Very cool, if true

See also:Kil'n people by David Brin

I'll say one thing: when Amy and Rory are knocked unconscious, they are far from the flesh vat "though the door, left, left again..." etc. When they wake up, they are right next to it

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Didn't even notice that!

And interesting that they were out for an hour. I do wonder what else happened during that time.

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skington.livejournal.com

The idea was fine, and the location work was fantastic, but the writing itself was a bit clumsy; the characters weren't introduced in anything like as well as the team in Silence in the Library, for instance, and the science felt like the worst of RTD-era hand-waving.

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The science wasn't explained at all, and that was fine by me - they weren't scientists, just people using tech.

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Well, the workers left for the mainland, for one thing.

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pisica.livejournal.com

I thought the 'oh yes, psychic paper evidence, we accept you belong here' was fairly standard but then being followed by a complete infodump made me wince. I figured out why the pacing had to be that way, but it just felt like 'here, we are giving you all this information [which, surely, he would have been expected to know about?] so we can get on with the rest of the episode.' Not my favourite by a longshot, and I don't care if I see the second half, and I'm wanting more story arc info please, rather than the same woman in hatch/positive-negative we've had three times now.

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I would rather they'd put more actual arc stuff into the last couple of episodes, rather than lumping it into the first two episodes and then leaving us without anything other than reminders since then.

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The only water in the Forest is the River!

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Snippets of clues aren't the same as actual plot though.

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Point.

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I am enjoying the clues though.

I still have no idea if I like the first two episodes of the season. At the moment they feel like a complete mess, but I don't know if the later episodes will make them make sense!

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Well, he did present himself as being there because of the storm, not as someone who would necessarily know anything about the factory.

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That's an interesting point. When would they have been imprinted on the Flesh, though?

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mb2u

I really had a problem with the writing-it was so leaden I kept looking at the clock wondering when the episode would end. The characters aren't very interesting, and as you pointed out in SitL, you can make characters interesting without needing tons of exposition.

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mb2u

I just didn't like this episode much. There's a good story here, but the writing is so heavy it drags it down. You could guess what was going to happen pretty quickly, and even the goo!Doctor was not a surprise. Somehow the Doctor knows far more about this stuff than he's letting on-and I don't think the goo!Doctor was an accident.

As for goo!Doctor being the one who is shot in The Impossible Astronaut, I'm hoping not. And are there goo!Amy and goo!Rory running around as well? Would not surprise me.

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momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com

It's not so much the science of the characters, as the basic job of advancing plot which I found appallingly clunky.

Eg: they leave the TARDIS, and it's all 'Oh! There is a PIPE! It looks DANGEROUS!'

Then towards the end of the episode we shift from the guy and his ganger about to go together to look for someone to everyone hating each other, but just lots of repetitions of 'It's us and them'.

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momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com

> I assume that the Doctor we see shot in episode one is made from The New Flesh.

OMG. Hadn't occurred to me at all. Wow.

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pisica.livejournal.com

Yeah, I mean, the Freaky Supermodel On A Pirate Ship episode was clearly stand-alone and I don't expect every episode to be building the story arc, but throw us a bone, Moff!

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pisica.livejournal.com

Ah okay, ta. At the very start of the episode the freeview box (or whatever our hosts had) was going a bit wiggy so I probably missed a relevant bit of dialogue.

But then, okay, 'worst-kept secret' maybe but a horrible infodump nonetheless.

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I’m really not enjoying this series much at all. It has weaknesses all over it and I’m struggling to care.

The Big Arc which kicks off with the Silence two-parter is interesting but nothing much has been done with it in the subsequent episodes. I don’t have any new information beyond a reminder about the Schrodinger pregnancy and the eye-patch through a hatch lady. We’ve not heard much about the Doctor keeping secrets from himself in the last few episodes. The death of the Doctor doesn’t seem to be a topic of conversation in the Tardis. No real development of the Big Arc in the two stand alone episodes, nothing in the first part of the current two parter and I’m not expecting the second part to have any room in it for other stuff.

