart. There's a nice dynamic between Jennifer and Rory, but her character is massively let down when she becomes the monster thing, it looks bad and does exciting. I did also like wat was done with the character of Jimmy, and how it explored his relationship with his son. 

The Flesh, and The Gangers themselves, is an interesting concept. I like how this story attempts to explore the themes of wether the Gangers should be treated as less human than real people, but it isn't executed in a satisfying way, so it's a great idea that isn't allowed to develop fully, thus losing it's impact. 

The pacing for this story is awful. This story really didn't need to be a two-parter, there isn't enough content here to cover that amount of time and it really shows. There were many points where I found myself checking my watch to see how long was left because I was bored, and that definitely isn't a good sign. Perhaps it wouldn't have dragged so much if I didn't watch both parts back to back, but who knows? 

The visuals are fine (except for monster Jennifer, which was awful). 

Overall- 3/10.

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The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People - Very middle of the road episode. I love the concept but the execution failed at times. 

The first part seemed to drag a little and the cliffhanger was weak. However having a 2 parter does give more time for character development but this wasn't used.

CGI not good in places.

I preferred the second part but the whole story was rather overshadowed by the cliffhanger at the end. Now that was brilliant. 

Overall 5/10

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 A Good Man Goes To War- This is one of my favourite episodes of the Smith era. Steven Moffat crafted an epic mid season story, and I love it for its ambition and scope.

The entire cast are great. The regulars are at their best, and the supporting cast is very good. I loved seeing the Paternoster gang in this story. The visuals are excellent, as is the pacing. The dialogue is brilliant for the most part, and I love the reveals in this story, and where the characters are left by the end of the episode. 

It's easier to just say what doesn't work in my eyes rather than list everything that does as well. I think this story loses points in the villain department. Madame Kovarian isn't that interesting, and the Headless Monks are pretty bland in my opinion. I also have a small gripe with the pre-credits sequence in this episode. I think that The Doctor blowing up all of the spaceships belonging to the Cybermen was unnecessary. It makes for a nice spectacle and starts the episode off on a high note, but I just don't think it was necessary for The Doctor to do that. Also, the supporting characters never really get that much time given to their development. The fast pacing of this episode leaves many of the new characters with no interesting personalities or development. other than those points, I love everything this episode does, and it is one of the ones from this era which I re-watch the most. 

Overall- 9/10.

It isn't a perfect episode but I love it for what it is, and what it adds to the lead characters. It's also just a well paced and entertaining episode.  

Edited by The Friendly Dalek
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A Good Man Goes To War - When Moffat goes for epic he tends to get it right and I think on the whole he did so here.

This is an excellent character piece and the production is brilliant. The main cast are great and personally for me Smith is giving his best.

The Paternoster Gang are a nice addition to Doctor Who. I actually quite like Madame Kovarian. I do agree that The Headless Monks are not a very imposing villain.

Fortunately I managed to stay spoiler free and didn't even twig with River Song's real identity. :lol:

Overall 8/10

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Good time to mention story arcs? Across the Modern Era of Doctor Who some of the story arcs have been better than others but I have enjoyed them all. Series 6 introduced the exception for me. I don't like the revelation of who River Song is. For me this is when I began to lose interest in the character and also the Smith era though he did have a few more good episodes.

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1 hour ago, Peter Capaldi Fan said:

Good time to mention story arcs? Across the Modern Era of Doctor Who some of the story arcs have been better than others but I have enjoyed them all. Series 6 introduced the exception for me. I don't like the revelation of who River Song is. For me this is when I began to lose interest in the character and also the Smith era though he did have a few more good episodes.

Series 6 is definitely the series with the weakest arc in my opinion, but it is also the one with the most complex arc. Most arcs in Who are just a repeated word or phrase which is revealed to have more relevancy as the series goes on, and although this series does definitely have foreshowing like that, it does get more complex as it goes. The first half of this series is fine, but the second half takes it way over the limit, with stories like Let's Kill Hitler and The Wedding Of River Song going overboard on the over-arching narrative at the expense of a cohesive story, both in terms of the overall arc and the episode it is in.

