Reaction: Doctor Who Series 7 and bits
Brief reactions, meta and comments on Series Seven of Doctor Who, and some associated bits.
No screencaps, sorry.
Incidentally, credit where it's due, many quotes appearing in this have been checked by referencing this awesome compilation of transcripts.
[6.07 Supplementary Material ]
6.07 Supplementary Material -"Demon's Run Two Days Later"
SO GLAD I FOUND THIS SHORT. THEY WROTE THEIR OWN FIX-IT FIC FOR STRAX.
-Strax fainted! Jenny and Vastra show up and practically offer to adopt him! SO MUCH SQUEE!
-Of course, being a Sontaran Strax refuses because they are "putrescent alien filth", but talks himself around to going to Victorian London with them as a scouting mission. "I look forward to obliterating you both in the name of the Sontaran Empire." Suuure.
-And I am totally in support of a Vastra and Jenny spin-off even just for the team-speak response to what do they do: "Solve crimes."/"Protect the Empire."/"There's quite a lot of running."/"Some spectacular dresses."/"And an awful lot of fun." \o/
-And then:
STRAX: "I'm not an expert on alien species, but you're both women ones, aren't you?"
VASTRA: "It has been noted."
STRAX: "Don't you need a man one?"
VASTRA and JENNY: "No."
STRAX: "Am I the man one?"
VASTRA and JENNY: "No."
STRAX: "So! Dresses, then!"
\o/
[Series 7 Prequel]
Series 7 Prequel -"Pond Life"
I'm watching this prequel in the correct sequence! WOW!
-Eleven as a DJ sort of rapper or something. *facepalm* God no.
-"Oh dear I appear to have collided with Ancient Greece. AAAAAAAAAAAAAA!" Hee!
-May. Stop what you're doing, clothes on, end of the world, whoops too early, never mind, byeee! UM, NO? Explain now please? O.O
-"The future is really safe." *hides from Series 7 blipvert*
-June. OOD! That head tilt, like "May I be of any assistance? ^-^"
-Amy's morning hair is awesome.
-July Aw. Ood trying to fulfil his programming. :-/
-"I feel so guilty."/"Just eat your breakfast."
-??? Yay, the Ood's been taken home and reconnected to the Sphere.
-Aw, anxious Eleven deleting the message, Amy waiting again. Hope that break up was just an anxiety vision.
[Doctor Who 7.01]
Doctor Who 7.01 -"Asylum of the Daleks"
-Nice boots. Highly impractical.
-"They say you can help."/"Do they? I wish they'd stop." OH ELEVEEEEEN. I will bury you in blankets and soup if you aren't careful.
-SKARO! Hey wait, didn't it blow up? A few times?
-Okay Dalek inside a human, what the serious hell?
-Hi Amy. Um Don't take this personally, but please stop letting River do your hair. The morning hair was better than the first photoshoot hair, the second's not bad though.
-"I don't have a husband." Aw. Not a paranoid delusion then.
-Daleks in human form are creepy.
-"How much trouble?"/"Out of ten? ...Eleven." *facepalm* Arg. They put that pause in just to let the pain sink in in advance.
-Oh great a Dalek trial. OH HEY, THEY AREN'T ALL THE CANDY COLOURED ONES! They're mostly the old configuration! I am so glad, I was worried that whole business back in series Five meant they were getting rid of all the old Dalek designs.
-"The Parliament of the Daleks." ... Excuse me a second. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA HAHAHAH. Ha. Okay, I'm good now.
-"Save us. You will save us." Oh hell, it had to come to this eventually. Too much history going on between them. "This is new..."
-Hunh, new titles font. I'll get used to it.
-Oh, hey, it's her... I thought she was later? Hunh. Odd. And why does the display on her stereo look vaguely Gallifreyan?
-Dalek Asylum, right, where the Daleks are human or something and think they're humans and ballerinas and such. I have heard things about this one.
-"I thought you'd run out of ways to make me sick." Eleven has issues, but to be fair he's had them for a very long time.
-"You think hatred is beautiful."/"Perhaps that's why we have never been able to kill you." Oh ow, aaah. That's... yeah. *nods*
-"What colour?"/*blank stares*/"Sorry, there weren't any good questions left." Though under the Dalek Rainbow Regime, that's actually quite a valid question.
