The Doctor Who 2014/15 Thread

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Brendocon 2.0
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Post by Brendocon 2.0 »

inflatable dalek wrote:I thought we'd banned him.
We should have made him king.
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Post by inflatable dalek »

One King.
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Post by Denyer »

Sades wrote:I mainly spent the time looking at Jenna Coleman's chest.
Skyquake87 wrote:it was a very tight jumper...
May as well catch up this weekend, then.
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Post by Brendocon 2.0 »

It's a good thing they completely lampshaded the bootstrap paradox earlier in the season so we don't waste valuable braincells trying to work out where he got the bird password from.

Also helpful that diamond was in the one room that didn't reset.

Et cetera and so on.

Capaldi genuinely sounded a lot like Tom Baker at points during that. Or at least to my spectacularly hungover ears.
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Post by Summerhayes »

I thought that was a bloody brilliant episode, personally! Would have been crap if Capaldi wasn't such a force of nature, but luckily he is.

Maybe there were a few loops that were a bit different before the one where he cottoned on and started leaving clues that created the looping escape plan?

Also, I got the impression the rooms reset when they'd done what they were designed to do, and the diamond room would have reset immediately after the time it broke; at which point the doctor wouldn't be there to see it anyway.
Brendocon 2.0 wrote:Capaldi genuinely sounded a lot like Tom Baker at points during that. Or at least to my spectacularly hungover ears.
I thought Alan Rickman a few times, myself.
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Post by Skyquake87 »

I really, really REALLY enjoyed this episode. A right good puzzle-box episode from Moffatt and one of the very best he's written. So yaaaay. Moffatt does seem to have come up with some good stuff this season. Its been solid stuff throughout and I continue to enjoy the tinkerings about what we mightor might not know about The Doctor. Although I've a feeling 'the hybrid' is just going to make something out of the McGann TVM line "I'm half human - on my mother's side." and comments from The Master about the same.

Capaldi was ace and yes, he sounded like Tom Baker to me too! Hope he isn't regenerating next ep, as now his character's a little more settled, I'd be up for another series with Capaldi :)
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Post by Brendocon 2.0 »

The half-human thing was my thought too.
Summerhayes wrote:Maybe there were a few loops that were a bit different before the one where he cottoned on and started leaving clues that created the looping escape plan?
That's the problem though. The moment he leaves the teleport room the first time, it should reset to how it was when he first arrived in it. Which would clear away his skull, dust and the message written in it. Which means it won't be there when he later goes back and finds the message.

Unless that room doesn't reset. But the fact that it does is the established reason for why it still has a copy of him in the hard drive.

Still a great episode and I know I shouldn't be subjecting it to such light scrutiny, but it feels like another instance of Moffat getting so carried away with how clever his idea is that he doesn't necessarily go back to make sure it actually works.

Not to worry, though, I'm sure there'll be a fan theory along to cover his arse for him.
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Post by Summerhayes »

Brendocon 2.0 wrote:Not to worry, though, I'm sure there'll be a fan theory along to cover his arse for him.
You say that like its a bad thing! One of my favourite things about coming online and chatting to other geeks is coming up with clever solutions to plotholes only we care about. Much more fun than just slagging something off and leaving it at that.
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Post by Brendocon 2.0 »

I like to think it's possible to do both. To come up with an explanation whilst also acknowledging that it's sloppy on the part of the writer.

I don't see why enjoying something and admitting it's flawed should be viewed as mutually exclusive.
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Post by Summerhayes »

Yeh, I agree. It's pretty important to acknowledge the flaws in the things you love.
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Post by Skyquake87 »

Just thinking about the reset thing...the Doctor does work out how to 'buy' some time and must be having some impact on his environment otherwise that diamond wall thingy thing that he's slowly punching his way through would also reset each time. So I think there are small things he can effect in that environment, but it just takes a lot of time to do...
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Post by Brendocon 2.0 »

Yeah, but the method for "buying time" involved waiting around for the dementor to reach him then sprinting full pelt for the farthest part of the castle. Doesn't really count as affecting the environment.

(also the diamond room not resetting was sort of what triggered the above exchange, so pointing to the diamond room not resetting as evidence doesn't really help ;) )
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Post by Sades »

I liked that one! I thought the buildup was perfect.
Brendocon 2.0 wrote:That's the problem though. The moment he leaves the teleport room the first time, it should reset to how it was when he first arrived in it. Which would clear away his skull, dust and the message written in it. Which means it won't be there when he later goes back and finds the message.

