Doctor Who 9x3 Instant Reaction Post
Just finished watching Doctor Who, "Under The Lake". Here's the usual random reactions.
That was ... OK, I guess. Middle-of-the-road, mid-season episode, not especially good or bad. I spent a lot of the episode feeling very underwhelmed, but it picked up and got more interesting towards the end, and that was a _nice_ cliffhanger.
At first I was very disappointed by the explanation of the "coordinates" business. First of all, constellations don't work like that, and second, it just seemed too far-fetched that the Doctor could reach that conclusion from just those few words. But adding in the Mysterious Sinister Psychic Writing somehow made the whole thing feel a little more plausible (for DW values of "plausible", of course).
I had been hoping for a neat demonstration of how the Tardis handles sign languages, or if not that, at least that the Doctor knows sign. I don't like this business of "deleting" memories (it's not very Doctorish, and seriously, Moffat, it's not as amusing as you apparently think it is), and anyway that's not a good choice of something to "delete". I'm justifying it to myself as the Doctor just plain forgetting things in his old age and not wanting to admit it.
The "kiss it to death" speech didn't work much better in context than it did in the trailer. It sounds terrifically dramatic, but what does it _mean_, exactly, besides providing a shivery, trailer-y moment? Feels like there's something that I'm just not getting.
What else, what else ...
I was surprised to see the Sonic Sunglasses again. I figured that the only reason he abandoned the Screwdriver was the first encounter with the kid in 9x1, and that issue got resolved by the end of 9x2, so now there's no reason not to bring the Screwdriver back. The Sunglasses were cute for one story, but I can already tell that the charm is going to wear off fast.
Next week's episode looks a lot more promising. I'm very interested to see what happens next.
This entry was originally posted at http://c-carol.dreamwidth.org/45017.html. Please comment wherever.
That was ... OK, I guess. Middle-of-the-road, mid-season episode, not especially good or bad. I spent a lot of the episode feeling very underwhelmed, but it picked up and got more interesting towards the end, and that was a _nice_ cliffhanger.
At first I was very disappointed by the explanation of the "coordinates" business. First of all, constellations don't work like that, and second, it just seemed too far-fetched that the Doctor could reach that conclusion from just those few words. But adding in the Mysterious Sinister Psychic Writing somehow made the whole thing feel a little more plausible (for DW values of "plausible", of course).
I had been hoping for a neat demonstration of how the Tardis handles sign languages, or if not that, at least that the Doctor knows sign. I don't like this business of "deleting" memories (it's not very Doctorish, and seriously, Moffat, it's not as amusing as you apparently think it is), and anyway that's not a good choice of something to "delete". I'm justifying it to myself as the Doctor just plain forgetting things in his old age and not wanting to admit it.
The "kiss it to death" speech didn't work much better in context than it did in the trailer. It sounds terrifically dramatic, but what does it _mean_, exactly, besides providing a shivery, trailer-y moment? Feels like there's something that I'm just not getting.
What else, what else ...
I was surprised to see the Sonic Sunglasses again. I figured that the only reason he abandoned the Screwdriver was the first encounter with the kid in 9x1, and that issue got resolved by the end of 9x2, so now there's no reason not to bring the Screwdriver back. The Sunglasses were cute for one story, but I can already tell that the charm is going to wear off fast.
Next week's episode looks a lot more promising. I'm very interested to see what happens next.
This entry was originally posted at http://c-carol.dreamwidth.org/45017.html. Please comment wherever.