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What The Flux?

Started by Daveycandlish, 07 November, 2021, 08:55:09 PM

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Daveycandlish

I thought that was the best of the recent bunch.
At least I (almost) understood it. And nice to see a returning classic monster in the post credits clip
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pauljholden

i enjoyed that groundhog day ep. aisling Bea rather proves my on going thinking that john bishop is startlingly bad as an actor. i'd be curious to find out if Bea ad-libbed some of her lines, which were pretty much all funny.

there was a few wtf? moments, but buried under a great deal of charm so i don't care too much about them.

Tiplodocus

That was great FUN. And I deliberately emphasize the word fun.

Great, simple premise, great performances (with one notable exception). Plus surely the repeated running down corridors is an homage to (and a bit of meta text on) Classic Who

Oh and my understanding was that Nick broke the 2355 rule when he ducked and survived that loop... So it made sense to me.
Be excellent to each other. And party on!

IndigoPrime

Solid concept. Overly talky Daleks. Abysmal characterisation. But still one of the better Chibnall efforts, and I quite liked a lot of it.

Leigh S

#109
Undoubtably Chibnall's best special, but the points he gets for an interesting idea are all but deducted by the handling.

We get scenes that are longer than the supposed loop lasts. Sarah's mom keeps calling after the time has gone past 4 minutes to - in fact, in the first pass, she tells her mom off for calling at 23:56 then looks at her phone and it shows 23:51 - basic errors.

The Nick dying for sure doesn't add up. If it was based on when you died in the first loop, there was no fixing it. If it was dying in last loop, then all you need to do is survive the first minute of each loop, independently of how you did the last time - Sarah and Nick both die within that time in the 4 minute loop, so by this logic should be dead thereafter...

The 1 minute loop has scenes longer than a minute and cuts out how many minutes it would take to get to the 5th floor ( or 6th if I didn't mishear Nick's stuff being on the 2nd floor and Jeff's stuff being 4 floors above Nick's....

This may sound nitpicky, but if you are basing your story on very specific measurable times and locations, then it's beholden on any decent writer to follow that strictly. The fact it is dumped here says all that needs saying about why Chibnall is never going to work for me.

But at last no teleporting, body snatching, resurrecting from being cut into three parts Daleks, so....

Tiplodocus

I'm ok with that. It's just movie making convention. If you put a stopwatch on ANY film you'll see that "Oh my god, it's so going to explode in thirty seconds!" is actually about 5 minutes e.g the end of Star Wars.
Be excellent to each other. And party on!

Leigh S

#111
I tihnk that is fair enough in a story where teh timer is incidental - when your whole narrative is based on a ticking clock that reduces how much time you have each pass, establish teh layout of the building and the resoures and time available to you, then having the final pass be "go to the 5th (maybe 6th) floor of a building and collect heavy drums in a trolley, then bring them down to the basement and place them strtegically concealed by some fireworks, then vacate the building before it falls down on everyone... in one minute"


The timer that isnt really "30 seconds" is a bit of a cheat, but is easy to ignore.  The "my whole plot is based on a timer" really needs a writer to commit to the conceit, the logic and the logistics.

If they dont have 1 minute but as much time as the plot requires, then whats the point of any of it?  When I think they'd struggle to do all that in 10 minutes, let alone  a few seconds more for dramatic effect, then it really is lampshading a writer who does not give a shit about the very thing he chose (not me!) to write about in the first place


Quote from: Tiplodocus on 02 January, 2022, 07:32:37 PM
I'm ok with that. It's just movie making convention. If you put a stopwatch on ANY film you'll see that "Oh my god, it's so going to explode in thirty seconds!" is actually about 5 minutes e.g the end of Star Wars.

Hawkmumbler

'Kin hell. That Next Time though...

MumboJimbo

#113
I thought Eve of the Daleks, was ok - a welcome palate cleanser after the lumpeness of Flux. Once the time loop conceit had been established, I got rather excited that this would be an unexpected - and most welcome - classic.

