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assuming he's responsible for all that is wrong with the world is a bit much.

 

I don't usually.

 

The only way I accept this is as it is usually in jest.

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Ignoring all the negativity above, I thought The Magician's Apprentice/The Witch's Familiar was great, especially the latter episode. Julian Bleach acted amazingly.

 

Next week is Under the Lake, written by Toby Whithouse. He wrote School Reunion, the Vampires of Venice, the God Complex, and A Town Called Mercy.

 

Still not looking forward to episodes 7/8 (because Peter Harness' last episode was the most atrocious since Fear Her). but every other episode seems interesting to me. A lot of seemingly 2-part episodes this time around. Well, there were a lack of them the past few years. 

 

But I'm way more easily pleased than most people. 

On Bota Magna, everything is about to fall apart.


 

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Nothing seems to stick in the recent Dalek episodes. New brightly-coloured Daleks? Nope. Daleks forget the Doctor? Nope. A good Dalek? Impossible. A human-turned-Dalek declaring its identity? Vocab wouldn't allow it.

 

I mean, it's understandable in such a long-running show and each showrunner has his own sense of continuity and the "rules" of the thing, but it's not even consistent to the showrunner any more. Can't say I personally mind all that much, but I do feel a bit sorry for the poor saps who try to fill out wikis on this sort of thing. And, hilariously, Moffat has so far found three different ways to stuff Clara in a Dalek.

 

I did like the line about the chairs, too. Yet another callback to the Curse of Fatal Death.

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...

 

...

 

That was an awesome guitar remix of the theme!

 

Between these first four episodes and the fact that the next episode is apparently written by Jamie Mathieson (writer of the IMO best episodes in series 8, Mummy and Flatline), I think I might already like this series more than series 8. 

On Bota Magna, everything is about to fall apart.


 

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I definitely like it better than the last one, the previous season/series/serial/whatever you're supposed to call it was mostly garbage with a few gems in my opinion. This one, I thought the first three episodes were great and the latest one was just mediocre but not terrible.

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Having no cable, I've been forced to watch the episodes as they come out on Amazon (I hate shelling out $2 an episode), and my family's been hooked on OUAT, so I haven't been able to watch recently. I did however recently go back and watch Listen for the first time. IT IS THE BEST EPISODE I HAVE SEEN IN A VERY LONG TIME. Faith in Steven Moffat = restored!

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Why the heck does everyone love Listen? In my opinion, it's just a massive disappointment- the whole episode is setting up for this amazingly creepy monster, and then it's just "No, your mind's playing tricks" or whatever. Completely wasted potential.

 

Anyway, in regards to tonight's episode:

 

I liked it. A more comedic tone like Robots of Sherwood, except slightly less ridiculous. Also- note the mention of the hybrid. Hints for Heaven Sent/ Bent, maybe?

 

 

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What use would such a hypothetical monster have? It would get old, very, very quickly, and any way of getting rid of it would be very disappointing to many - it was never setting up for an 'amazingly creepy monster', not to mention if there was a monster perfect at hiding... why would we see it? It would not be perfect at hiding if someone was able to know it was there. It would also defeat the entire point of the episode. It plays on human (and I guess time lord psychology) - we've all felt that we're being watched, that something is hiding us at some point, only to find it was nothing. Alternatively, there was a monster, but it's so good at hiding nobody ever realised it was there, but if that were the case, it really cheapens the episode. 

 

---

 

I'm gonna rank series 9 so far.

 

Single episodes: 

 

1. The Girl Who Died

2. The Witch's Familiar

3. The Magician's Apprentice

4. Under the Lake

5. Before the Flood

 

Entire stories:

 

1. The Girl Who Died

2. TMA/TWF

3. UTL/BTF

 

Currently Unaired:

 

x. The Woman Who Lived (S9E06) (Writer: Catherine Tregenna)

x. The Zygon Invasion (S9E07) (Writer: Peter Harness... oh dear.)

x . The Zygon Inversion (S9E08) (also Peter Harness.)

x. Sleep No More (S9E09) (Writer: Mark Gatiss - not the best but at least he doesn't make the MOON an EGG.)

x. Face The Raven (S9E10) (Writer: Sarah Dollard)

x. Heaven Sent (S9E11) (Writer: Steven Moffat)

x. Heck Bent (S9E12) (Writer: Steven Moffat)

 

Yeah, not much change. Still, haven't been disappointed by an episode this series yet, and after five consecutive episodes, that's a very good thing - already I find almost half the series to be good. That might change with Peter Harness' episodes though... he wrote Kill The Moon and he's writing the Zygon two-parter. A two-parter. The dude shouldn't be writing two-parters yet until he's proven he can write a good single-part episode, IMO. 

