Heads up! Dr Who starts Saturday....

[citoyen]

I loved it. Completely gripped. Decent level of peril and clever story on theme of mortality. I felt it seemed more like proper sci-fi than the usual kids' adventure yarn. Maybe that's why I liked it.

And maybe why wife and son seemed ambivalent.

d.

[her_welshness]

I loved it. Completely gripped. Decent level of peril and clever story on theme of mortality. I felt it seemed more like proper sci-fi than the usual kids' adventure yarn. Maybe that's why I liked it.

And maybe why wife and son seemed ambivalent.

d.

+ 1. For me sometimes I feel like I have to get through 45 minutes of Dr Who. This was not like that. I thought that Karen Gillen was wonderful.

[Rhys W]

Yeah that was pretty good. The Guardian Guide mentioned something about the "casual surrealism" of The Prisoner or The Avengers, which had me intrigued. I liked the general idea of the plot but eventually gave up trying to follow the timey-wimey paradox and just went with the ride. Ending got a bit sentimental, but it was saved by a following hint of existential darkness. Or something.

[mrcharly-YHT]

meh.

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I think it would have been better as a two hander - plenty more potential in that story, didn't give much of a chance for the relationship between old amy and rory to develop.

Stonking performance from Karen tho', and really really good makup.

[Billy Weir]

Agree that Karen gave a good performance.  But she can't do action scenes for toffee.  All the ninja skills of a 12 year old boy mucking around with wrapping paper tubes in his bedroom.

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And yes, I used to be that boy.  Although more jedi than ninja.  Damn you George Lucas, bzzzzwwwmm.

[Manotea]

Agree that Karen gave a good performance.  But she can't do action scenes for toffee.  All the ninja skills of a 12 year old boy mucking around with wrapping paper tubes in his bedroom.

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And yes, I used to be that boy.  Although more jedi than ninja.  Damn you George Lucas, bzzzzwwwmm.

The 'Predator' hair was a good touch.

[mattc]

really really good. OK, so time paradoxes are old-hat (and inherently a bit rubbish, really) , but this one had a new twist at least. And a not-quite-happy ending 

Lots of good lines, visuals (i liked Rory carrying the comedy huge magnifying glass) and "casual surrealism"*.

"Well it's your marriage..." 

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Did anyone else want Amy to say:
the first 10 years were the worst. And the second 10 - they were the worst too.

_{*No idea what this is, but it sounds good}

[MattH]

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So Rory stood guard over Amy for a couple of thousand years.

And she throws a strop just because he turns up a little bit late?

[citoyen]

Good point.

Typical woman. So fickle. 

d.

[gonzo]

I'm not sure that last one was that great, but I'm just enjoying the fact that Doctor Who has remembered that all the episodes don't need to be part of something bigger.

[Steph]

One sodding great hole in the plot: they are in two time lines, moving at different rates. But can talk to each other.

Sorry, spent too long reading real SF...

[border-rider]

Yeah.

Timey-wimey Deus ex machina through-a-glass-darkly tosh. See also Amy's ability to hack & handily reprogramme The Interface and the Tardis's ability to just "lock on" to her.

The plot was so thin it was threadbare.

[mattc]

One sodding great hole in the plot: they are in two time lines, moving at different rates. But can talk to each other.

Sorry, spent too long reading real SF...

Bollox. "Real SF" ?!? All time travel plots are bollox.

What matters is the issues/incidents/dilemmas that the writers hang off them.

That's why Back To The Future is high quality bollox 

[border-rider]

No, no, no. It must be self-consistent bollox

That's why Back To The Future is high quality bollox 

[red marley]

I can tolerate a few holes in the time travel stuff, but I wasn't convinced by Amy's 36 year wait (nor Rory's longer one). There was plenty of scope to imagine what it might really have been like to be alone for 36 years. Apart from losing her sanity, would she even remember much about Rory and the Doctor (I struggle to remember what my eight years old school friends looked like)? They seemed to put all the effort into her makeup instead.

