More Doctor Who
Jul. 21st, 2012 05:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
schneefinkIt still feels a bit weird that at the moment I'm meeting most of my friends to watch TV together, because when I grew up I was told that watching TV is not social and I should go out and do something with my friends instead. But it's so much fun! And we only spend at most half of the time actually watching TV anyway.
Thursday, for example, I invited a bunch of people to come over and watch The Princess Bride for their first time. It was a lot of fun. I also made Caramel Apple Pie Cupcakes that took over three hours (final clean-up not included.) They did taste very nice, but not as much nicer as simple chocolate in relation to how much longer it took to bake them.
And yesterday we watched more Doctor Who!
Amy's Choice: Interesting. I think I'd have to watch it again and pay more attention to what exactly the Dream Lord said. Things like "he doesn't trust you (or anyone) completely" and "Rory is the third wheel." I guessed that both alternatives were dreams, and I thought the creepy old people were well done. One of them (Ms. Pogget) seemed familiar, and imdb tells me she also played a villain in SJA.
I loved Amy telling the Doctor off for calling her life dull. So now it's her turn (after Donna) to imagine non-existent children, poor them. I was sure that she'd choose Rory because of narrative logic, but I couldn't quite imagine how, until he died. But that also begs the question what she would have done if the Doctor had died instead, because I don't think she could stand his death either. What I think they did well is that Amy chose the Doctor's world to save Rory, nice symmetry.
The Hungry Earth: That was a nice build-up with few surprising twists. When the boy said his Sherlock Holmes line (When you eliminate the improbable etc.), L. paused the episode to explain in detail why that is a logical fallacy *g* I like Eala (not as a person, but as a character/plot device, also she's pretty), but heh, you picked the wrong person to ask what he's willing to sacrifice! In general I thought the new people could have been much more fleshed out for the screen time they got. By the end of the episode I could pretty much predict exactly what they were going to do.
Cold Blood: I found this episode disappointing, but it's hard to say why. Maybe mostly because I could always predict what was going to happen, which isn't often the case in DW and especially not in two-parters. The lizard people are a great concept, but most of them seemed to be more plot devices than actual characters (with the time they had I don't know exactly what they should have done differently, but that's the writers' job.) I hope we get to see homo reptilia again (I guess they already appeared in Old Doctor Who.)
Except the ending! I didn't predict that. I knew Rory was going to come back, of course, but I hadn't known he died in-between. Interesting.
Vincent and the Doctor: This one was great! I thought the actor who played Van Gogh fit very well. Lying in the grass and looking at the stars, and then the scene where they bring him to his exhibition, awww. And then they brought him back and I started chanting "No, no, no" under my breath, because for some reason I was convinced that a crack would open and take all his memory of what he'd seen away, I'm so glad that didn't happen!!!
The Lodger: That was more fun than I expected from the premise. For some reason the Doctor playing football was great, and I liked his radio interactions with Amy. They managed to make the two new characters three-dimensional, and the only thing that was weird was how they made the machine explode in the end, I have no idea how that worked.
The Pandorica Opens: River is back! I might have made some high-pitched noises. She is the best. (When C. started talking about how he knows spoilers about River and I explained in detail the gruesome results of him telling me any of them all the others nodded in approval. Just saying. *g*) And we got glimpses of Vincent and Liz Ten too, nice. I don't quite understand how the Doctor figured out the Pandorica was hidden under Stonehenge, especially since from the description it sounds a lot older, but whatever.
Rory! I expected him to be here because I was spoiled for Rory as a Roman soldier (ugh, spoilers -.-), but I had no idea how. Him being part of Amy's memories the Doctor's enemies used to manipulate him and then overcoming this manipulation because of Amy is a nice way. And the Doctor doesn't even get what is unusual about him being here at first, very funny and then it makes even more sense because the manipulation was deliberate to keep him from noticing anything unusual. So Rory now has the full memories of a Roman Centurion, interesting.
The most feared thing in all the universe is the Doctor. Of course. Wow, that makes much more sense than some never-before-heard-of unspeakable evil I thought they were going with.
And River in the TARDIS! But the TARDIS can't be the big explosion causing the cracks, so what is? I don't remember them explaining that. They did explicitly mention that they don't know yet what caused the TARDIS to explode, hmm.
Good job at setting up a seemingly hopeless situation.
The Big Bang: time travel shenanigans! They don't use that very often in episodes, so I almost forgot how convenient it can be.
I heard about Rory punching the Doctor for daring to say the universe is more important than Amy, which in advance annoyed me a bit because the inconsistency of good of the many vs. saving a friend's life aside we're talking about the entire universe, but the way it's done works for me.
Yay little Amy! The slow reveal of what happened (Amy in the Pandorica, then back, then forward etc.) was well done.
