The Dr Who thread

[Governmentyard]

That was absolutely superb. Classic Who in so many ways.

[Mayhem]

Yeah, that was pretty enjoyable. Did call it immediately after the first visible attack that

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they were already in a dream at that point and it was gonna go all Inception like!

[Cloudane]

Well that was a thing

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First of all the obvious bit I have to mention, lel mlp namedrop.
The other obvious, Doctor Who does some bizarre mix of Inception, TNG's Frame of Mind and a Christmas comedy o.o Interesting!
There was a lot of "WTF am I watching?!" in this one :p
"No one likes the satsumas? But that's my signature gift!" XD
Seeing as I've been watching the Third Doctor adventures, I caught not one but two references to The Claws Of Axos! First there was the idea of doing rapid-fire metal arithmetic to escape from a psychic assault, then there was the big guy who just stands around complaining and eating a turkey leg :p Then another reference to the Third in general with using a fire extinguisher as a weapon! (it's super effective)

Doctor: "Well how do you fit all the presents in there?"
Santa: "It's bigger on the inside~"
Elves: "Ooooooh!"


"You have a horror film called Alien? That's really offensive, no wonder everyone keeps invading you!"

You know the Doctor cares about someone when he's just simply asking how to kill the thing.
So much self-awareness with how much of a ridiculous fairytale the Doctor himself is
Clara telling the Doctor to behave
Him saying "I'm a Doctor, not yer mam" :p

Rather lovely at the end to see this Doctor actually being happy and cheerful. Seeing as it's Christmas.

That was rather good

[Baggypants]

Best

[Mayhem]

I thought the voice of one of the elves sounded a bit familiar, turns out he's the guy who plays Strax! Nice to see him in a non-makeup necessary role heh.

Of course at the end of the episode there is still the nagging feeling

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that they might still be dreaming and there's still another layer of dreamcrabs to remove...

[Harlequin]

Of course at the end of the episode there is still the nagging feeling

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that they might still be dreaming and there's still another layer of dreamcrabs to remove...

Sometimes a satsuma is just a satsuma.

[Governmentyard]

Heh. Imagine if, at the end of the next series, The Doctor wakes up in a psychiatric unit, he's called Stephen and he's been there since he was a child. The End.

I'd laugh my arse off. It would almost be worth doing. You could have an upturned bin that looks a bit Daleks-y in the corner, crayon drawings of cybermen on the walls, nurses who look a bit like companions.

It would almost be worth doing. Then just finish. Knock it on the head. Done. Time for something new.

Can you imagine the response? Oh god, please let this happen. I was big fanciful at first but now I want to see it. No fob watch get-outs, no 'next time'. Just a mental old man, in essentially, a box. They could even paint his room door blue.

[KlaxonCow]

Buffy the Vampire Slayer did that.

In one of the episodes nearing the end of the final season, Buffy wakes up in an asylum. Talking to her psychiatrist, she explains that she's a "vampire slayer" and her best friend is a witch that casts magic spells and... well, it all sounds rather ridiculous, doesn't it? Like the rantings of a mad woman.

She periodically goes in and out of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer world" and the asylum throughout the episode, then decides that she has to save her friends and the world and such, and the episode ends with her back in this fantasy world of vampires and witches...

...and, well, it's never thereafter addressed. It's purposefully left hanging and never resolved.

It might be that "the real world", with the asylum, was a delusion sent by some evil force to distract her from fighting "the Big Bad" and saving the world one last time, or maybe the whole entire thing - the entire series from beginning to end - was all just the insane fantasies of a mad woman and she just chose to stay inside her mad imagination, because it was a nicer and more welcoming place than the horrors of reality.

It's just left for the viewer to decide.

(...or, perhaps, for the viewer to realise that, philosophically, the problem of "Descartes' Demon" is an intrinsically undecidable thing. "Cogito Ergo Sum" and all that jazz.)