-Oswin Oswald? Really? You had mean parents, girl. Not the her I'm thinking of then. Or is it? An ancestor?
-Souffles against the Daleks. Hee!
-A tsunami of insane Daleks. There's an image.
-"It can only be turned off from within the Asylum." Oh terrific planning. Lock a bunch of your people up, then give them the only key to the jail.
-"The Predator is the Dalek's word for you." Yeah, there's that long history there.
-"I get fired at a planet and expected to fix it."/"In fairness that is slightly your M.O."/"Don't be fair to the Daleks when they're firing me at a planet!" *glee* Rory! :-D
-"The Doctor requires Companions." Hahah, yeah, they've got notes about how this works.
-The Mad Max look the human Daleks have going on is kind of cool.
-Aw Rory fell down a hole!
-A year "Two hours ago we were doing engine repairs." Yep, he's a Dalek. One of the one's hallucinating but looking like a Dalek? It would explain Amy's weird reaction to him on the surface if she's seeing a Dalek coming up and asking if he can help instead of the view the Dalek has of himself, but then there's the ladder. But then Daleks can fly now. Hm.
-"I died outside and the cold preserved my body. I forgot about dying." Always something reassuring to hear from a person you've just met. O.O He's a stealth Dalek then.
-Nanocloud makes everyone into Daleks. Okay. When did the Daleks get/develop this tech, how, and knowing the Dalek philosophy, why aren't they carpet bombing every inhabited planet in the universe with the stuff?
-GAAAAAAAAAAH ZOMBIE DALEKS!!! DDDD-:
-Hm. Oswin doesn't have a bracelet... *side-eyes*
-"We split up. What can you do?"/"What can I do?" Aw. The Doctor's trying to fix his 'last homely house' of Amy and Rory's home/marriage. Aww.
-Crap, zombie Daleks got Amy's bracelet. So therefore they'll need to figure out a way to resist or reverse the nanoconversion, right?
-"Eggs. Eggs. Term. In. Ate." HAHAHAHAH. And then they all go berserk shooting everywhere. Yeah, I've had mornings like that too.
-Awesome slide, Rory!
-"Because we've had this conversation four times." Could just be panic. *shrug*
-"Scared isn't Dalek." I dunno, they're plenty scared of the Doctor.
-"It's just people." Yep. Dalek-shaped people that she can see because she's becoming Dalek (seriously there has to be some meta in "things that have tried to convert Amy into themselves", Weeping Angels etc)
-Aw, the Dancing Girl Dalek is the stealth Dalek's daughter. Aw.
-"How are you going to destroy me?" Heh. For an entity desperate enough anything can become a weapon, including their own destruction.
-"I'm looking for reverse." Eleven has a hell of a hatred on for Daleks. He's worse than Nine was, and Nine was fresh off the Time War. What's up with that?
-Aw. He blew up the people Daleks. :-(
-"Who killed all the Daleks?"/"Who do you think?" *shiver*
-*slap* "She remembers me." Amy is a violent girl. :-/
-"Doesn't she seem too angry to you?"/"Somebody's never been to Scotland." Pft.
-Oswin says she has a handwave shield thing vs the nanowhatsits. *side-eyes* If she's a human Dalek, why is she helping them, and if she's an insane and delusional actual Dalek, she's got one hell of a voice modulator.
-Milk for the souffles. *shrug* She's on a crashed cruiseliner, she could be near ship's stores, and shelf-stable milk is available in the UK today, so it's really not a big thing that she has access to any amount of milk she could need. Also, thanks to Doctor Who, I've learned that souffles need milk. I thought they were like a meringue.
-Four seconds is really not a long time.
-"You're beaming up to a Dalek ship to get exterminated."/"Fair point. Love this plan." Okay, new idea, Rory and Craig need to meet up and go hang out at a bar. On the Tardis maybe.
-"I'm gonna take this off my wrist and put it on yours." She's already exposed though, so it's too late, isn't it? It'd just expose Rory.
[And then I ran out of time to transcribe the notes, so cutting down considerably on the blather for the rest.]
