...here we go again the official Dr Who 2000ad discussion thread, so what did you think of this weeks episode, and what about the cliffhanger?...
Well don't want to be a foward thinker but with next weeks title being World war three...
I, of course, will not be watching...
Ump - we get it already!
Honestly, you're missing a treat, but I'm sure the Beeb will be appropriately miffed at your protest! :)
Bah, spoilertastic preview in the Guardian!
Cannot wait to see reactions to big Ben getting it!
When are they going to the Carribean?
Not quite as good as last week, but great fun.
But which fucking idiot thought that showing a trailer that *featured every damn character surviving* was the best way to maintain suspense? Completely knackers suspension of disbelief...
Well, Dr Who is an unparalelled joy for me.
I really enjoyed this, so many moments of pure fun, I can overlook any faults.
This was the first episode where Ecclestons manic grinning actually entertained as opposed to put me off.
Fabbo.
What was good:
The Slitheen
The fake pig alien
Most of the performances
UNIT
The SFX
What wasn't so good:
The overuse of the fart gag. Cut back a bit & it would have been amusing, but not ridiculous
Some of the alien model effects (a couple of Slitheen shots showed the suits up *as* suits)
The arse-head who decided to run that trailer
Good in general but aliens a little bit cheesy no I lie mega cheesy.Good to see it in more than one episode to build up suspense.Coming back to the aliens how could one pig make such a noise but the pig is a personal favourite.The silveens looked like rancor`s crossed with a giraffe.
Heh - Pig-Alien is going to be a personal fave for a while, and the Doctor's angry reaction when he realised what it was was nicely done. The CGI Slitheen in the trailer look pretty well-handled, and I'll look forward to seeing them in action.
(Aarrggh... that trailer! All the direction and build-up to put all of the main characters in peril, buggered :-( )
I thought the fart gag was interminabley composed to become more and more sinister.
Until it was no longer a joke.
More an invasive prodding into the nerves.
And then the line.....
Silent but..
One of my favourite bits was where the doctor told his sonic screwdriver to shush. It was amoment of real childish glee for me.
Whoa! Pig Yeah
My faverite episode so far,just for the pig alone.The aliens looked pretty good,along with the rest of sfx.It was great to see they used UNIT and I hope they will be used more.
The only downers was the over use of the farting,but it still gave some well done bits of tension,such as with the police man.The other was showing so much of the next episode in the trailer.
Did anyone phone the onscreen number to report an alien and if so what did you get?
-pj
That was a cracker... I think spreading the story over two episodes really helped the pacing. Liked the way being an assistant has consequences ('You were gone a year!'), that we would all be watching the consequences of a flying saucer crashing into the Thames on the telly (like we all did with 911) and UNIT of course (hope the bring in a new Brigadier equivalent - played by Ross Kemp). The farting was a bit overplayed but it did give some good jokes. And the absolute cracking triple cliff-hanger (including the old favourite of a monster lurching towards a screaming women) was well spoilered by the preview of next week.
You know something, I should be the one complaining about the fart jokes.
A friend who sends me all sorts of crude jokes (against my will) sent me a text complaining about it. I'm genuinely sick of seeing crudity used so casually in all aspects of life, but this didn't bother me in the slightest.
It seemed to me that it was a silly joke, but with some real dramtic uses, and it was explained in a non-offensive way. Some sort of gas regulator wasn't really working.
And yes, wasn't the mention of UNIT just a joy. We'd been told all along it wasn't UNIT (and techinically they were right), and what a great surprise it was when they got a mention.
Yup, trailer as a huge spoiler, but if we'd had the will power we'd have turned over wouldn't we!
Missed last weeks but this was so good. Its just full of good bits...dead Prime Minister stashed in cupboard, how do we get in to see this alien ship I know lets go watch it on telly, wee ned vandalising the TARDIS, the MP for God knows where getting in the way. And was that BBC reporter bloke, Jeremy Vine(?) in one shot on the news broadcast.
A good start (ie before the credits) but then it went downhill and overall it was pants.
How many casual viewers would have turned over for good at:-
[SPOLIERS - BUT THEN WE HAVE ALL SEEN IT, RIGHT?]
The pig in a space suit?
The rubbish, never ending and needless fart gags?
The pantomime baddies laughing for no reason? (Surely they should have announced their evil plot before laughing, and preferably had droopy moustches to twirl while doing so?)
The dodgy SFX. I mean, come on, those aliens at the end were up there with the Myra!
After the sublime-ness of last weeks, this one was a dog turd. I guess it's been padded out to two weeks just to deal with the Rose back-story.
As for the trailer - what worries me about this is that I think there may be a marked reluctance at the beeb for characters to be killed in this new Who. Maybe they don't want to scare the kiddies, but I found the lack of body count oddly low for an alien invasion.
Still, maybe the body bags will fill when the Daleks get on the scene.
Of course now I'm hoping that the Brig will turn up next week. It'd be just the icing on the cake.
Was it just me that thought the cliffhanger could have been shortened to less than the five minutes it seemed to take until the credits rolled?
"We have invaded your Earth - MWAH-HA-HA-HA!"