This is also the turning point for River's character in my opinion. I can't fault Moffat for his ambition, but he really did allow these massive and complex arcs to overshadow the story at hand, and as a result series like 6 and 9 (if memory serves the arc in that series wasn't well handled either, but i'll see if I still think that when I reach that series) end up feeling weaker than most because there is no satisfying resolution to the arc, because they are so much more complex, and as a result the resolution needed to equal that in order to give it a satisfying end. I do find myself watching episodes from series 7 more than series 5 or 6 (controversial I know, but more on that when we reach series 7), so I think that Smith's era had great content throughout, but the quality definitely drops a lot in this middle portion of his era. 

Edited by The Friendly Dalek
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11 hours ago, natedammit said:

Time for one of my massively welcome opinions:

River Song is one of my least favourite characters in anything ever. I hate her so much. 

Sitting on the fence as per usual.

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Let's Kill Hitler- Blimey. How did we go from A Good Man Goes To War to this rubbish? 

Let's start with what I like. Smith, Gillan and Darvill. Time to move on to the negatives. :lol:

Firstly, this episode has absolutely nothing to do with the man in the title, which makes me wonder why they bothered including him in the first place. Placing The Doctor into the middle of WW2 could have been interesting, but this episode completely wastes that setting. Hitler does nothing, and is reduced to being the victim of a few jokes. If you're going to include a historical figure who has had such a major influence on the lives of so many people, I think that the production team should have treated it with a bit more respect than to make a load of jokes involving Hitler and then leave him out of the rest of the episode. Just for clarification, I don't mean it is disrespectful to him (yes I have been mis-interpreted as having thought that when talking about this episode in this way in the past). He was a bad person who did many bad things. I think it is disrespectful to those who's lives he has impacted in the real world to just make him a joke. I don't think there was a way that this show could have dealt with a person like Hitler and remain respectful to the people who's families were affected by him. It's a very sensitive subject, and unless this show wanted to make a much darker story out of this subject matter, they shouldn't have tried at all, because making Hitler a walking joke just doesn't feel right to me.

This is the point where River becomes unlikeable in my eyes. Her character is all over the place. Firstly, Mels is very unlikeable, and the actress does a decent job but her dialogue is awful. Alex Kingston is just as unlikeable in this episode. Again, she does the best with what she has, but the way her character is written here really annoys me. I still don't know how she has the ability to regenerate in the first place. She was conceived in the TARDIS (as revealed in the previous episode), but does that give a person the ability to regenerate? If there;s another explanation for this that I've missed please let me know. 

The Teselecta isn't interesting at all in my opinion, and the way it was utilised in this story was pretty dull. This story also has no clear villain. It certainly isn't Hitler, due to his immediate side-lining right after his introduction. It isn't the Teselecta, considering that thing is out to kill River after identifying her as the person who will kill The Doctor. So does that make River the villain of this episode, especially considering she poisons and nearly kills The Doctor in this episode? Making an established character like River the villain out of the blue just doesn't work for me.

A major reason as to why the reveal at the end of the previous episode worked is because none of the character's had any idea what was happening. The reveal in question is the one regarding River being Amy and Rory's daughter. This worked so well in my opinion because they barely know who River is, so to have it revealed that she is their daughter has a clear impact on those characters, which also extends to the audience. This episode ruins that concept, as it reveals that Mels was a friend of theirs for a long time. So the fact that they spent so much more time together than we thoguht they had lessens the impact of the reveal in my opinion. This is the hardest issue to explain I think. To put it in the simplest way I can think, it has a larger impact to know that the few times that Amy and Rory met the adult River were the only times they saw her outside of seeing her as a baby, rather than learning that River was close to her parent's for much longer than we previously thought. It is a more tragic and emotional story to go with the idea that they barely know their daughter, so this episode removes that emotional aspect of their story.

This episode also falls flat as a result of the series arc. We know from the very first episode in this series that The Doctor will die in Utah after being shot by the astronaut. A large amount of this episode is focused on The Doctor trying to recover from being poisoned, but there's no tension here, as we know he has to survive so he can die later in the desert. 

The pacing is bad, the plot is all over the place, and the dialogue is boring. I like the performances from the three leads (as always), and I also like The Doctor's black costume, with the cane and the top hat. I like how that looks, but other than those things this episode has no redeeming qualities. This is truly bottom-of-the-barrel Who. 

Overall- 1/10. 