I’m also not convinced that Amy wouldn’t be talking about the eye-patch through a hatch lady with somebody. If I saw a strange lady a few times in situations where she couldn’t possible be I’d just assume that my blood sugar was too low and I was halucinating. However, if I lived as strange a life as Amy did and my definition of what was possible was significantly different to most people’s I would not just shrug off something appearing in my head, especially if I’d just had an encounter with a mind altering species.

Little story arcs. Silence two-parter was okay to good. A few weaknesses (Nixon character not great and the big weakness for me; if the Doctor can visit Earth hundreds of time over thousands of years and even live here for a period and not notice the Silence before hand why are the Silence not running Galifrey?)

I hated the Pirate episode. Just utter nonsense.

The Doctor’s Wife was okay to good. Nice idea, nice to see the soul of the Tardis. A bit of a lack of exposition. What or who was the thing that took over the Tardis? How was it able to kill so many Timelords and nobody noticed. Given the fuss that was made about the Doctor stealing the Tardis I’m expecting that these things are not allowed to go missing without some kind of inquiry. If the only two rogue Timelords are the Master and the Doctor surely someone on Galifrey was expecting the two dozen missing Timelords to return at a set point having achieved a set objective.

I like aspects of the current two-parter. The idea that a copy of you has as much right to your past as you do is interesting. However, the fall out from suspicion, to near reconcilliation to out right war was awfully quick.

Overall, I’m struggling with the three characters of the Doctor, Amy and Rory. I quite like the Matt Smith Doctor but I find him frenetic and I wonder if this incarnation would have gotten used to himself a little more by now. Amy doesn’t seem to have deepened as a character much, in fact if anything become shallower. Rory, he’s dead isn’t he? I may have missed something but I thought he was removed from time and replaced with a Roman robot. So, how is that working out for him? Put bluntly, how is Amy enjoying shagging a dead guy?

All in all I’m getting to the point where I don’t care.

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I don't think you're going to get that kind of character explanation in Dr Who, which is after all a fairy story for kids.

I suspect the Timelords went missing during the Timewar, when there were probably a lot of them vanishing off the radar.

Eye-patch lady is bothering me though.

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I don't think you're going to get that kind of character explanation in Dr Who, which is after all a fairy story for kids.

Maybe not about the shagging but I'd expect some kind of continuing emotional response from both Amy and Rory. It seems that his death and reincarnation was used to create shock and pathos in a couple of episodes but then has little on-going consequence. I think it is therefore an empty plot development.

I suspect the Timelords went missing during the Timewar, when there were probably a lot of them vanishing off the radar.

Fair point - but when my great uncle went missing in his plane during the war somebody noticed.

Eye-patch lady is bothering me though.

Aye - as other folk have said a reminder or a cryptic clue is not a plot development.

I really would expect Amy to at least ask herself "Given that I live in a weird world is this real or not real?"

Overall I think the characters and the big and little plots are not strong enough to stop me asking what-about-this questions. Too much dead time and too much of a lack of willing suspension of disbelief.

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erindubitably.livejournal.com

If there's a goo!Amy, she could be pregnant, hence the weird TARDIS readings?

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Entirely possible.

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bohemiancoast.livejournal.com

ooh well spotted.

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It may or may not be significant. On a re-watch, they are both moving when the doctor leaves them to go climb the tower and get zapped.

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bohemiancoast.livejournal.com

I quite liked this too, and expect the second part to be very enjoyable. I like these two part episodes, because taken together they're the *right length* for a Doctor Who story.

I too think that gooDoctor is the one killed in ep1.

I am becoming frustrated by Doctor Who's approach to arc management. I see lots of TV with great story arcs now, and the arc is weaved through the episodes with much greater finesse than DW ever manages.

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I hated the Pirate episode.

On the bright side, the doctor made some immortal space pirates.

No, wait, "bright side" may be the wrong phrase here.

