The Doctor Who 2014/15 Thread

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Brendocon 2.0
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Post by Brendocon 2.0 »

Is this the first companion death through being a smartass since Adric?

Is this the first companion death since Adric? I know that Amy and Rory died, but that was a badly plotted handwavey crock of shit.

Nice of how the raven just loitered about while she had an overlong dragged out mawkish goodbye scene. Way to kill any actual genuine emotional impact that was there to be mined.

She's not going to be properly dead is she?
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Skyquake87
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Post by Skyquake87 »

Heh I thought that (the Adric thing - "Now I'll never know if I was right." Well you weren't were you, you stupid plonker).

Amy and Rory didn't die though, they just got zapped back in time to live a full and happy life. Its just something something time travel will this do? I've Sherlock to write you know.

I found the death a bit drawn out. Thankfully, my girlfriend talked all over it. I hope she is properly dead. It would be a pointless rug pull knowing the actress has left already.

Perhaps I'm so indifferent to Clara dying because she's always been a plot point rather than a character. I will miss Jenna Coleman who worked wonders with the slight material she was given.
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Post by Brendocon 2.0 »

Skyquake87 wrote:Amy and Rory didn't die though, they just got zapped back in time to live a full and happy life. Its just something something time travel will this do? I've Sherlock to write you know.
Pretty much. They just treated it as if they'd died because the Doctor can't go back and visit them at any point during their new time-displaced life because oh hey look over there.
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Post by Rack 'n Ruin »

Skyquake87 wrote:...my girlfriend talked all over it. I hope she is properly dead.
Wow, harsh! But fair, I think. Interesting place to confess, though...
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Post by Skyquake87 »

ha! whoops. didn't realise how that'd scan. although it is annoying that she talks over the one or two things I want to watch in a week (woe betide me if I waffle over cobblers like Neighbours), murdering does seem a bit strong. I'd settle for her tidying up once in a while as recompense.
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Post by Heinrad »

Well, I can see why Amy and Rory are technically dead. At least to the Doctor. He can't go see them because he'd be unable to leave them where he found them, and if they get atomized on the front lines of a Sontaran attack in the year 5000 on the planet Googlesplortch as opposed to dying of old age in 19-something or other in upstate New York on Earth, all the things they would have done, the lives they would have affected, the book or books Amy wrote never would have happened.

That being said, this wouldn't prevent the current incarnation of the Doctor to drop in and say hi. But given how long in show terms that Susan's been waiting for her grandfather to drop in and say hi, Amy and Rory probably shouldn't hold their breath.

As for Clara..... The way she's been running, this isn't surprising to me.
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Post by inflatable dalek »

Well Amy of Rory did turn out to have died of old age before we even met them, but I'm not sure that counts. After all, from the present day setting of Face the Raven Jamie would have been dead for several hundred years as well.

As for the episode...

What an unexpected ending! I didn't see that one coming. What a twist.







Thank you Summerhayes.



Hard to judge this one because how it stands up in retrospect will depend entirely on how Clara is handled in the last two episodes (and there's no way she won't be in at least one of them, if only for contractual reasons ala Adric in Timeflight).

Part of me really does hope they wouldn't have done such a big and long death scene if they were immediately going to go "Ha, she was alive all along!" or "She's gone to some sort of non-religious specific heaven". But this has been a season of odd choices.

Was her leaving in this episode originally supposed to be a surprise? I hadn't heard anything about it till my mother told me Graham Norton had mentioned it (though note they just said she was leaving, not how), did they decide to blow it in the hope it would make enough people care to watch?

That might also explain why the official synopsis for the next two episodes blows who it is that wants the Doctor despite this episode presenting it as a mystery (but I'm too nice to ruin it).