They really should have had twirly mustaches - or a goatee at the very least.
it was great
...big ben getting trashed was a great effect and the inprobability of it also used in the plot, also loved the scene just before where Rose and the Doc were talking and over flies the space ship and the Doctors joy at something strange happening again...
i thought the episode was great (what everyone said before was spot on). one thing no-one has mentioned, though, is the thread they are running through the last couple of episodes, namely the tardis. it's buggered. either the doctor is a crap driver of epic proportions - thereby exposing some as yet unseen fault in his character (did that happen with any of the other doctors, and with such regularity - i can't remember??) or they are setting up a future story about the tardis busting. it has parralels with han and the falcon, i can't wait for the doctor to shout 'it's not my fault'.
jon
Ahhh, but the TARDIS has always been buggered.
The Doctor has only been able to control it whan it was dramatically required for him to do so, or the Time Lords sent him somewhere.
you're saying the tardis is selectively buggered when it's required to do so?? that's lazy writing in my book, just pop's up and 'hey presto' there is a super problem wherever/whenever they land. may have been feasible when i was a kid but now??? i'm not sure if i can take another 9 episodes of that happening. but i have faith, it's been great so far.
I've always thought about it like this. The T.A.R.D.I.S. is pinging around time and space on a random course, mainly because The Doctor isn't that good at controlling it and partly because it's more fun for him if he doesn't know where it lands. Sometimes it lands and he and his companions have a few cups of tea, eat some scones, sightsee and then move on. Sometimes there's danger, excitement, adventure. It's those occasions that we see.
Now I know there have been linking elements between the first four stories of this season but nevermind...
you're saying the tardis is selectively buggered when it's required to do so?? that's lazy writing in my book, just pop's up and 'hey presto' there is a super problem wherever/whenever they land. may have been feasible when i was a kid but now??? i'm not sure if i can take another 9 episodes of that happening. but i have faith, it's been great so far.
You could look at it like that I suppose... or you could see it as the greatest plot device ever created. A machine that can take the hero anywhere at any time!
Well couldn't you argue that the fact that every time they step out the bloody box they find themselves in some sort of tricky situation to be a somewhat unlikely plot device, if you're really going to be that obsessional about it?
It's a kids programme, for god's sake - lighten up!
[Sorry, but I've just had to spend the last half hour explaining to my parents who these "pig men hiding in skins" were supposed to be.]
Well, to make a nerdy TARDIS-based lecture...
Originally, the TARDIS was utterly buggered, and sent the doc and his companions on compeletely unpredicatable paths through time and space. Then, following the third Doctor's release from his exile on Earth, it worked ok for a bit, but gradually got more and more buggered 'cos of a lack of maintainence, since it had only a crew of one (or, tops, two) Time Lord when it needed a good deal more. Remotely, though, the Time Lords on Gallifrey could operate it all they liked, presumably via the space internet or something.
Famously, of course, the chamelion circuit has always been buggered, leaving it looking like a police phone box. Except that one time where COlin Baker managed to turn it into a Hammond Organ for a while. That crazy guy.
It was a chair back in pertwee's time.
I seem to remember the Fourth Doctor fitted some sort of 'randomizer' to avoid getting found by the Black Guardian after the Key to Time sequance.
God, I'm more nerdy than I thought.
I started watching it but got interrupted and didn't discover I'd failed to record it properly until after todays repeat.
Does anyone have a video I can borrow?
Cheers,
Wake
Thought it was full of nice ideas, but poorly executed. From the pig, to the fart jokes, to the poorly-designed aliens at the end, all a bit naff. However, it gets 10/10 for the beautiful Penelope Wilton's presence alone.
Also, it seems too soon to have come 'home'. In things like Trek and Quantum Leap, going home was a huge event within the series. Going back to contemporary London and Rose's family so soon seems to me to hint at a lack of imagination, and an over-reliance on soap-operatic elements - at the expense of Sci-Fi.
And did I really hear Rose say to The Doctor "You are so gay!"...?
M@
I watched it with my wife and two boys. We all enjoyed it. The FART gags got to me a bit but overall it won - Boyfriend Mickey comes out of this episode a lot better than he did in the first one - which is nice.
Medium Sized Tips even had a couple of his mates around to watch it - they have 7pm on Saturday night set aside now - which is how it should be.
Tiny Tips loves it though doesn't really understand it - aliens, spaceships etc - I've trained him well.
But is it a bit TOO childish? I can watch something like THE INCREDIBLES, MONSTERS INC and TOY STORY without having to resort to the excuse of "Oh, it's for kids" so why not WHO?
(Apologies If I've got this all wrong - I don't recall watching much Doctor Who after Tom Baker - probably the odd Peter Davidson) so we may always have had to make this excuse about it being for kids but I don't think so.
Yes, Rose did tell the Doctor "That is so gay".
I thought it was amazing.
Although the one thing that sticks out as being bad is the whole who takes over from the Prime Minister in line of sucession bit.
Just because the cabinet/deputy Prime Minister is out of London doesn't mean they aren't able to take charge! That's the biggest problem with it for me. Now if they'd made the character the deputy that would make more sense.
Or had the cabinet killed off by being on a pleasure cruise on the Thames at the time ;)
Last week on the Doctor Who Confidential,the show shown after on bbc 3,it was said that the tardis was surposed to be crewed by 6 time lords.If this is right I guess that could have something to do with it.