Edited Date: 2011-05-23 04:28 pm (UTC)

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Rory, he’s dead isn’t he? I may have missed something but I thought he was removed from time and replaced with a Roman robot.

A common misconception, but no. That timeline was erased/replaced with a more normal one right at the end of the season finale episode. I know that this doesn't make sense. Never the less, it's fact.

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The Amy who has been in the TARDIS is (most likely) not a goo!Amy.

Edited Date: 2011-05-23 04:52 pm (UTC)

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But The Doctor had a conversation with him about waiting all that time for Amy, I thought?

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Yes.

I'm not expecting something seamless, like BSG or Game of Thrones, but Buffy did it better, for goodness sake.

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erindubitably.livejournal.com

Yes, but the TARDIS deals with timey-wimey stuff, it could have been sensing another Amy from a future reality? I don't know! This stuff is hard...

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Amy wakes up on 26 June 2010, to discover Rory and her parents have been brought back into existence

He's a time traveller, and thus remembers things that willn't have happened. Rory tells Amy's parents that "I was plastic"

I told you it doesn't make sense.

And there's another reason that it doesn't make sense. If there is a goo!Rory, he's a different person (with the same past but a different future) to regular Rory. So why is roboRory the same person as regular Rory?

Edited Date: 2011-05-24 09:18 am (UTC)

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This is becoming silly now.

Surely it must be time to kill the last of the Daleks again.

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Who no doubt will re-appear at some point when they are least required because that would be cool.

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Or cybermen. And destroy the earth and/or universe.

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All of that and more. I want a false regeneration too. I want at least one companion to be banised to an alternative universe and then make an impossible return.

Basically, I want not to be able to believe that any of the preceeding 50 years of narrative is binding.

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Then this will make you happy:
http://teatimebrutality.blogspot.com/2009/07/canon-and-sheep-shit-why-we-fight.html

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I did like that. Thanks.

My problem with the almost constant utter destruction of the Daleks isn't the continuity. It's the lazy story writing and the boredom it causes me.

It's almost as if the script writers are admiting they can't think of a decent use for one of the greatest characters ever created so in order to create some excitement they have to kill off the super-villan.

It's got to the point where as soon as I see the dome of a Dalek I know three things. Firstly, they are all going to be destroyed, again. Second, but they will be back and I know it, the script writer knows, everyone knows it so why get excited this time, or the next time it happens. Thirdly, there will be some badly thought out explanation for how another load of Daleks escaped. (Again, it's not the escape per se, it's the poor quality - it was all a dream, he did it with magic - style of the escape.

Whilst this series won't have Daleks in I am willing to bet that series 7 will have, that they will have some banjaxed reason for being where they are, that they will be destroyed - utterely - and will reappear in series 9 in time for my 40th birthday. If we are lucky they won't feature in some tenuous and badly hinted at major story arc where the Doctor's Companion is secretly being maniuplated by someone.

Honestly, it's getting to the point where I think more Daleks escaped the Time War than died in it. I'd say, that on balance, they won.

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Yes, it's a similar situation to the one that comics universes suffer, where you might kill Batman off, but everyone knows he'll be back the week after next.

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Aye - so I'm left wondering, if everyone knows that X plot development is too big not to be reversed, why do it?

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I think that some people feel the need to be EPIC. That if the whole universe isn't threatened then the story doesn't matter.

Which I feel is a fallacy, but it does seem to be annoyingly pervasive.

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EPIC ENVY does seem to lie behind a lot of it. I guess driven partly by the belief that if it’s not EPIC it’s not interesting or the desire to be the most EPIC writer. Shame.

Some of the most interesting stories set in a particular Universe have been smaller in scale. I’m thinking of the Star Trek Next Generation episode where Picard is captured and tortured by the Romulans and the one where they meet an alien who’s langauge is built on a formal structure of allusions to historical or fictional stories and the alien (my favourite episode ever I think).

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I agree. I don't mind epic stuff sometimes, but when everything is epic it's just like being shouted at. You need quiet between the episodes (things like The Doctor's Wife, for instance)

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