[ SECRET POST #2280 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2280 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 04 pages, 080 secrets from Secret Submission Post #326.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

New Doctor Who ahoy [SPOILERS]

[(Anonymous)]

What did y'all think? And what are your speculations for the rest of the season?

Re: New Doctor Who ahoy [SPOILERS]

[(Anonymous)]

It was all over the place, but Clara's delightful.

And I'm thinking the Nina and governess stuff will show up in the finale.

Re: New Doctor Who ahoy [SPOILERS]

[(Anonymous)]

My expectations were low after the first half of the series and that dreadful Christmas special, but I enjoyed it after the first ten minutes or so. I liked Clara much better than her previous incarnations, which is always a good start.

As for the rest of the series ... I'm just looking forward to Neil Gaiman's episode, and will take the rest of it as it comes. I really hope Moffat is leaving sometime soon, because he is the source of so many of my issues with the show as it is now.

Re: New Doctor Who ahoy [SPOILERS]

[fenm]

One of the things I found was that I was nervous every time there was a scene with the Doctor and Clara together. Given what Moffat has done in the past--including with this very character--I keep thinking she's going to jump him at any second. Gyah. DO NOT WANT.

Re: New Doctor Who ahoy [SPOILERS]

[(Anonymous)]

Ugh, I know. Especially since in the Christmas Special she's shown that uncomfortable blithe disregard for him pushing her away and telling her to stop hitting on him. *eyetwitch* I mean, I like other aspects of her, but Moffat's writing has conditioned my WARNING! BAD TOUCH! button to start bleeping like Dot Matrix's virginity alarm whenever a female character gets within groping range of the Doctor. :\

Re: New Doctor Who ahoy [SPOILERS]

[fenm]

she's shown that uncomfortable blithe disregard for him pushing her away and telling her to stop hitting on him.

Plus, just FLAT OUT kissing him without his permission.

Moffat's writing has conditioned my WARNING! BAD TOUCH! button to start bleeping like Dot Matrix's virginity alarm whenever a female character gets within groping range of the Doctor. :\

Ugh... this, exactly.
Great reference, by btw. (-:
/"I'm programmed to go off before you do."

Re: New Doctor Who ahoy [SPOILERS]

[(Anonymous)]

Is this episode liable to be a confusing place to just jump in? I've never watched Doctor Who at all, but I adore Celia Imrie. Is it understandable as a one-off ep?

Re: New Doctor Who ahoy [SPOILERS]

[(Anonymous)]

NO. It's a pretty good ep, but it's a TERRIBLE one-off ep. The plot is incomprehensible without watching two other episodes that come before it, and both those episodes are pretty incomprehensible out of context as well, not to mention they're terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible jumping-on points for Doctor Who. Sorry :(

Re: New Doctor Who ahoy [SPOILERS]

[intrigueing]

I...didn't like it. I didn't DISlike it, I didn't immediately notice any big issues with it, I just had a worrying lack of any feeling towards it. Which is unsettling to me. I'd much rather be frustrated with an tantalizing and rich but badly flawed story than just not really care. :( But it was an intro episode, after all, so maybe it'll pick up. And hopefully there will be another writer for the next episode.

I'm glad the Doctor's well out of his Christmas funk, but now he just seems so obsessed with the Clara mystery that I'm a tad nervous about his mental health. Oh well, I'm always worried about his mental health. Nothing new there.

I liked the scene of the Doctor taking care of Clara when she was unconscious and eating her cookies and then going all the way outside of her house to guard her though.

I also guffawed at the end where Clara tells him to come back later and is surprised that people just run off with him. I'll probably find something wrong with it later, but it amused me when I saw it.

Clara seems too...Amy-ish though. There were a few lines where she would've seemed exactly like Amy if she'd had a Scottish accent. I thought Victorian Clara was a lot more interesting and unique. Ah well...lotsa episodes for development left.

Speaking of which, I punched the air and squealed at Amy's book, because I have whined an irritating number of times in various locales around the internet about how it was SO obvious that Amy should have been a novelist when she grew up. And "chapter 11's the best!" LOL. Oh Moffat. Sometimes you're kind of cute <3

I'm still disappointed Strax isn't the companion instead.

Re: New Doctor Who ahoy [SPOILERS]

[(Anonymous)]

I feel like I'm literally going to lose it if that 'Doctor Who?' gag gets used one more time. Which is unfortunate, because it looks like it's gonna be a running gag for the rest of the episode.

