Comments on: Doctor Who and The Power of Three

By: Hal

Hal — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 13:53:05 +0000

Oh yes the narration! God, that’s hackneyed now. Hey, I *liked* Darth Egghead, warping around the room like that . I sort of agree about the 45 minute length, that length isn’t the problem, it’s how they fill it. These last few episodes in particular had a lot of boring filler. I felt that there was a lot of potential behind the concept of the Shakri (sp.?) and that it could form the basis of a great two-parter if they knew how to write one, unfortunately their plan here was uhm dumb. They don’t know how to best exploit interesting concept while their idea of epic is hamstrung by laziness, and a weakness for the big gesture over logic. And as for the ridiculously mechanical soap opera elements that the emotionally incontinent and critically challenged praise (responding to His Master’s Voice i.e. Moffat)… Oh Dear. Do they know nothing of real drama?
Don’t mention Miracle Day, no one else has in Doctor Who , people moaned about inconsistency in UNIT era Who but millions of people are always dying and then not in Modern Who, are we to believe there’s a temporal reset everytime or just arrogant showrunners and bad writing?!
Next Week: The Weeping Angels and… River Song? Again? Prepare to weep, at least that’s what Moffat’s insistent huckstering tells us we should do. Anyone care to defy that?! Sorry for my habitual extended posts, it’s an illness!

By: sjv

sjv — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 07:01:45 +0000

Well… in “the Impossible Astronaut” he did introduce his companions as Legs, the nose, and Mrs Robinson… so maybe not “tits” but only about a shade away from being that bad.

By: sjv

sjv — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 07:00:16 +0000

I had a very similar reaction… at the end of the episode I found myself thinking… IF I’d missed this episode, would I have known the difference? I honestly think the answer is no. IF my DVR hiccuped and I forgot about it… I would likely never know I missed this episode.

The bodies in the street… Two things… One… Why weren’t most of those people dead? And further, IF the magic boxes could jumpstart their hearts after a good 10 minutes or more of not pumping blood… they wouldn’t just be getting up like it was ok! Two… why weren’t at least SOME of those bodies already picked up by medical people? Were they just going to let them lay there? OR maybe they all remembered Torchwood Miracle Day and figured everything would be sorted soon

And the original-trilogy-out-of-the-mask-Vader hologram… seriously, I’m not the only one who thought of that last scene from Jedi with Luke taking off Vader’s mask, right?

I don’t get anything about that whole invasion/serial killing anyway… and it isn’t because (as Moffat would say) I’m not clever. It’s because there really wasn’t a point to it.

I also reject the notion that Dr Who is hampered by the ~45 minute episode format. There are lots of US and UK shows that do quite well with having plots that make sense, characters that evolve and experience things, all in that period of time. I cringe at the thought of spreading these paper thin plots over even longer periods of time!

And the Amy narration… once again I felt I was watching the Amy show, starring Amy and Rory, with special guest star “Vader” and also featuring “the Doctor”…

Jameson nailed something else too… I feel like the actors are way underutilized… sometimes we get glimpses of what these actors could do if the scripts were there…in fact, I find myself imagining there is actually a much bigger story arc that goes across series 5-present in which all of the main characters have been captured and trapped in a virtual reality universe and have been unable to escape from the horrible plots each week.

You know… I actually just watched the episode late tonight too… was in no rush… last week I didn’t watch until mid week I think. I’m in college football mode and DVRing Doctor Who and finding that I almost forget to want to watch it. As the Doctor would say… “That’s new.”

By: Hal

Hal — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 05:39:00 +0000

Concluded
- proper story in which concepts are properly explored rather than added as pendants, with humour that is integrated not larded on and actually witty (the Doctor calling a character “Glasses”, really? Would he have called an uh “chesty” woman “Tits”?!), and in which the Doctor and his companions act logically and learn. Pity.
Still, a lot of people think this is how it has to be and aren’t bothered by the asinine characterisation, rampant pretension, and mysteries & plot that don’t *truly* go anywhere, so…
Great work, Jameson. I hope Kate, the new UNIT, and Berkoff will return. But I more fervently hope that if Moffat and Co. come up with another cop out ending that someone takes that fricking Sonic Screwdriver and shoves it right up their collective a… You get the idea. Ahahaha.

By: Hal

Hal — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 05:23:57 +0000

Cont’d
This leads me to the point you so astutely and vociferously made, the lack of consequences and the immature squeamishness over death. We are obviously supposed to be concerned about what might happen to the Doctor, Amy, and Rory but the sort of en masse death that Power of Three featured lacks all weight because it isn’t really given any. There isn’t enough sense of the enormity of what is supposed to have happened and then at the end the Doctor waves his wand around and all’s well, the supposed greater maturity of modern Who is a fiction. It’s this tonal schizophrenia, the unwillingness to commit to drama and suspense or to really say that yes it’s sf that damages the stories. The absolute stupidity of the box plot and people’s reaction to them is a good example of this.
The first third of the show sets up the mystery of the boxes then slips into a semi-rerun of The Lodger (which I thought was bollocks as well, sorry J), the second third picks up as the boxes start *doing* things, we meet Kate, and the cardiac stuff happens. It’s here that Smith gets a stupidly fantastic Doctorish moment when he’s fascinated by the box extruding a camera only to have to run away when it starts shooting at him, now that I liked. Unfortunately the last truncated third illustrates what a waste all the waiting around was (um, yes, I identify with the Doctor) as several interesting ideas are abruptly pissed away, it’s amazing that people bleat on about Doctor Who’s pace when it’s a poorly structured and plotted as this. The aliens and the mystery were far more interesting than the flat on-the-nose attempts at meaning but of course one isn’t supposed to think that. One wonders if Moffat wants the Doctor to seem moronic, if something bad *does* happen to Amy and Rory won’t that make the Doctor too irresponsible? That doesn’t seem like a good idea at all.
I liked the Shakri and the concept behind them, I liked the effects, I found a few things amusing, but every criticism you made is correct. They seem afraid of telling a Cont’d

By: Hal

Hal — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 04:53:59 +0000

Wow Jameson, that was an excellent and brave takedown of the episode; the Bigger on the Inside post may or may not be better written but your damn the torpedoes review brilliantly summarized all the problems with this particular episode and much of the overall approach of modern Who.
Now hold onto your hat but I enjoyed bits of this episode and feel it’s Chibnall’s best effort which isn’t to say it’s not mediocre but it at least has a few good ideas which makes it superior to his usual drivel. Yet those good ideas are, as you so fiercely write, thrown aside for the illogical same old, same old. The argument that this is a character piece rather overlooks the fact of the sheer clunkiness of the attempts at meaning. We are supposed to be moved by Amy’s maturing yet it’s so obviously *forced* and unconvincing on anything but a facile soap opera level that it doesn’t work. As for the Doctor being fixated on A and R because they were the first faces he saw – ugh! This serves to make this Doctor *literally* infantile, and what of all the time he spent away from them before his not-so-fateful meeting at Lake Silencio? Moffat’s desperation for the audience to buy into the bond between the Doctor and A & R means that he also requires them to be stupid or to remember only the things he wants them to remember and cry a river when Amy and Rory meet their fate. Is this good writing or artificially sentimental hogwash? Cont’d