Slightly longer thoughts
Jul. 7th, 2008 02:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
binidjThere may be more later but, in a nutshell ...
The reality bomb was a toss weapon.
Daleks like to make more Daleks and more spaceships and more weapons. In order to do this they need materials from conquered planets using slave labour to extract and process said materials. If they destroy all matter in the multiverse then there will be no more Daleks, no progress, nothing to aspire to ... the Daleks aren't that stupid.
Testing a weapon designed to destroy all matter in the multiverse inside your own mothership is dumbness on an epic scale ... testing it on a frightened bunch of Humans is largely pointless.
Supposedly the Daleks are a match for the timelords1 so why would they include/tolerate a remote control device in Davros' chamber? The whole point of Daleks is that they aren't machines! They are malicious and alive and choose to be the way they are. The idea of a comedy remote control device is just ludicrous.
Catherine Tate doing a very very poor David Tennant impression ... no.
The whole Human/Timelord hybrid stuff ... no.
Ruining a superb ending by giving Rose a sex toy clone ... no.2
For all the hoo ha, the companions seemed, in the end, largely irrelevant ... the only one that mattered to the story was the gurning horror.3
The Osterhagen key was superb, it would have been much better had there been a plea for time from the Doctor rather than a cheesy teleport trick.
Sarah Jane's amulet proved to be utterly worthless (and now destroyed) so clearly RTD thinks that his Deus ex Machina is more important than The Sarah Jane Adventures' plot.
Having Donna choose to die as who she had become rather than return to what she was would have been a more powerful ending (in my opinion) than the Doctor ignoring her choice and wiping her mind.
The whole Earth-towing incident wasn't a bad thing necessarily4 but it was largely unnecessary. I don't think it worked in a dramatic sense, in a narrative sense or in a special effects sense.
Long story short ... Deus ex Machina is a rubbish habit to get into, and the double episode was chock-full of it.
1 Otherwise why is it that the much-lauded Time War wasn't over in five minutes, ending with the timelords giggling off into the distance?
2
s0b I have to acknowledge that sometimes a happy ending isn't appropriate ... or actually happy.
3 Catherine Tate ... for those who weren't paying attention.
4 Though the way it was done sucked ... should have vanished and reappeared in a cosmic FWOOSH FWOOSH FWOOSH
The reality bomb was a toss weapon.
Daleks like to make more Daleks and more spaceships and more weapons. In order to do this they need materials from conquered planets using slave labour to extract and process said materials. If they destroy all matter in the multiverse then there will be no more Daleks, no progress, nothing to aspire to ... the Daleks aren't that stupid.
Testing a weapon designed to destroy all matter in the multiverse inside your own mothership is dumbness on an epic scale ... testing it on a frightened bunch of Humans is largely pointless.
Supposedly the Daleks are a match for the timelords1 so why would they include/tolerate a remote control device in Davros' chamber? The whole point of Daleks is that they aren't machines! They are malicious and alive and choose to be the way they are. The idea of a comedy remote control device is just ludicrous.
Catherine Tate doing a very very poor David Tennant impression ... no.
The whole Human/Timelord hybrid stuff ... no.
Ruining a superb ending by giving Rose a sex toy clone ... no.2
For all the hoo ha, the companions seemed, in the end, largely irrelevant ... the only one that mattered to the story was the gurning horror.3
The Osterhagen key was superb, it would have been much better had there been a plea for time from the Doctor rather than a cheesy teleport trick.
Sarah Jane's amulet proved to be utterly worthless (and now destroyed) so clearly RTD thinks that his Deus ex Machina is more important than The Sarah Jane Adventures' plot.
Having Donna choose to die as who she had become rather than return to what she was would have been a more powerful ending (in my opinion) than the Doctor ignoring her choice and wiping her mind.
The whole Earth-towing incident wasn't a bad thing necessarily4 but it was largely unnecessary. I don't think it worked in a dramatic sense, in a narrative sense or in a special effects sense.
Long story short ... Deus ex Machina is a rubbish habit to get into, and the double episode was chock-full of it.
1 Otherwise why is it that the much-lauded Time War wasn't over in five minutes, ending with the timelords giggling off into the distance?
2
s0b I have to acknowledge that sometimes a happy ending isn't appropriate ... or actually happy.3 Catherine Tate ... for those who weren't paying attention.
4 Though the way it was done sucked ... should have vanished and reappeared in a cosmic FWOOSH FWOOSH FWOOSH
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no subject
Date: 2008-07-07 01:37 pm (UTC)I think that would have ripped the Doctor in two.