Re: New Doctor Who ahoy [SPOILERS]

[(Anonymous)]

Can anyone tell me if the Great Intelligence is a completely new thing or if it might be related to some Old Who concept or villain?

Re: New Doctor Who ahoy [SPOILERS]

[fenm]

Apparently it shows up in a few Second Doctor episodes.

Re: New Doctor Who ahoy [SPOILERS]

[(Anonymous)]

The Great Intelligence is an old villain fromn the Troughton days. Seen first in The Abominable Snowmen and then in The Web of Fear (The reference to the London Underground in The Christmas episode was a reference to this). Both serials are mosty missing from the archives though.

Odd straight to video story Downtime also features the Great Intelligence, but it is not really something I could honestly recommend.

Re: New Doctor Who ahoy [SPOILERS]

[intrigueing]

It appeared in a couple of Two's serials, The Abominable Snowmen (it's partly missing but SO MUCH FUN), and, apparently, in The Web of Fear. I dunno if it's been mentioned since then.

I wondered about that a bit after The Snowmen, because when I tried to find The Web of Fear, it turns out only one episode out of the serial still exists. I wonder if Moffat found a copy of the complete serial and has been hoarding it until he tells the rest of this story. Wouldn't put it past him. ;)

Re: New Doctor Who ahoy [SPOILERS]

[(Anonymous)]

Why was it called "The Bells of St. John"? That only came into play in the intro! And it wasn't even about that! /confused

It wasn't bad, but there was nothing compelling about it either. In fact, this whole season has been kind of...dead. Apart from the wonderful character development and UNIT stuff in very thinly-plotted The Power of Three and Strax/Vastra/Jenny and the gorgeous ethereal fairy tale little bits and pieces in the overall lackluster Snowmen, this entire season has been devoid of anything interesting or meaningful. As faily as season 6 was, at least it had a lot of meaning.

I'd be more appreciative of the fact that the Doctor thankfully isn't moping about the Ponds anymore if it didn't seem like he was purposely distracting himself from dealing with his feelings with Clara. *sigh*

Re: New Doctor Who ahoy [SPOILERS]

[othellia]

Why was it called "The Bells of St. John"? That only came into play in the intro! And it wasn't even about that! /confused

For the same reason they named an episode "Let's Kill Hitler."

Re: New Doctor Who ahoy [SPOILERS]

[(Anonymous)]

I'm glad Amy and Rory are gone just so I don't have to hear the Doctor call them 'the Ponds' every single episode. It might have been an amusing joke if it hadn't been used all the time. I think even Moffat finally realized how much some viewers hated it and that is why he ended their run as companions with Amy being forceful about using Williams instead of Pond and then showed her book with the proper author name.

Re: New Doctor Who ahoy [SPOILERS]

[(Anonymous)]

I was sort of weirded by the fact that the Doctor looks like he's totally ga-ga over Clara when he's supposed to be officially with River. Or is that, like, not an issue? I mean, it's not an issue for ME, but I can't help but wonder how many casual fans are going "waiiiiit, isn't he supposed to be married?"

Maybe it's just a flirty thing that won't go anywhere. *shrug*

Re: New Doctor Who ahoy [SPOILERS]

[othellia]

Personally I couldn't help but keep comparing it to the Idiot's Lantern.

Also I was hoping we'd have a bigger look into Clara's home life, but it seems - like Amy - she's going to remain rather backgroundless. I'm planning on writing a full review of the ep + future eps, so that will be fun.

Re: New Doctor Who ahoy [SPOILERS]

[(Anonymous)]

I liked Victorian Clara a lot better.

This episode was all over the place and I liked it less and less as it went on. The motorcycle thing was ridiculous and then I couldn't decide if it was more or less so when it was revealed that it was robotclone!Doctor (which wasn't exactly an earth-shattering reveal).

Eleven seems to me like a very proud and very inexperienced person. He doesn't come off as a continuation of the character who has had ten previous versions. Sometimes he makes a reference to something a previous Doctor said or did, but mostly it seems like he got amnesia during his regeneration and he's a completely new character that is starting from day 0.