Whedon got there first. And, indeed, did the even cleverer thing of just leaving it as an open question about the show forever.

[F-ZeroOne]

That was really good - possibly just a touch schmaltzy at the end, but then given the time of year... possibly the best of the Christmas specials, and properly scary too. Possible neat bit of fridge brilliance with Santas

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reindeer - obviously, only having three makes it a bit easier on the SFX team, but considering it was all a dream - how many of the reindeer can most people actually name...?

[Darkflame]

Pretty darn fun epp.
Cant really say more then that.

Other then perhaps Nick Frost being the most obvious case of Nominative Determinism Ive seen in awhile.

There wasnt a next season teaser was there? The....method.....I was using to watch was cut off before the full credits

His romance with River Song never really happened, just lots of hints then a marriage done for plot reasons.

From where I was sat, the plot looked like a misguided attempt by Moffat to a: look clever and b: tie things up with regard to the marriage that he'd already established long ago in 'Silence'.

He didn't have a coherent masterplan for all this River Stuff. If he did, it wouldn't have been so weak.

Try watching the extra where its all put in the right order, its very nicely worked out.
At least, her reverse timeline. Her first kiss his last stuff etc. All that works and to do that "on the fly" would be far more clever then planing.

That said, most of the relationship (her "nights") happened deliberately offscreen.
Which makes sense as relationship stuff is boring when this is a show about dinosaurs on spaceships and whatnot.

Also, even if you find the relationship "weak" that doesn't mean it wasn't planned. Planning is a very mechanical thing. Getting the bits in the right place. Who knows what when etc.
Making a realistic relationship is a whole different skillset.


(Also, in no way was Rose and Mickey a interesting romance. It was a drawen out horrible breakup because Rose was a horrible horrible person )

[anon76235]

Nasty pasty

[Istar]

Not bad.

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+1 Clara doesn't leave twist
-1 Clara hasn't left
+1 Nick Frost
-1 Oh dear, Alien rip-off
+1 "They're like facehuggers" self-acknowledgement Alien reference
+1 Dreamcrabs (not Dreamhuggers - someone knows their Black Mesa lore)
+1 Nested dreams / lucid dreaming
-1 Ambiguous tangerine totem at the end
+1 "Bigger on the inside"

For me, the defining moment of the episode was observing where The Doctor is when he wakes up outside the TARDIS. Because that's either really careless coincidence on the part of the production team, or a clue to a mind-numbing piece of subterfuge, cunning and artful misdirection so deep we'll have to amend the dictionary to read "Machiavelli: see Moffat".

[Mayhem]

Yeah, I was pondering on that exact bit of information too, but it was over quickly so I kind of forgot about it.

[Governmentyard]

Not bad.
For me, the defining moment of the episode was observing where The Doctor is when he wakes up outside the TARDIS. Because that's either really careless coincidence on the part of the production team, or a clue to a mind-numbing piece of subterfuge, cunning and artful misdirection so deep we'll have to amend the dictionary to read "Machiavelli: see Moffat".

Explain...

[Istar]

Not bad.
For me, the defining moment of the episode was observing where The Doctor is when he wakes up outside the TARDIS. Because that's either really careless coincidence on the part of the production team, or a clue to a mind-numbing piece of subterfuge, cunning and artful misdirection so deep we'll have to amend the dictionary to read "Machiavelli: see Moffat".

Explain...

Dark Water. The scenery when the Doc wakes up (twice) in Last Christmas looks almost exactly like the place he 'wakes up' in Clara's dream-state when she kidnaps him, takes the TARDIS to volcano-world, and starts chucking keys in.

EDIT: Ah good, I'm not the only one...

Okay, when the Doctor woke up on the fire/volcano set from “Dark Water” did anyone besides me FLIP OUT at the possibility that most of the season 8 finale had been a dream and that the Master hadn’t been vaporized yet and Danny could be saved?