Comments on: Doctor Who Prequel: Pond Life

By: Hal

Hal — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 17:28:34 +0000

It was magnificently and rightly venomous! One of your best reviews too, and nice job with the screengrabs. I’ve seen at least one prominent magazine’s website give Asylum five out of five, which is, I think, pathetic. Twist or no twist. I *did* want to like it. At least Skaro looked impressive…

By: dailypop

dailypop — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 13:09:58 +0000

Hal, I hope that my review had the appropriate amount of venom in it. It’s also the first review of the new series where I took screengrabs as I was watching it.

By: dailypop

dailypop — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 05:48:05 +0000

go for it, lads.

By: Hal

Hal — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 04:59:28 +0000

You are *dead* to me now!
Without spoiling anything, I’ll just say that if one takes away the major surprise and looks at the *story*, there is not much there, in fact the surprise *is* the story and therefore as you imply it’s all set-up but I, unlike you, didn’t think much of it. There *were* bits I liked but they were just that *bits*…oh, and the Daleks weren’t used well which defeated the point of all that hype. And… “Eggs”, ack, *choking*, must drink water. Can’t wait for Jameson’s review so I can comment more fully.

By: sjv

sjv — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 04:14:40 +0000

Without being spoilery…

As usual, I am left not knowing what to think. I’ve said before that Moffat is good at the setup, but equally bad at the payoff… Both series 5 and series 6 started well, in my opinion, but were big letdowns by the time you finish. He probably likes Stephen King stories… I do, but lots of King stories start well, ask good questions, but have an ending that leaves you thinking “what?!” and “I read 1000 pages to get to that?!”

So… taking this new episode as a standalone… I only have one gripe about it that I can’t mention without spoilering… so I’ll save that for a thread where Jameson reviews the episode. Maybe my low expectations made this seem better? Hard to say… but aside from the for-the-moment-unmentionable gripe… this episode was fine to me… always little nits, but those don’t ruin the whole thing… HOWEVER… the nudge in the back of my brain says, yeah this sets up things to come… but those things will ultimately disappoint… so I reserve the right to go back and critique more IF we find the usual non-payoff later in the series.

By: Hal

Hal — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 01:25:06 +0000

Ah, that was my mistake! Actually when you watch it you’ll see how Daleky People could be among we humans without us knowing so that explains it then, Moffat’s Dalek Puppets have entered our “reality”. You have solved the conundrum, SJV but watch out… They’ll be after you now .

By: sjv

sjv — Sat, 01 Sep 2012 23:46:13 +0000

Haven’t seen it yet… A little over an hour before BBC America airs here in the US… and I’ll be recording it to watch later while I instead watch football live. The football *might* not be as good, but so far Moffat has nothing to do with the plots of American football so there is a chance

By: sjv

sjv — Sat, 01 Sep 2012 23:44:17 +0000

Don’t you know?

DALEKS = Demonstrate Allegiance and Loyalty to Emperor King Steven

By: Hal

Hal — Sat, 01 Sep 2012 20:14:13 +0000

I’ll be interested to see if you enjoy it, from what I’ve seen there are plenty of people who thought it excellent (stay away from anyone handing out Kool Aid, kids!). There’s an amusing scene of the Doctor prancing around which I liked (much of the dialogue sucked mightily though, the Doctor should *not* say “You beauty!”. Ugh. ) but for all the “blockbuster” rhetoric this was really dull in places while unfortunately, a few sequences apart, the Daleks were surprisingly poorly used. As for the ending, in which *something* happens to the Daleks, the rationale behind it was peculiar and didn’t really make sense as the Daleks aren’t robots (Destiny of the Daleks made the same mistake, tho’ one could argue that Nation had decided they’d become so by that point, even if later writers decided that was a bad idea) although Moffat tries to set this up. That particular twist leads to a new (inept) status quo really similar to the end of Wedding of River Song, so isn’t exactly stunning. The earlier twists aren’t unguessable (with Moffat using the nanogenes from The Doctor Dances in a new way that does lead to actors looking silly with “things” protruding from their skulls) though the most prominent twist does present us with a compelling new character. I *hate* what they’ve done with Amy and Rory – and I don’t even really *like* them! – and question having them return, as for the way they are brought into this story: Huh? Are the Daleks aware that Amy and Rory have to be in the story because they read articles on Doctor Who?!

By: dailypop

dailypop — Sat, 01 Sep 2012 19:40:40 +0000

Haven’t seen it yet, will post when I have, but feel free to talk among yourselves…