Re: New Doctor Who ahoy [SPOILERS]

[intrigueing]

IMO, it seems like he got amnesia when he was erased by the crack and brought back by Amy, not when he regenerated. He seemed very much a continuation of the character in season 5 (except in The Lodger -- as much as I love that episode when I turn my brain off, he makes no sense there unless I headcanon that he was just goofing off and acting weird to mess with Craig for shits and giggles), especially when you trace him from "The End of Time" to "The Big Bang" -- that arc is pretty wonderful. More than wonderful, it was a nearly perfect reaction to and continuation of Ten.

But starting with "A Christmas Carol" he seems to have...really regressed into a weird self-deluding path of denial that makes very little sense. Unless you theorize it as him going on a massive ego trip after getting de-erased. Which I really, really, really, really DON'T want to theorize about him doing, because that totally defeats the purpose of season 5 :\ And the worst part is that he seems like a completely different person in non-Moffat episodes. I mean, contrast The Doctor's Wife and The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People with The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon and A Good Man Goes to War. It's rather jarring.

I try to see it as Eleven being uncomfortable about his past and not knowing how to deal with all the identity crises and PTSD and other shit that the Doctor has been struggling to deal with during his Ninth and Tenth incarnations, so he just kinda tried to pretend he was someone entirely different and forget about what happened. Kind of casting himself as Amy's imaginary friend and losing himself in that role. So he's purposely trying to act like a totally different person. And then the 200 years of wandering around doing god-knows-what exacerbated that.

Which is a very understandable idea for the character, but would work a lot better if I could see authorial intent in the text. It seems like Moffat just thinks "LOL THIS IS SO KEWL". He might not be, he might just be trolling like the lying trollface liar he is, but that's how it seems and it's not particularly enjoyable.

But yeah, as much as it depresses me to admit it, the longer Moffat keeps writing, the more I starting thinking Ten might have had a point with all his freaking out and anxiety about regenerating and feeling like he was dying in "The End of Time" :\ Maybe he knew himself better than we did. Which isn't a remotely satisfying idea from a character development perspective. But I'm sure it can all be fixed with the next writer. Just kind of integrate Eleven into the succession of incarnations as a stage of the Doctor's character development where he was trying to get away from his identity. Which, ta-da! is exactly what this whole season is about. So I have hope yet.

How the fuck did I tl;dr all that? Wow, kinda just came out of nowhere.

Re: New Doctor Who ahoy [SPOILERS]

[(Anonymous)]

Eleven seems to me like a very proud and very inexperienced person. He doesn't come off as a continuation of the character who has had ten previous versions. Sometimes he makes a reference to something a previous Doctor said or did, but mostly it seems like he got amnesia during his regeneration and he's a completely new character that is starting from day 0.

As a New Who fan who only has Nine->Ten's regeneration to compare with (so I don't know if the amount of continuity present between Nine and Ten's personalities vs the disconnect between Eleven and the previous two Doctors was unusual for the Doctor or not), can anyone tell me if this kind of reset-button type thing ever happened to the Doctor before?

Re: New Doctor Who ahoy [SPOILERS]

[(Anonymous)]

I liked Clara but the episode was pretty weak and mostly boring. I also think it's ridiculous for Moffat to assume that the audience has absolutely no knowledge whatsoever of how computers and the internet work. I think Moffat is so out of touch with the audience that the show can only get worse from here. I'm ready for someone else - anyone else - to take over now.

Re: New Doctor Who ahoy [SPOILERS]

[(Anonymous)]

I'm pretty sure that Clara will agree to travel with him and ultimately he won't get her back at the time he says he will. While they're gone, they will travel all over time and space where one or the other will make unwanted advances on the other while running from completely unfrightening monsters/aliens. Every now and then the episodes will have A Big Message for the audience and all the teenage girls on tumblr who watch Doctor Who will say it was the best episode ever while every viewer over the age of 21 with an IQ over 70 will be Unimpressed. Then Moffat will take to some form of social media to say he doesn't understand why people say mean things about the show or him and then he'll throw in some Sherlock wankbait and go home to laugh at the fallout.

Re: New Doctor Who ahoy [SPOILERS]

[(Anonymous)]

I felt let down by the motorcycle stuff. It looked so cool in the trailer I thought it would be the Doctor and Clara chasing down a villain or something actually important and central to the plot. Instead it was just to catch a ride to the cafe with a lame excuse that made it obvious it was a scene specifically written to be in the trailer and/or act as an iconic image without any meaning behind it.

Kind of like the first season 7 trailer with the Doctor carrying Amy past the dead Daleks. It made it look like it was a huge important meaningful moment, when it was just a random bit of fighting.