Poor Rory, first – okay, first his girlfriend's imaginary friend comes, saves the world, and disappears again. Then Amy runs off with the guy on the night before their wedding, and invites Rory along to face aliens and weird dangers in space with a lot of almost dying. Then he actually dies and wakes up as a Roman soldier with no idea how he got there and what will happen to him. When he finally finds the Doctor and Amy again, Amy doesn't even remember him (and the Doctor doesn't react to him at first – those must have been very strange seconds.) Then when Amy does remember him Rory finds out he's a mechanical construct and kills her against his will. Then the Doctor shows up and says they can save her, they just have to shut her in a box for 2000 years, no problem, now come to the future with me to save the universe. No wonder the poor guy concentrates on the simpler things, like protecting the love of his life. For 2000 years! (And he kept the Roman uniform next to his other disguises for haunting, nice.) There must be fanfic out there.
River! River in the exploding TARDIS, and when she gets out she and Amy blow up the Doctor's fez, and then the Dalek appears, heee! Have I mentioned how awesome she is yet? And when she faces off against the Dalek! The Doctor doesn't want to say goodbye to her separately because he doesn't know her yet, and now he never will! Sooo good.
Hmm, not quite sure I understand the rewind. Through the cracks? And I'm still not sure how the prison on the other side of the crack in The Eleventh Hour fits together with the cracks as we see them later, I hope that will be explained.
If everything gets reset to how it should have been, where do Amy's parents come from? Obviously they didn't disappear in normal ways. More puzzles for the next season. Awww, they got married. I hate embarrassing myself in public, so I felt sorry for Amy when she's trying to puzzle out her memories, but then the Doctor actually comes! Late for her wedding, though. Old, new, borrowed, blue, of course it's the TARDIS. I'm not quite sure how Amy made him come back, how that worked… but either it will be explained, or it's some mysterious handwave-y thingy. I do hope we'll learn more about the cracks.
River and the Doctor! "Yes." How much do I love River Song, sooo much. (No really, I did the arm motions and everything. The others laughed at me, hmpf. *g*)
Time to say goodbye! Goodbye, Earth! :D For some reason it took me longer to warm up to Amy than with the other companions, but if the rest of the season hadn't, that would probably have done it.
A Christmas Carol: A carriage drawn by a flying shark, nice! Um. I think that's the most I can say about this episode? Flying fishes are cool. It was nice to watch, but nothing special. And I just realized that after this one is probably the second DW/SJA crossover episode in DW timeline.
Not sure if it was good to watch this after Big Bang to calm down a bit or if stopping at the high point would have been better.
Thursday, for example, I invited a bunch of people to come over and watch The Princess Bride for their first time. It was a lot of fun. I also made Caramel Apple Pie Cupcakes that took over three hours (final clean-up not included.) They did taste very nice, but not as much nicer as simple chocolate in relation to how much longer it took to bake them.
And yesterday we watched more Doctor Who!
Amy's Choice: Interesting. I think I'd have to watch it again and pay more attention to what exactly the Dream Lord said. Things like "he doesn't trust you (or anyone) completely" and "Rory is the third wheel." I guessed that both alternatives were dreams, and I thought the creepy old people were well done. One of them (Ms. Pogget) seemed familiar, and imdb tells me she also played a villain in SJA.
I loved Amy telling the Doctor off for calling her life dull. So now it's her turn (after Donna) to imagine non-existent children, poor them. I was sure that she'd choose Rory because of narrative logic, but I couldn't quite imagine how, until he died. But that also begs the question what she would have done if the Doctor had died instead, because I don't think she could stand his death either. What I think they did well is that Amy chose the Doctor's world to save Rory, nice symmetry.
The Hungry Earth: That was a nice build-up with few surprising twists. When the boy said his Sherlock Holmes line (When you eliminate the improbable etc.), L. paused the episode to explain in detail why that is a logical fallacy *g* I like Eala (not as a person, but as a character/plot device, also she's pretty), but heh, you picked the wrong person to ask what he's willing to sacrifice! In general I thought the new people could have been much more fleshed out for the screen time they got. By the end of the episode I could pretty much predict exactly what they were going to do.
Cold Blood: I found this episode disappointing, but it's hard to say why. Maybe mostly because I could always predict what was going to happen, which isn't often the case in DW and especially not in two-parters. The lizard people are a great concept, but most of them seemed to be more plot devices than actual characters (with the time they had I don't know exactly what they should have done differently, but that's the writers' job.) I hope we get to see homo reptilia again (I guess they already appeared in Old Doctor Who.)
Except the ending! I didn't predict that. I knew Rory was going to come back, of course, but I hadn't known he died in-between. Interesting.
Vincent and the Doctor: This one was great! I thought the actor who played Van Gogh fit very well. Lying in the grass and looking at the stars, and then the scene where they bring him to his exhibition, awww. And then they brought him back and I started chanting "No, no, no" under my breath, because for some reason I was convinced that a crack would open and take all his memory of what he'd seen away, I'm so glad that didn't happen!!!
The Lodger: That was more fun than I expected from the premise. For some reason the Doctor playing football was great, and I liked his radio interactions with Amy. They managed to make the two new characters three-dimensional, and the only thing that was weird was how they made the machine explode in the end, I have no idea how that worked.
The Pandorica Opens: River is back! I might have made some high-pitched noises. She is the best. (When C. started talking about how he knows spoilers about River and I explained in detail the gruesome results of him telling me any of them all the others nodded in approval. Just saying. *g*) And we got glimpses of Vincent and Liz Ten too, nice. I don't quite understand how the Doctor figured out the Pandorica was hidden under Stonehenge, especially since from the description it sounds a lot older, but whatever.