Unless that room doesn't reset. But the fact that it does is the established reason for why it still has a copy of him in the hard drive.
Didn't he say that if he leaves it long enough, the room resets? So it probably just takes a long damn time to reset. It stays just long enough for him to come back and find the message left by the previous copy. By the time he gets back to it after having his head fried by Mr. Ghostpants, the room has reset. He does his thing, pops out another him, and so on.

I'm pretty sure that I heard that the diamond room is the one room that doesn't reset, but Hound said that he doesn't remember hearing that so now I'm thinking I might have misheard. Why no diamond room reset: dunno, but it wouldn't be a game without a way to win (well, it'd be a super-shitty game... well, it's already a super-shitty game, but don'tlookatmeIdidn'twritethisshitifIdidthere'dbelesssensemakingandmoreboobs)

The thing that bothers me is the fact that he kept hitting in the same effing spot, yet he still managed to create a person-sized tunnel (thought yes, I realise he was there long enough to have probably given the wall an even, vaguely person-shaped thumping, but eh). And that the "diamond" just crumbled away in the last shot. Other'n that, was good stuff.
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Post by inflatable dalek »

Brendocon 2.0 wrote:It's a good thing they completely lampshaded the bootstrap paradox earlier in the season so we don't waste valuable braincells trying to work out where he got the bird password from.
Ah, it's not a bootstraps paradox though. I made the same assumption at first, mainly because I'm so used to the Moff doing timey whimey stuff it actually took a few minutes for it to sink in that there's no actual time travel in this episode. It's a loop for the different Doctor's because none of them remember it, but the building itself is going in a straight line through time.

Which actually explains a lot of the problems mentioned in this thread. The first time the Doctor arrived would actually have been quite different, no skull, no "Bird" message, no musing on the stars being wrong, no dry clothes or skulls. He obviously had to have worked out the "Burn yourself to create a double" thing straight away, but the rest of it could have developed much more gradually. It would have taken a while for the stars to be noticeably off for starters.

That also explains why the not-diamond doesn't reset. The rooms aren't being rolled back in time, something/someone is going in there after the Doctor has left and is fixing things (be it super nanites, Star Trek style replicators or-my personal choice-a bunch of midgets with feather dusters and shovels). Presumably they either didn't have another not-diamond or the damage was so small and gradual with each punch it didn't register on whatever detection system they have.

I'm not sure why whoever put the Doctor there (I'm not sure it would be the Time Lords, else it'd be a bit odd for them to have the exit portal go into the middle of nowhere rather than, say, a cell in the capitol) would have an exit though. Did they want him to escape in the end? Even assuming they were watching events at greater speed you have to wonder at what point they'd just get bored and give up with the process as well.

It's also lucky that teleport was good for two billion years service.

Probably the best episode of the season, even with the BBC synopsis blowing that it was going to end on Gallifrey weeks ago. Mainly thanks to Capaldi being bloody awesome.

I guess Clara kept her back to us for most of it lest her boobs get too distracting again.

EDIT: Oh, and not really having been on GB this week, has there been much outrage over the fact the original Doctor actually properly dies (off screen!) and is replaced by an identical clone like he's some sort of a Harry Kim?
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Post by Sades »

Re: "clone" : I had a similar thought while watching the episode. Didn't bother me much, though the thought that now they can produce Doctors whenever they feel like kind of did. Unless the thing's been destroyed or disabled and I've forgotten. I'd be cheap to use that in a plot (imo).

Star Trek has corrupted my mind, because one of the little things that stuck in my head about the billions of years thing was thoughts about "pattern degradation". My science fiction is not allowed to mingle anymore.
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Post by Brendocon 2.0 »

inflatable dalek wrote:Ah, it's not a bootstraps paradox though. I made the same assumption at first, mainly because I'm so used to the Moff doing timey whimey stuff it actually took a few minutes for it to sink in that there's no actual time travel in this episode. It's a loop for the different Doctor's because none of them remember it, but the building itself is going in a straight line through time.

Which actually explains a lot of the problems mentioned in this thread. The first time the Doctor arrived would actually have been quite different, no skull, no "Bird" message, no musing on the stars being wrong, no dry clothes or skulls.
It's not time travel but it is (after he's realised what to do and set it in motion with the bird message) essentially a closed loop. The stars thing isn't an issue, as the dialogue changes each time. The Doctor isn't trapped in a pattern of saying the same thing over and over because of a loop, that's just a byproduct of his behaviour. Each time he thinks it's the first time, until he eventually reasons it out and works out what he's been doing / needs to carry on with.