As for the main plot, it actually felt like this one could have been a two parter as there really wasn't enough time to properly explore the ideas. Williams/Me also really fell down in this one as well.
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Post by Denyer »

Worth watching?
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Post by Brendocon 2.0 »

Heinrad wrote:Well, I can see why Amy and Rory are technically dead. At least to the Doctor. He can't go see them because he'd be unable to leave them where he found them, and if they get atomized on the front lines of a Sontaran attack in the year 5000 on the planet Googlesplortch as opposed to dying of old age in 19-something or other in upstate New York on Earth, all the things they would have done, the lives they would have affected, the book or books Amy wrote never would have happened.

That being said, this wouldn't prevent the current incarnation of the Doctor to drop in and say hi. But given how long in show terms that Susan's been waiting for her grandfather to drop in and say hi, Amy and Rory probably shouldn't hold their breath.
Basically the only reason he never goes to see them is because he never goes to see them. It was vague handwavey bullshit then and it's still vague handwavey bullshit now.
inflatable dalek wrote:As for the main plot, it actually felt like this one could have been a two parter as there really wasn't enough time to properly explore the ideas.
Yes, the ten minutes worth of plot should definitely have been stretched over 90 minutes rather than 45.

That way Clara's scream could have been repeated from another 27 different angles.

If she is "not dead" then something something only took her soul something something boring semantics something plot twist aren't we clever Sherlock's not made up on the fly at all.
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Post by Skyquake87 »

Denyer wrote:Worth watching?
Yes. It is good overall, I'd say. Its just when you start joylessly nitpicking like me you find things that don't quite work (death scene is waay drawn out compared to how a character is quickly bumped off in a similar fashion earlier on).

Although 45 minutes for this was plenty, I thought.
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Post by Rack 'n Ruin »

The reason we never see Amy or Rory again is simple. The 11th Doctor made a secret pact with the Weeping Angels. This meant Rory was sent back to New York to die old and alone, while Amy was sent back in time to Roman era Pompeii. With Rory thus finally out of the way, this allowed the 12th Doctor to visit Amy for Bacchanalian "toga parties" as often as he liked - until his idiot former self, the 10th Doctor, came along and took him away, ruining his fun. It's all right there in the show - honest.
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Post by Brendocon 2.0 »

Works for me.
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Post by Sades »

inflatable dalek wrote:What an unexpected ending! I didn't see that one coming. What a twist.







Thank you Summerhayes.
Ha!

Well, we just watched this. Agrees all round, the dying took too long. I'm pretty much assuming she'll turn up again at some point (even if it's just Jenna Coleman in a cameo or flashback or something), so that kind of killed any emotional impact this scene was supposed to have for me.

I mainly spent the time looking at Jenna Coleman's chest. I'm not sure why, I never paid much attention to it before. But it drew my eye, I made comment, and Hound said something to the effect of "She's about to die and you're staring at her chest". I couldn't help it!

While it did drag on a bit, I like the way she just "accepted her fate", which is annoying and trope-y but **** it, it's a little hard to avoid nowadays.
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Skyquake87
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Post by Skyquake87 »

it was a very tight jumper...
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Post by inflatable dalek »

Surely that's what every actor leaving the show wants? Great things in front of them.
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Post by Summerhayes »

Oops. When did I give that away?
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Post by Brendocon 2.0 »

Summerhayes wrote:Oops. When did I give that away?
When you posted your reaction in the wrong thread and I knighted you for your efforts, good sir.
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Post by Summerhayes »

Ooooh, see I haven't really been online since I made that post so I had no idea! Some of Dalek's recent posts, going to extraordinary lengths to hide mentions of that scene, now make more sense!
Summerhayes wrote:I POSTED IN THE WRONG THREAD AND HAVE NOW SPOILT THE ENDING OF THIS WEEK'S DOCTOR WHO FOR DALEK. I AM A BAD BAD MAN.
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Post by inflatable dalek »

I thought we'd banned him.
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Post by Summerhayes »

I'm gonna post a scene-by-scene recap of tonight's episode in the thread you least expect...
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