 

I know we're only five episodes into the series, but this series so far is proving very promising. Episodes 7 and 8 are worrying me a bit, though. I like the return of two-part episodes, it works well and I actually have a hard time of thinking of TMA/TWF and UTL/BTF as separate episodes - they just feel like one long story... which is how they should be, really. Stories have the time to breathe that they really need. 

 

Also, the hybrid is a very intriguing thing considering it seems to be the series arc. It's not in-your-face, but not something that's too subtle, either. It feels a lot more natural than more recent series arcs so far.

On Bota Magna, everything is about to fall apart.


 

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I'm not too worried about Harness, Kill the Moon is my least favorite episode of Who ever but some of my least favorite episodes are written by writers that write some of my favorite episodes (ex: Gatiss wrote episodes I don't much care for like Victory of the Daleks, Night Terrors and Robot of Sherwood but also wrote The Unquiet Dead, Cold War and The Crimson Horror, some of my favorites).

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  • 3 weeks later...

Gonna have to disagree with you on that one. During Clara's first series, I was quite disappointed with her personality- she seemed like such a bland, generic "nice, plucky" girl who existed basically as a walking plot device and sass dispenser. She had all the traits we're supposed to admire in a female character- beautiful, smart, witty, brave, loves books and children, but in spite of Jenna Coleman being a great actress and highly watchable, Clara didn't feel like a real person. Worse still, she'd have these moments where she seemed completely out of character- cracking distasteful jokes after people died, narcissistically proclaiming that her leaf was the most important leaf in human history because it happened to be the one that led to her being born, and the TARDIS hated her for no discernible reason.

 

Then after Capaldi arrived, Clara is forced into increasingly difficult and emotionally devastating situations, and the image of Little Miss Perfect started to crack and crumble away. She falls apart when circumstances get beyond her control, she becomes an almost-pathological liar, she misleads people in order to manipulate them, she gets carried away by the prospect of adventure to the point where she puts other lives at stake, she forgets about children left in her care, and after Danny's death, she's willing to betray and threaten the Doctor to force him to break the rules just for her. the reason she felt so artificially constructed in her first series is because, in-universe, she was.

 

All the hints were there- the bad-taste jokes, the need to be in charge, the obsession with stories, etc. Clara hides her flaws under a mask that she works very hard to maintain. She does all the things a good heroine should do, likes all the things a heroine should like, and has a firm idea in her head how everything "should" be. And at first it really does seem like the universe is bending over backwards to fit Clara's ideal version of her story- a mysterious, handsome man shows up out of nowhere and saves her life, she gets magically upgraded with special skills that allow her to save the day with him, she defeats a planet-sized monster using a plot trinket left by her dead mother because of course that would work, she single-handedly takes command of a small military platoon despite no combat training and leads them to victory, and when an enemy splits itself throughout the Doctors timestream, of course she's going to perform a pseudo-heroic sacrifice to save him- that's what any self-respecting heroine should do. The way things were going so far, she had no reason to believe she wouldn't make it out of the timestream unscathed.

 

Clara is a sly, manipulative control freak and a raging narcissist, an impulsive thrill seeker who puts her own amusement ahead of other people's safety, and at times, has such a severe case of "personal fable syndrome" that she's completely irrational in her perception of reality. And yet she's also a perpetual optimist with genuine intentions to help people and save lives, who loves and cares for the Doctor very much, is fond of children and wants to live a fulfilling life. I think she's easily one of the most complex female characters on television, and I like her a lot now.

 

As for the death thing- I don't think that a character dying necessarily detracts from their value or complexity. Sometimes we learn a lot about a character by the way that they die, particularly if they have some sense of agency in making the choices that landed them in that position- e.g. Matoro in Bionicle. Sometimes a death practically makes the character. Other times, the character's death is just a fitting end to their story, like with Amy Pond- her character arc was basically her growing from a flighty, directionless girl who lacked the ability to make a commitment or show that she cared for someone, into a grounded and compassionate person who was able to give up the adventure and mystery of travelling with the Doctor so that she could be with the person she loved- her death was just the incidental result of living a long life.

 

Sometimes a character is killed just for shock value or to make another character more angsty. When that happens, it does kind of feel as though the writers didn't value the character as more than a plot device. A recent instance would be O'Donnell in Under the Lake- she's a textbook example of "fridging"- killing off a female character for no reason other than to create drama for a male character. But it's worth noting that a character being sad/guilty/angry about another's death doesn't mean the death was necessarily a fridge, unless it served no other clear purpose in the story. Death is an inevitable part of life, so not every instance of major character death is just an example of bad writing. There's a lot to be said for the hows and whys.