He only finds out "bird" is the password because the previous him has written it down before he dies, so where did the first Doctor to discover this fact get it from? Presumably he was just walking around saying stuff as he didn't have the clue to work from and stumbled across it by accident, and decided to leave it for the duplicate in order to trigger a different series of events. Okay, fine. Can work with that.

As far as the dry clothes go. Either there was a spare pair there from the start or at some point the Doctor burned himself while naked. If it's the latter then the clothes would have disappeared whenever the room reset itself.

Or was the dialogue that "given long enough each room resets"? I can't remember exactly, but either way surely he'd have been gone long enough for that one to do so.

Who wrote "I'm in Room Whatever" on the coffin? Or left the shovels there as a hint to dig? Him? Surely the writing would have disappeared the same way the soil reset itself. Which means that it was set up to allow him to figure a way out.

And why would there be a portal to Gallifrey hidden behind a load of crystal anyway? I mean I'm assuming we were inside his confession dial here. Which they didn't get until after Arya had already slapped the teleport on the Doctor... so they teleport him out of the hidden street, keep him in the ether while they set up his confession dial with a picture of Clara and a spare set of clothes, plus hidden hints to lead him out the back door, then load him into it?

The confession dial in general seems a bit flawed if it comes with a pre-loaded way of escaping. I can buy there being a door to Gallifrey so they can get in and set it up / extract him when he's given up the info, but why leave clues around to lead him to it from the inside?

Surely it makes more sense to give him no way out other than the truth. But then he knows that if he dies, but then there's the teleport and anyway surely if he's in a loop of saying/doing the same things, surely the dementor already knew those confessions each time so should have needed something new?

And yeah, I realise that you've covered a bit of that in the rest of your post, but ho hum.

I'm not saying you can't reason out some of the plotholes if you really really want to, but it does feel an awful lot like Moffat's Sherlock thing of "hey everybody, look over here at how clever we are and how good the acting is, but whatever you do don't look directly at the plot".

OR MAYBE WE'LL GET ANSWERS NEXT WEEK.

We won't get answers next week. I'm still waiting for Moff to explain how the Doctor was able to remember about the Silence during the Day of the Moon two-parter.

As far as the Doctor having died off-screen and we're dealing with a clone? Yeah. Basically. He even acknowledged it in the inference of that's how teleporters work. So every time he's teleported in the past, that's also what's happened. So anybody having a cry about it is going to have to go back and retroactively apply the same logic to any other story where somebody's teleported.
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Post by inflatable dalek »

Oh, not all of it makes sense (though as you say, maybe next week...), but it makes more sense than I first thought.

I'd just assumed the confessional thing was just returned to him at the end, it didn't click as it seems to have for just about everyone else he was supposed to be trapped in it for the entire episode (I had just assumed he was bullshitting when he told Me he didn't know how it worked. If he hadn't tried to "Confess" on it before, what did he think was on it back when he was handing it to Missy?). This has led a lot of people to assume none of what we saw really happened and it was all in the Doctor's mind, meaning there are no real plot holes and the Doctor didn't really die.

Hmm.
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Post by Heinrad »

I quite enjoyed that. Especially the amazing turnup at the end.

And the Christmas special looks like it'lol be fun.
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Post by Summerhayes »

SPOILERS THIS WEEK

Well, that was an enjoyable, if not mind-blowing, end to the series. Even more bootstrap paradox/ self-fulfilling prophecy stuff with the hybrid business. The Time Lords were worried about the Hybrid, so they killed Clara in their efforts to catch the Doctor and find out what he knew about the hybrid, which made him so angry he became the hybrid. Still, I enjoyed seeing a spot of Gallifrey. And you can tell this was a Moffat finale; cameos from every monster.

CHRISTMAS SPOILERS
SPOILER! (select to read)
Yay, a proper Screwdriver.
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Post by Brendocon 2.0 »

That was nice. Felt like it was going a bit Quantum Leap finalé at the beginning, but a good little twist at the end. Massive airpunch at the sight of the inside of the stolen capsule.

Good to see the Hybrid issue answered in true Moffatesque not-really-answered-at-all manner.

Christmas trailer makes it look appalling.
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