Rory! I expected him to be here because I was spoiled for Rory as a Roman soldier (ugh, spoilers -.-), but I had no idea how. Him being part of Amy's memories the Doctor's enemies used to manipulate him and then overcoming this manipulation because of Amy is a nice way. And the Doctor doesn't even get what is unusual about him being here at first, very funny and then it makes even more sense because the manipulation was deliberate to keep him from noticing anything unusual. So Rory now has the full memories of a Roman Centurion, interesting.
The most feared thing in all the universe is the Doctor. Of course. Wow, that makes much more sense than some never-before-heard-of unspeakable evil I thought they were going with.
And River in the TARDIS! But the TARDIS can't be the big explosion causing the cracks, so what is? I don't remember them explaining that. They did explicitly mention that they don't know yet what caused the TARDIS to explode, hmm.
Good job at setting up a seemingly hopeless situation.
The Big Bang: time travel shenanigans! They don't use that very often in episodes, so I almost forgot how convenient it can be.
I heard about Rory punching the Doctor for daring to say the universe is more important than Amy, which in advance annoyed me a bit because the inconsistency of good of the many vs. saving a friend's life aside we're talking about the entire universe, but the way it's done works for me.
Yay little Amy! The slow reveal of what happened (Amy in the Pandorica, then back, then forward etc.) was well done.
Poor Rory, first – okay, first his girlfriend's imaginary friend comes, saves the world, and disappears again. Then Amy runs off with the guy on the night before their wedding, and invites Rory along to face aliens and weird dangers in space with a lot of almost dying. Then he actually dies and wakes up as a Roman soldier with no idea how he got there and what will happen to him. When he finally finds the Doctor and Amy again, Amy doesn't even remember him (and the Doctor doesn't react to him at first – those must have been very strange seconds.) Then when Amy does remember him Rory finds out he's a mechanical construct and kills her against his will. Then the Doctor shows up and says they can save her, they just have to shut her in a box for 2000 years, no problem, now come to the future with me to save the universe. No wonder the poor guy concentrates on the simpler things, like protecting the love of his life. For 2000 years! (And he kept the Roman uniform next to his other disguises for haunting, nice.) There must be fanfic out there.
River! River in the exploding TARDIS, and when she gets out she and Amy blow up the Doctor's fez, and then the Dalek appears, heee! Have I mentioned how awesome she is yet? And when she faces off against the Dalek! The Doctor doesn't want to say goodbye to her separately because he doesn't know her yet, and now he never will! Sooo good.
Hmm, not quite sure I understand the rewind. Through the cracks? And I'm still not sure how the prison on the other side of the crack in The Eleventh Hour fits together with the cracks as we see them later, I hope that will be explained.
If everything gets reset to how it should have been, where do Amy's parents come from? Obviously they didn't disappear in normal ways. More puzzles for the next season. Awww, they got married. I hate embarrassing myself in public, so I felt sorry for Amy when she's trying to puzzle out her memories, but then the Doctor actually comes! Late for her wedding, though. Old, new, borrowed, blue, of course it's the TARDIS. I'm not quite sure how Amy made him come back, how that worked… but either it will be explained, or it's some mysterious handwave-y thingy. I do hope we'll learn more about the cracks.
River and the Doctor! "Yes." How much do I love River Song, sooo much. (No really, I did the arm motions and everything. The others laughed at me, hmpf. *g*)
Time to say goodbye! Goodbye, Earth! :D For some reason it took me longer to warm up to Amy than with the other companions, but if the rest of the season hadn't, that would probably have done it.
A Christmas Carol: A carriage drawn by a flying shark, nice! Um. I think that's the most I can say about this episode? Flying fishes are cool. It was nice to watch, but nothing special. And I just realized that after this one is probably the second DW/SJA crossover episode in DW timeline.
Not sure if it was good to watch this after Big Bang to calm down a bit or if stopping at the high point would have been better.
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no subject
Date: 2012-07-21 04:52 pm (UTC)The Lodger is my fav season 5 episode. And its in a great season with great episodes. I think its mostly because the Doctor's madness is contrast against the ordinariness of real life and yet, somehow, because he is the Doctor, it just works.
I concur with you on the season finale - Blue, Old, Borrowed (stolen) TARDIS and all. I personally didn't really like the Russel T Davies Finales. I fond them a little OTT. But this one, as Steve Moffat's first finale ... wow. just wow.
I think you needed to give yourself a break between Big Bang and christmas carole. As an immediate follow on, Carole doesn't really match up, but as a DW snapshot in the middle of the year after months of no Who? It was brilliant! Lighthearted (when so many of the other Christmas Specials were dark and tragic) and well... Katherine Jenkins singing :)
no subject
Date: 2012-07-21 06:26 pm (UTC)You found this finale less OTT than the ones before? Where they end up rebooting the whole universe? ^^ I think this is the first season finale in which the Doctor doesn't lose anybody, which is nice.
Yeah, probably. Only one season left to catch up on and then I have to wait like everyone else...