I don't think it quite nailed the landing though. That kind of plot needs a meticulousness in its execution, as people will rewatch it to compare each iteration of the loop. Of course, meticulous plotting is not really Chib's bag is it? He obviously abandoned the idea of when people die in each iteration being somehow significant, but forgot (or couldn't be arsed) to scroll up in his Word document and delete the initial set-up. Slapdash.

I didn't see the whole Yazz being keen on the Doctor thing coming though. Not that that could develop much though - the 13th doctor is perhaps the most emotionally evasive we've ever had, which is ironic (in a good way) as she's the first female doctor, and it's typically a quality seen in blokes. She's no more likely to talk about her inner feelings than a dad in the 1970s - instead using the gambit of standing there awkwardly until the other party changes the topic of conversation.

Jim_Campbell

Enjoyed it more than most Chibnall Who... but, yeah, when you've established a conceit of reducing time available on every iteration and you're down to two minutes, I was just... "Why are you STANDING AROUND CHATTING, YOU STUPID DUMBSHIT GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKERS?!"
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IndigoPrime

If nothing else, this is yet more evidence the series needs a solid script editor. This at least didn't feel 'first draft', but it did feel very 'second draft'. It wouldn't have taken a lot to tighten it up, but either Doctor Who doesn't have someone capable of doing that (in terms of ability or budget), or Chibnall doesn't let them. Either way, the flubs here look embarrassing when compared to Danger Mouse, let alone something like The Expanse.

As for Yaz luvs Doctor... The entire 'romance with the Doctor' thing has legs if played right (not least in the Doctor looking human but not being human). But dumping that kind of thing less than two hours from the end of this incarnation's run seems unnecessary and cruel. Moreover, it seems entirely unearned. Rose and Tennant made some kind of sense. But it's hard to know what Yaz sees in this Doctor, given that neither character has evolved to be much more than a cypher during this run.

What is this Doctor's motivation? What does she believe in? What are her key characteristics, beyond generic ones (smart; quippy)? Or perhaps Yaz is dead keen on people who say "fam" a lot and are heavily into genocide and needless, cruel deaths.

That's not to say JW's entire run was a bust. It's had its moments. The show often looks really good now. And Segun Akinola will, for me, be deeply missed when RTD inevitably goes for a take on the theme heavy on bombast and light on horror and mystery. But, man, it just feels like such a waste of potential, and I worry that it will be seen by too many people as 'proof' that a female Doctor can't cut it, when the problem absolutely wasn't JW but the material (and, frequently, direction) provided for her.

Robin Low

Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 02 January, 2022, 11:22:29 PM
Enjoyed it more than most Chibnall Who... but, yeah, when you've established a conceit of reducing time available on every iteration and you're down to two minutes, I was just... "Why are you STANDING AROUND CHATTING, YOU STUPID DUMBSHIT GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKERS?!"

This man shouts the truth. I mean, I'd be fine with the fact they'd never be able get around that huge building in the time available if it just looked as though they were making the fucking effort.

(See also, Star Trek: Discovery for the same annoying behaviour.)

Still, this has to have been rare example of an actual idea, something we've not seen in the show for a while, and I quite enjoyed it.

Regards,

Robin

The Legendary Shark


Well, that was poor.

Daleks, scourge of the universe, destroyers of worlds, armed with new Gatling guns - and it takes a sustained barrage for them to get through a bog-standard aluminium roller shutter? Just so our trapped heroes have enough time to chat? Poor, poor, poor.

Doctor who wants a cup of tea and a goss while the world falls apart around us, more like.

[move]~~~^~~~~~~~[/move]




Richard

Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 02 January, 2022, 11:22:29 PM
"Why are you STANDING AROUND CHATTING, YOU STUPID DUMBSHIT GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKERS?!"

I would like this printed on a t-shirt, or tattooed on my face.