Edited by The Friendly Dalek
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Let's Kill Hitler - It is very difficult to see where Moffat was going with this episode. There have been numerous films or TV that have made fun of Hitler but there has always been a deeper message. That wasn't apparent here.

Nice to see Rory get a bit of action. Smith and Gillan are also excellent. That's the positives. The Teselecta are a boring villain when they could have been so much more. River Song is annoying.

Overall 2/10  Gains an extra point for people complaining to the BBC that the guard said "Where the f*** is he?" My sister-in-law (German by birth) agrees with the official BBC statement that he says "Halt, was machen sie?" :lol:

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25 minutes ago, The Friendly Dalek said:

I'm pretty sure that's the most I've written about one episode for a while. To say I have strong feelings about this episode would be an understatement. :lol: 

Your negative reviews are as enjoyable to read as your really positive ones. At least this episode stirred some feelings. :lol:

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I've been missing so many days of this. :lol:

Night Terrors- This is one of Mark Gatiss' weaker stories in my opinion. There's much I dislike, but there's not much I really like about this one.

The direction is good, and the set design is nice, especially in the doll's house. The leads are great as always. I actually really like Daniel Mays in this episode. I think he does a good job. I don't like saying child actors aren't great, due to their age really, but I found the kid in this episode to be rather annoying. The rest of the supporting cast isn't that interesting either, due to both their acting and the script. There is some nice development of the character of George, and how he is forced to face and overcome his fears. However, the idea that he is an alien that took the form of Alex's ideal child is a bit too far in my opinion, and I didn't think that was a necessary inclusion. 

The reason why The Doctor is involved in this story in the first place doesn't really click for me. I always thought the psychic paper only showed someone what they expected to read, rather than being a device which people could send mental messages to. The pacing isn't great, and the way in which the plot progresses just doesn't really work. The reasoning as to why the giant doll house exists in the first place, and the way people enter it all just seems silly and unbelievable, even by Doctor Who standards. 

Another reason why this story doesn't work for me is because the monsters just aren't interesting or threatening. This leaves me feeling disconnected from the episode as a result, because I just didn't really care about what was happening. 

Overall- 3/10.

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Night Terrors - I haven't seen this one since it first aired so took the opportunity to watch it again today. It's by no means perfect but I actually really enjoyed it.

OK so the writing is sloppy with a lot of plot holes. The elderly lady and man with dog are surplus to requirements. How The Doctor got involved didn't work. But it was a pleasant enough way of spending 45 minutes.

The leads are excellent. Daniel Mays is also good. The setting in the doll's house is different. The episode is creepy enough - probably more so for children. It's not an episode I would choose to watch again and again but it's by no means the worst.

Overall 5/10

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The Girl Who Waited- I don't know how an episode as good as this one managed to come out after the string of poor episodes that were released previously in this season, but I sure am happy that this one was this good.

Thankfully, this episode decides to go for a small-scale story which focuses on character drama, and it is works a lot better than some of the more ambitious stories in this season in my opinion. 

The very small cast in this story allows to regulars to shine here, and Karen Gillan gives what is easily one of her best performances in the show. Tom MacRae's dialogue, coupled with Gillan's performance, makes for a brilliant episode. Arthur Darvill is also at his best here. 

I love a good time paradox story, and this one features one of the most interesting visualizations of this idea which I have seen in Doctor Who. The heart of this episode is the relationship between Amy and Rory, and their interactions really do make this episode. Focusing on relationships in this way could be risky, because it could delve into melodrama, which I don't like, but this episode manages to keep their interactions subtle enough whilst still putting across all the necessary emotional beats. Due to this, The Doctor does take a back seat in this story, but there is an interesting reason given as to why The Doctor can't leave the TARDIS, and Matt Smith is excellent in the scenes that he has. Gillan and Darvill are so good that I didn't really care about how The Doctor didn't do much, because I was invested in their story. 

The pacing is great, The visuals are excellent, but very simplistic for the most part. The white visual style reminded me of The Ark In Space, and that can only be a good thing. :lol:

The weak link in this episode is the threat. Much like Night Terrors, I didn't find the threat in this story very interesting, so as a result whenever the story went away from the drama and focused on the handbots it didn't work for me, but since the episode around them is so good I'm not surprised that they are the weakest part of it.

Overall- 9/10.

Edited by The Friendly Dalek
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