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Post by legios on May 18, 2024 17:40:31 GMT
A point I am not clear enough about in 'Boom': If there isn't any actual enemy to fight, had did Dad Soldier get blinded? Is it just the Ambulances who are going around killing people? There might have been an explanatory line I missed.
-Ralph
From context, he was injured by an Anglican weapon of some kind. Possibly shot by some sort of emplaced automated weapon, or some sort of autonomous drone - a weaponised version of one of those fog clearers perhaps. Or some other kind of anti-personal mine... Or perhaps the algorythm ramped up and auto-discharged the laser sight on the other blokes rifle to create a casualty. Shrapnel from a munition dropped by a Anglican aircraft perhaps. The episode didn't dwell on the how because how he got blinded wasn't of particular significance.
Karl
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Post by The Doctor on May 18, 2024 18:18:29 GMT
I understand. I just felt that it made no sense when the twist about the war was revealed. Very frustrating episode. Great premise, good ideas but it felt a bit first draft.
The Devil's Chord remains the standout story for 15 for me so far.
-Ralph
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Post by Llama God on May 19, 2024 9:02:29 GMT
Well... I enjoyed Boom. It's additional proof that Moffat is capable of writing good stories, as long as he's only tasked with doing one a year, or if he has at least a year to prepare. Compare Smith's first season and Capaldi's final season where Moffat had basically a whole year to write the stories, and their other series. And Day of the Doctor compared with Time of the Doctor. If RTD wants to bring him back for one per year, that's fine. But no more than that.
Can also recommend watching the "in vision commentary" on the iPlayer, as it's Moffat, RTD and one of the producers who spend so much time going off on deep cut tangents - it's great. Or I was very tired and thus easily amused. One of the two.
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Post by Philip Ayres on May 19, 2024 16:26:18 GMT
Did you recognise The Coms officer in episode 1 and the Tea Lady in Episode 2? They are Both Susan Twist again tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Susan_TwistPreviously Mrs Merridew in the Doctor Who television episode Wild Blue Yonder and an unnamed woman in The Church on Ruby Road This week: The Ambulance
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Post by Pinwig on May 19, 2024 16:41:52 GMT
This is a bit like the Bad Wolf stuff cropping up over and over from RTD's first season, isn't it. It's also noticeable we get references that point to Susan/the Doctor's family all the time. The Susan Twist stuff is one thing, but there's the reference to the first Doctor being 'over there' in 1963 and this week the 'one Dad to another' line was a bit of a shock, never had a reference like that before. Clearly Susan's going to crop up somewhere in the next two seasons, but I'm wondering now if the missing generation in the middle will also be part of that. It's a bit different to what we've had before because that always seemed to be about who the Doctor's mother is, this time it's all about his own children/grandchildren - that's presumably what he has left to look for as an orphan, while Ruby is still intent on looking the other way to find her mother.
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Post by legios on May 19, 2024 18:50:57 GMT
I quite enjoyed this weeks episode. Was it a lot more confined than the previous episode, yes - being almost entirely set in a hole in the ground! But I thought it made a decent fist of its central conceit of taking the military-industrial complex to its logical conclusion - an artificial war that is killing people at just the right speed to ensure that an acceptable profit margin continues indefinitely. Brutally awful as a concept, and delivered at just about the right pitch to not be excessively horrific but also not to over sanitise it I thought.
I don't know what is up with the recurring "Church Militant" thing that seems to turn up in Moffat scripts from time to time. I think clearly that it is a particular bee he has in his bonnet, but bu contrast I do think his attitude to the whole issue of faith lacks nuance and intellectual rigour. But that is not a new thing, it is a recurring trend in his writing. I will say that I do think that this episode would have been better without opening up that whole issue though. I think the whole war as industry issue is big enough that it could have been this episodes issue.
On the whole I didn't like this episode quite as much as the first two. But I am pleased to see that we've had a nice strong variety of tones and genres in the first three episodes. Fun space fantasy romp with a mild satirical bite, urban fantasy bonkersness, and then anti-war/mildly anti-capitalist polemical tv-play. You can't say that the show is playing things entirely safe.
I'll be honest I've been mostly ignoring all the foreshadowing stuff sprinkled in these episodes. I've no doubt there are varying things that are there to be paid off in the last episode or two of the season, that is the Doctor Who formula now. I'm not particularly engaged with that element of it though. I'd be quite happy with they didn't do it - as long as each individual story is engaging in some way, exciting, and a decent three-quarters of an hour of television, that'll do me.
Karl
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Post by Shockprowl on May 19, 2024 21:15:41 GMT
Ohh I hadn't realised the NEW DOCTOR'S NEW SERIES had begun!
Watched Space Babies.
...not impressed.
Ncuti is interesting though. If the give him stories better than Space Babies and Labyrinth.
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Post by The Doctor on May 20, 2024 8:40:32 GMT
Space Babies was one of those episodes where RTD needed to be taken to one side and told: "No, Russell, no."
-Ralph
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Post by Philip Ayres on May 20, 2024 8:47:39 GMT
It was a nice bit of cute fun
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Post by The Doctor on May 20, 2024 10:08:20 GMT
Bugger all happened. Like TCORR there was an idea there but it struggled to fill out the running time. That's a 15-minute plot stetched out to 45.
And having the Doctor shout: "SPACE BABIES!" every few minutes got right on my tits.
-Ralph
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Post by The Doctor on May 20, 2024 10:11:43 GMT
Tom Spilsbury reports on OG that BARB's data shows 7-day ratings of 4 and 3.9 million for episodes 1 and 2. Ouch. This is sub-McCoy levels, if accurate. No, the show is not doomed but golly. The audience size has collapsed. -Ralph
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