All goes to show that RTD couldn't do subtle if he was slapped around the face with a subtlefish.
(no subject)
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Date: 2008-07-07 02:28 pm (UTC)Maybe a handicam shot fan based episode where the studio gets invaded and shooted RTD.....
Opinion from the outside
Date: 2008-07-07 03:07 pm (UTC)And the answer is not really. Turning the daleks into a subject of ridicule seems to defeat the purpose, having Tate do it while spouting techno-babble turned it into a sketch from Not the Nine O'Clocks News. The two 'we'll destroy everything' plot devices coming to nothing, the Tardis taking ages to die without any defences, the dialog, the terrible static acting, all piled up to make me wonder what anyone sees in the series.
Really not very good TV imho.
Re: Opinion from the outside
From:Re: Opinion from the outside
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From:Re: Opinion from the outside
From:no subject
Date: 2008-07-08 09:32 am (UTC)Know what it reminded me of? An outgoing plot-team/GM going full on to tie up all their loose ends because they are THEIR loose ends whether or not leaving some stuff for the next guy would make sense.
The cloned doctor thing, on reflection, I think that a gang of fan/slashficcers broke into RTD's office and slipped some Marysue juice into his latte.
The setup of the penultimate episode COULD have made the finale into something AWESOME (JFS' idea about Badwold/Rose for example).
You're bang on the money about Daleks and their aims - They are Nazi's - Self declared supreme beings who want to exerminate all lesser races and competition not blow stuff up, just because.
Testing the wangmangletron on human prisoners was just pulling the wings off flies and Daleks don't do that because Daleks couldn't even frame the concepts required.
Davros though? Davros salvaged the episode for me. His whole thing about the soaring, olympian heights of the Doctor's hypocrisy was perfect... Never carry a gun? Turn people into weapons though...
Donna? Love or hate KT, that ending for the character blew goats. At least give her the choice the Gods gave Achilles, to die a hero or live a long and unremarked life. Better still to have her regenerate into someone else with most of Donna's memories and have fun with THAT storyline.
Towing the earth? I was expecting something messianic out of a RTD episode, so this wasn't as bad as I expected... I mean the choral music wasn't too full on and there were not hordes of seraphim giving the Doctor a tongue baptism as the TARDIS flew through space.
The 6 pilots thing was a nice touch though, liked that.
I'd be ashamed to end a campaign arc in a game I was GMing on an episode like this and when good fanfic beats what the author produces, it really is time to go.
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2008-07-08 11:04 am (UTC)I can imagine RTD describing the story (often a good way of telling if a story is badly thought out, because it starts to sound even crappier).
"..and then its revealed that Sarah Jane has this magic amulet thingy that can save the day all along-only it doesn't work, but Martha has a key thingy that will work by blowing the earth up-only they don't get to use it-and then K9 appears and he has a doo-dah that can interface with another thingy to save them all, only actually it doesn't really, though it helps a bit. And then... (starting a sentence with "and" because I am starting to suspect RTD might actually do that)...well, the first time the dr. didn't regenerate he got effectively cloned (so its not really an anti-climax after all but really very very clever see), but a bit of the clone thingy goes into Donna as well but it doesn't really happen because it needs to be activated, and it just happens that Davros attacking her does this which is handy and cool, and so she becomes a Dr.Donna mix (only she gets his brains which is cool, cause his willy would look stupid on her) and when both the real dr.s fail she suddenly goes all like the dr. see and knows that there are levers she can flip that solve everything! Imagine that-just flipping all those levers destroys the Daleks and saves everyone! Of course she knows this because she is Dr.Donna now and knows exactly what all the Dalek levers do. Brilliant isn't it?"
short answer...no.
As for towing the earth with the Tardis... I was just amazed that after all that shaking about people's fridge contents were still intact and there was no mess anywhere at all. Good to know that us earthlings approach to the trauma of having our planet abducted and then rushed through space back home is to go tidy up and clean the fridge before sending the kids into the park to play while we go for a stroll. You can't keep us humans down for long!
It was "A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury and signifying nothing". I hope Moffat will prove to be as good in RTDs shoes as he has been writing. The series needs him.
Having said that-Daleks speaking German made sense, had a certain irony, and worked well. Plus the special effects were pretty and several people did some good acting (most notably Cribbins and Sladen).
Exterminieren! Exterminieren!
From:Re: Exterminieren! Exterminieren!
From:Some Bureau42 discussion
Date: 2008-07-08 01:11 pm (UTC)http://www.bureau42.com/view/4576
seems like some people enjoyed it ...
Re: Some Bureau42 discussion
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