A more convincing "long wait" with a narrative short cut via time travel was in Hitchhiker's Guide with Marvin's wait to the End of the Universe.

[Manotea]

Yeah.

Timey-wimey Deus ex machina through-a-glass-darkly tosh. See also Amy's ability to hack & handily reprogramme The Interface and the Tardis's ability to just "lock on" to her.

The plot was so thin it was threadbare.

Well, she had 36years to play with; "hack" and "reprogramme' might just come down to 'asking the right questions', questions which simply might not have occurred/possible for intended population.

[nicknack]

Can't you lot just enjoy it?

[border-rider]

Yes, and we can enjoy talking about it too 

[mattc]

No, no, no. It must be self-consistent bollox

That's why Back To The Future is high quality bollox 

I would agree that self-consistency is what helps the suspension of disbelief, and is generally a Good Thing in SF.

Unfortunately time-travel plots never stand upto any close scrutiny. Which is also one of the arguments against time travel ever working in the real world. e.g. why doesn't anyone invent another DeLorean in the future, come back, and mess up Marty's timeline again? Hmm? etc ...

[Bill and Ted sent all this up beautifully.]

So I choose the sit-back-and-enjoy-it option (mostly).

[border-rider]

Star Trek NG got this mostly right.  They had proper science consultants, and whilst there was of course plenty of made-up tech they did mostly stick within the laws of physics, respect causality and remain self-consistent.

There's very little else that has taken as intelligent an approach to the problem since.

[mattc]

Star Trek NG got this mostly right.  They had proper science consultants,
....

... who would insist on taking their vacations together, resulting in the Holodeck Episodes. 

[citoyen]

I don't think the "science" is at all important. It doesn't matter that any of it is implausible, that's not what makes it good or bad. The story is everything.

For me, what makes good sci-fi is using that framework to explore the human condition or address moral dilemmas, stuff like that. In this case, facing up to mortality and whether or not you'd choose to sacrifice 36 years of experience to regain your youth.

OK, so having just a 40-minute single episode to work with, you're not going to get much chance to explore that theme in great depth, plus you have to also cram in a bit of being chased by scary robots, but I thought the episode was up there with the likes of The Girl In The Fireplace.

YMMV. I guess it depends what you're looking for.

d.

[citoyen]

No, no, no. It must be self-consistent bollox

I thought this episode did well on that score. OK, so there was the usual rabbit-out-of-the-hat solution, but I thought the story worked well overall.

d.

[MacB]

Yes, and we can enjoy talking about it too 

Nicknack has a point though, it's like joining a literary club to better appreciate books only to find all the magic being ripped out 

My yardsticks are the kids, if they've got big grins, or trouble sleeping, then it's a good un

[Eccentrica Gallumbits]

Re the Hitler episode:

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Also, I assume this is the last we see of Alex Kingston, since she lives backwards in time compared to the Doctor, so her introduction to him is his farewell.

But she doesn't live "backwards" in time compared to the Doctor - their timelines don't intersect in chronological order, neither backwards nor forwards. It's quite feasible that the Doctor's future timeline could intersect with hers again at any number of points between her regeneration into River Song and her death, either before or after previous intersections. The Doctor and River's timelines are tangled up like spaghetti.

We've already seen that they keep notes to prevent spoilers. If their timelines only intersected in inverse chronological order, that wouldn't be necessary. Plus they have the whole relationship thing to develop yet.

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When she was initially introduced, then yes, the concept of tangled timelines was there. However, in a more recent episode they changed that, and stated that River lived backwards in time and the Doctor forwards, and emphasised this by making the Doctor's first kiss of River to be her last kiss (afraid I can't remember the episode off the top of my head). But possibly we'll go back to spaghetti timelines, which would be good, since the "spoilers" would make sense again.

But

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each of the two tangled strands of spaghetti has two ends - a beginning and an end. The beginning of one is at the end of other and vice versa, with all the tangling in between.