Heads up! Dr Who starts Saturday....

[GruB]

The 5 of us just watched it on I-player and all I can say is WOW!!!!!!! time paradox makes my head hurt at the best of times and I've read a lot of scifi. Spooky, scary, confusing and funny, that's about as good as it gets.

Even scarier I'm now in the position of yet again changing my favourite Doctor...David Tennant finally beat out Tom Baker but Matt Smith is superb.

It's like being a kid again, got to wait a whole week for the next episode 

My 10 yr old refused to watch it but the 14 yr old was well chuffed to have made it home on time.

[peliroja]

... loud laughs,  ...

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   The Legs, The Nose, and Mrs Robinson

!

My favourite laugh was:

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I'm being extremely clever up here and there is no one around to look impressed! What's the point of having you all!

 

[TimO]

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He was 200 years older but still in the same body.  That must mean that no other actor can play him unless they change events

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Yup I was thinking in the same lines, what will out great great great (etc) grand children do for entertainment ? Since he will be dead and no more Dr Who. Live on 200 odd years of repeats ?

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I dunno, it wouldn't be the first time the Dr has been "dead", in fact it was the end of last series.  It wouldn't be beyond him swapping the body over or something, so that the supposedly 200 year old Dr could go on living.  Since he was "burnt at sea", there's no remains to cause problems, and possibly Rory could have been coerced in helping out with the swap.  It would be problematic letting him die looking like the current Dr, since they couldn't replace the actor.

Thinking about it, the Grey aliens can obviously have some effect on memory, so possibly they can also have an immediate effect should they choose to, so if they're on friendlier terms at some point in the later episode, they could aid with fiddling stuff.  It also looks suspiciously like they can fiddle with time, and that could also help.

[citoyen]

Lots of good stuff but some bits I really didn't like...

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   The Legs, The Nose, and Mrs Robinson

!

I admit I laughed at that but my son just looked puzzled. It's a shame they feel the need to include lines that aren't going to be understood by their core audience. It's a kids' programme, FFS.

But even more annoying was...

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Yet again they're resorting to plots that will require them to pull some ridiculous deus ex machina out of the hat to save the day. It was bad enough that they destroyed the entire universe in the last series, but I didn't think there was any way they could trump that... until they killed off the Doctor in the first five minutes. Strewth.

d.

[Arch]

Even scarier I'm now in the position of yet again changing my favourite Doctor...David Tennant finally beat out Tom Baker but Matt Smith is superb.

I think DT will always be it for me, but having just watched on iPlayer, I think Matt Smith is pretty damn good. I was put off the last series when it seemed a bit too 'kiddie' (plus I missed a lot of episodes).

The new music is still awful though. Bring back the DT incarnation theme.

[Wascally Weasel]

Lots of good stuff but some bits I really didn't like...

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   The Legs, The Nose, and Mrs Robinson

!

I admit I laughed at that but my son just looked puzzled. It's a shame they feel the need to include lines that aren't going to be understood by their core audience. It's a kids' programme, FFS.

But even more annoying was...

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Yet again they're resorting to plots that will require them to pull some ridiculous deus ex machina out of the hat to save the day. It was bad enough that they destroyed the entire universe in the last series, but I didn't think there was any way they could trump that... until they killed off the Doctor in the first five minutes. Strewth.

d.

Yep, sums it up for me.

It doesn't help that I rewatched some old stuff with Sarah Jane in this weekend - yes the old stuff had flaws too but the Doctor was more interesting when he wasn't a god/superhero.

I don't hate the recent stuff but I thnk they have written themselves in to a very tiny corner by having too many plots with huge climaxes.  

[Cunobelin]

It's a shame they feel the need to include lines that aren't going to be understood by their core audience. It's a kids' programme, FFS.

Since when?

One of the strengths of Dr Who has always been the ability to be suitable and maintain the interest of both children and adults

[andygates]

And I did like the way their little exchange went over the heads of everyone in the room at the time, too.

Plus, y'know, he's a Time Lord.  Plots that appear impossible without doing some wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff are absolutely bread and butter.  Second only to the Tourist Of Time ones (quarry, ancient evil, kidnapped assistant, kaboom).

[andyoxon]

We enjoyed it, but I haven't made up my mind about 'Rory-the-Roman' tagging along - River Ok, but Rory possibly too many.

Apparently, though, the first episode ratings were down on last year...

[mattc]

We enjoyed it, but I haven't made up my mind about 'Rory-the-Roman' tagging along - River Ok, but Rory possibly too many.