-Rory's conviction that Amy loves him less than he loves her has a complicated sort of aww to it that makes me want to simultaneously wrap him up in blankets and smack him upside the head.
-"I gave you up." Ow. Demon's Run made Amy unable to have kids, that's a huge ow, but I kind of want to shake her very hard for making that a reason to 'give Rory up' because a) they have River, even though they didn't get to raise her, b) adoption and surrogacy and any number of other options are things which exist and anyone who's going to be resentful about staying with their wife when they find out she can't bear children in this day and age is a giant flaming bag of dicks and Rory really doesn't give off that kind of attitude and may have sort of lived through most of history sitting next to a box, he wasn't raised in the 1700's, and c) a decision that affects two people should involve some form of discussion between those two people and not decided by fiat by one side or the other, unless the attitude and actions of one side make it obvious that the other side needs to make the choice to defend themselves. In short, Amy, you're an idiot. But Demon's Run and trauma and god only knows what they did to make her barren after River, so Amy not thinking straight is understandable, but I still kind of want to shake some sense into her, or feed her soup.
-Of course good old self-negating Eleven snuck his bracelet onto Amy and made the whole mess moot, other than having them work out their silly business about who's trying to be nice to whom by kicking them to the curb. *headdesk*
-Had a feeling Oswin was a Dalek all along, but her voice being not noticably Daleky to the gang threw me off. Also, the trouble with reminding someone that they are a Dalek is that they remember that they are a Dalek.
-"We have grown stronger in fear of you." Yep. Centuries-long arms race of a sort, and neither side is going to be the one to stop first, unless the 'forget the Doctor command' goes through all the Daleks everywhere, but even then they're so geared to exterminating and surviving, it'd be a damned hard rehabilitation into something different. Doable, but I think needing something bigger and more than just the Doctor and his Dalek-related emotional baggage.
-Forcefield down. "I am Oswin Oswald. I fought the Daleks and I am human. Remember me." Yes of course, lovely and thanks but wasn't that forcefield only going to have a window of four seconds between forcefield down and planet go boom? Which, really is terribly sad, just blowing up a whole planet of sentient life because it mostly happens to be insane Daleks.
-"Incoming, prepare to defend." Wasn't sure if that was a double-cross, or that they had forgotten the Doctor entirely, including having sent them all down to deal with the planetary shield. But then...
-"Identify yourself." *MASSIVE FISTPUMP* I hope something good will come of that, but really the entirety of Dalek history just became a giant swath of Swiss cheese, with loads of 'things happened, we were doing stuff, and then blank, and then we lost somehow and were really really angry about it' so I have the feeling that they may not remember the Doctor, but if they bother to do much self-examination and historical research they will still possibly piece together the "Predator of the Daleks" from the shape of the blanks left behind, and may still not remember who it was, but will know there has been something interfering with their plans throughout history, and no longer have a specific target for their ire, and just blast the crap out of everything that could be of equivalent power and scope. Or maybe they've got a tamper-proof backup somewhere. Though Daleks don't seen to be the sort to tend towards historians and backups, so who knows.
-Though for an entire roomful of Daleks chanting "Doctor Who?" it might be worth it.
[Doctor Who 7.02]
Doctor Who 7.02 -"Dinosaurs on a Spaceship"
-"Ship the size of Canada." Yay Canadian content!
-RUPERT GRAVES! OMG! I had forgotten that I'd heard about him having a role in a Doctor Who episode, which is an advantage of having gone so long between the episode airing and watching it with my dodgy memory, and I'm glad I forgot because I know know what it would look like if I'd been electrocuted. Arms and legs everywhere and screaming (but quietly so as not to wake the neighbours.)
-Rory's dad. WHo looked really familiar but I couldn't place him until just now when I looked him up and RORY'S DAD IS ARTHUR WEASLEY. The crossovers practically write themselves. That aside, not recognizing Rory's dad when I watched this, I still thought Rory's dad was incredibly awesome on first sight, and even more awesome when he didn't freak out completely about getting kidnapped by the Tardis. I guess he didn't meet Eleven at Rory and Amy's wedding.
-The ship looked like a thing that would turn into another thing. Those lumpy extensions looked like they might expand into solar sails or something, but no.
-Had a passing thought about Adric when the dinosaurs turned up, as one does.