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Don't know about sets, but for now, there's this...

 

Video of all Doctors in Lego Dimensions.

 

Kind love how Six is banging on about tact and finesse before immediately toppling off the edge. Though there was a missed opportunity for Eleven to do a "Geronimo!"

Yeah, they dropped the ball on that, him saying that would have been perfect. :P

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Seriously, though, imagine Lego Batman gearing up to do another angsty metal track on his electric bat-tar, and then Twelve shows up and hijacks the song with a solo of his own. While riding a dragon, or some other stupid awesome thing you couldn't do on the BBC's budget.

 

I wonder if Peter Capaldi can sing? Or do a heavy-metal shouty voice? If he was gonna do a song in-character as the Doctor, Lego Movie 2 would be the place to do it.

 

Also, I like to think he's good friends with Dumbledore and Gandalf. Maybe the three of them are in a band or something. 

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Sleep No More.

 

I'm hoping it's going to be as good as Mummy on the Orient Express was- I might even say that it has potential to be another Blink.

 

Potential spoilers for Sleep No More approaching.

 

 

In one of the YouTube videos posted by the Who YouTube channel, Moffat said that this monster basically comes and gets you if you don't sleep- sounding scary enough yet?

 

 

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Good premise, well executed story about what could have been a very silly idea for a monster. It feels like it should be half a two parter though. Like, the Doctor didn't even seem to think he'd eliminated the threat, and now he's just gonna move on? Also feel bad for anyone who was really hoping to see a good trans character, though I suppose trans actors and actresses shouldn't be limited to playing trans characters- some aspects of the whole grunts bit just felt kinda (really) awkward, though.

 

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I freely admit to having actually slept through that. 

 

Anyway...

 



Face the Raven does look good- Ashildr's back again, a Cyberman, an Ood- if this is a ramp up into the series finale I'd say Heaven Sent/Opposite of Heaven Bent is going to be good as well. Perhaps even a three-parter like Utopia/The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords?
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Sleep no more was a return to last season's quality. Which is very much a bad thing. I thought last season was mostly garbage with a few gems and this was the first episode this season I didn't like. (Well part two of the ghost storyline, I'm sort of neutral on, part one was great though). I mean seriously. Eye booger monsters? No real explanation as to why. So if I pull enough all nighters will I be eaten by my eye boogers? Far from sleeping no more it was a snoozefest.

 

tldr; The Doctor summed it up best: "None of this makes any sense."

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Really though, I'm disappointed about two things in that episode- firstly, Clara's last line wasn't "Run you clever boy, and remember". Which would have been a nice way for her to go out. And, predictably, the second thing is that Twelve didn't say "I AM THE TIME LORD VICTORIOUS" at any point.

 

Which is sad.

 

Because Time Lord Victorious was a massive character turning point in the lead up to Ten's regeneration.

Tl;dr great episode but missing a few iconic lines that would have made so many Whovians squeal.

 

 

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Oh... pathetic. This sexist practice of killing off a female character to create angst for a male character takes it too far. But you know what the worst part about it is? Moffat's probably going to turn it into a big cop-out, like he always does!

 

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~ CHTrilogy

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Heaven Sent
 


Woah.
That was amazing.
I expect multiple looking-over-my-shoulder moments in the next few days; and I predicted as soon as the titles for this series' episodes came out that the finale would involve Gallifrey.
 
How right I was. :D
 
Anyway, onto next week: looks amazing. Hopefully we'll see some more Missy as well, since by the way that in Death in Heaven she appeared to know that Gallifrey had been saved instead of destroyed she was kind of implying that she was a regenerated version of John Simm's Master, as the only way for her to know that would have been if she was the Master who was sucked back into the Time War at the end of The End of Time. Enough long sentences though- I'd say this is looking to be one of the best finales since Series 4, since The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang was kinda rubbish, The Wedding of River Song is almost universally hated, The Name of the Doctor was a bit meh, and Dark Water/Death in Heaven was anticlimactic.
 

gallifrey_falls_no_more_by_mclatchyt-d6yGallifrey Falls No More.

 

 

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Huh, definitely could be Ashildr- hadn't thought of that. I thought it was going to reference the Doctor *allegedly* being half human, but Moffat loves his worldplay.

 

Definitely the best episode of the year so far, possibly even the best of Capaldi's run. That premise is easily one of the most disturbing things the series has ever done, and the mind!TARDIS sequences were well used, even if they were obviously borrowed from Sherlock. The whole thing was beautifully filmed as well.

 

 

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