Gillan makes the point that with Rory around, any romance between her character and The Doctor is snuffled out - I think this is a good thing, Dr Who is a much better programme without falling back on the worn-to-paper-thin cliche of will-they-wont-they between the leads.
Agree about deus-ex-machina stuff. It just makes the episode/series/multi-parter seem pointless. Yes, the Doctor is clever-n-powerful - but if there doesn't seem to be any struggle, what's the point? Why doesn't he just stun every bad guy with eye-ball lasers (or his sonic screwdriver)? etc ...

Fortunately Moffat wrote all the better stories a few years ago, so hopefully he prefers a 'proper' plot.

[TimO]

Buggeration, I just realised that I'll be at Chez Molio for the next episode.  Ah well, that's what iPlayer is for.

[tiermat]

Buggeration, I just realised that I'll be at Chez Molio for the next episode.  Ah well, that's what iPlayer is for.

And Mythtv and SKY+

[peliroja]

Is RtR able to get Pond preggers? And what's with the sickness experienced by both River and Pond?

[her_welshness]

Buggeration, I just realised that I'll be at Chez Molio for the next episode.  Ah well, that's what iPlayer is for.

If you ask nicely am sure that Monsieur Molio will put it on for you 

[andyoxon]

We enjoyed it, but I haven't made up my mind about 'Rory-the-Roman' tagging along - River Ok, but Rory possibly too many.

Gillan makes the point that with Rory around, any romance between her character and The Doctor is snuffled out - I think this is a good thing, Dr Who is a much better programme without falling back on the worn-to-paper-thin cliche of will-they-wont-they between the leads.
Agree about deus-ex-machina stuff. It just makes the episode/series/multi-parter seem pointless. Yes, the Doctor is clever-n-powerful - but if there doesn't seem to be any struggle, what's the point? Why doesn't he just stun every bad guy with eye-ball lasers (or his sonic screwdriver)? etc ...

Fortunately Moffat wrote all the better stories a few years ago, so hopefully he prefers a 'proper' plot.

Twas ever so..?  e.g. the Tardis pulling the earth back to it's proper orbit etc., etc.

[TimO]

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Why, if no one ever remembers them, does the Alien in the Whitehouse wear a suit?  It's not as though he (it, she?) needs it for disguise.

[TheLurker]

Fine new monsters as well...

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Meh. They put me in mind of the sidekick, Hathaway,  in Lewis.

[TimO]

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Why, if no one ever remembers them, does the Alien in the Whitehouse wear a suit?  It's not as though he (it, she?) needs it for disguise.

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I thought they were all wearing suits, even the ones in the undergound whassaname.

Obviously it's because suits are scary.

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One of the ones that River meets in the tunnels, definitely is, but you can't really tell with the other three, when you first seen them, because they've got their arms crossed in front.  Checking again, later on it's clear that several of them are wearing suits.

As an aside, did anyone else notice that the inside of the spacecraft (timecraft?) looks identical to the one in the Lodger, from the last series.  Cheap reuse of sets, or the Ford Escort of spacecraft?

[Tim]

I thought this was supposed to be a new series. Ho hum, meh.

River Song in an episode about aliens in space suits/aliens you shouldn't look away from...

edit: seeing Tim's post I hadn't registered that they were reusing sets as well.

[TimO]

edit: seeing Tim's post I hadn't registered that they were reusing sets as well.

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To be fair, it could be the same spacecraft, since it's definitely referred to in The Lodger as a "Time Engine", and there are some implications of Time Travel in this episode, the references to tunnels that can't be there for example, and possibly whatever mechanism they're going to use to get out of having the current incarnation of the Doctor dying.

[mattc]

Twas ever so..?  e.g. the Tardis pulling the earth back to it's proper orbit etc., etc.

Depends on your definition of 'ever'; did this sort of thing happen before Russell T.Davies?

(this is the problem with non-sf writers trying to come up with suitable spacey-awesome ideas  )

[citoyen]

Depends on your definition of 'ever'; did this sort of thing happen before Russell T.Davies?

There was a fair bit of "reversing the polarity" back in Jon Pertwee's day...

About the most cataclysmic thing I remember happening in Doctor Who when I was growing up was when the Cybermen crashed their spaceship into the Earth, killing off Adric and apparently causing the extinction of the dinosaurs.

d.

[Eccentrica Gallumbits]

I remember that. And also something the Doctor did in 1666 started a fire in Pudding Lane.

[Wascally Weasel]

Depends on your definition of 'ever'; did this sort of thing happen before Russell T.Davies?

There was a fair bit of "reversing the polarity" back in Jon Pertwee's day...

About the most cataclysmic thing I remember happening in Doctor Who when I was growing up was when the Cybermen crashed their spaceship into the Earth, killing off Adric and apparently causing the extinction of the dinosaurs.

d.

It was worth finishing off the dinosaurs just to kill Adric.

[mrcharly-YHT]

wot he said. Anything to kill off the whiny little twerp.