-The new logo changing to match the theme of the episode with the lizard skin pattern was... interesting. Probably best they stopped that later though.
-"I can take one of them." With a knife. Rupert Graves is pure awesome.
-"What sort of a man doesn't carry a trowel?" Rory's dad and the Doctor should get along famously.
-Of course Eleven has a Christmas list, but I doubt it's a list of physical objects he'd like to get. Maybe a 'what not to do' list. Avoid London on December 25th. Try not to get anyone killed permanently.
-"System malfunction. Ignore it." NEVER EVER IGNORE A SYSTEM MALFUNCTION. Particularly in space, whether you're talking to a person of indeterminate motivations or not. Who is being played by another Harry Potter alumni who played the Hogwarts caretaker Argus Filch, which takes on interesting new giggle-ness now that I know Rory's Dad's Arthur Weasley. Not really, Arthur Weasley I mean but- ugh, you know what I mean.
-Riding a triceratops and getting it to run by playing fetch is awesomely fun.
-I was so sure that the unique object the guy was after would be the Tardis, but it being Nefertiti made it SO VERY SKEEVY. O.O
-Loved the bit with making the missiles think the other ship was the main ship by swapping the IFF module (glowy thing that identified the ship "Identification Friend or Foe", except for the bit where it wasn't being targetted by using the IFF, just by the ship being there as a big object in the sky, and Eleven sending the guy off to his death with his wisecracking robots has its major issues as well, that I'm semi-preliminarily handwaving as [reference to original series]an action of the future Valeyard that hasn't split off yet. Maybe. But swapping the part was still cool.
-"There's something I want to see." Earth. From high orbit. In open space. With a thermos of tea and a sandwich. I LOVE RORY'S DAD.
[Doctor Who 7.03]
Doctor Who 7.03 -"A Town Called Mercy"
-"Someone's been peeking at my Christmas list." Yep, Eleven's Christmas list is full of interesting plot seeds.
-"He shoots people's hats?" How heinous!
-"Why would I be curious? It's a mysterious space cowboy assassin. Curious? Of course I'm not curious." Naw. Though with Eleven sometimes he has off days.
-Abraxas Security Systems. I often take a good side-eyeing of any somewhat random things turning up named Abraxas, because this and this there is a lot of scope for references that might not bode well.
-"You want justice, you deserve justice, but this isn't the way. We can put him on trial."/"When he starts killing your people, you can use your justice." Must admit it, the mysterious space cowboy assassin has a point.
-"And how many died screaming on the operating table before you had found your advantage?" Hello angry Doctor.
-"There's rage there, like me. Guilt, like me. Solitude. Everything but the nerve to do what needs to be done. Thank the gods my people weren't relying on you to save them." Jex, honey, you have no idea who you're talking to.
-"Every time I negotiate, I try to understand. Well, not today. No. Today, I honour the victims first. His, the Master's, the Dalek's, all the people who died because of my mercy!" And there's a big dose of ow from the tip of Eleven's major-issues iceberg.
-"Oh, I know exactly what you are, and I see this reformation for what it really is. You committed an atrocity and chose this as your punishment." And again, with Eleven getting into it with Jex about guilt and culpability and responsibility etc, and he's pretty much talking to and about himself. Climbing mountains with souls and carrying your prison with you indeed.
-"The people of Mercy were used to the strange, the impossible." Hm, wonder how close it is to Night Vale?
[Doctor Who 7.04]
Doctor Who 7.04 -"The Power of Three"
-July. Ah it's the other part of "Pond Life"
-OH HI BRIAN COX, RENOWNED ACTUAL QUANTUM PHYSICIST!!! *waves like a doof* There's a "Science of Doctor Who" Special with him going through the Tardis with Eleven and applying current scientific theory etc to fictional Tardis capabilities. Haven't seen it yet, but I will soon. I'll be taking a lot of notes I think, but more as research for fic than a reaction post. Still, it's little bit of a canon reality crossover thing, and that's so cool, and probably less facepalm inducing than Supernatural's "The French Mistake"
-UNIT! THE BRIGADIER'S DAUGHTER though I am shamed to admit I didn't realise that's who she was until Eleven pointed it out later on. I did like her a lot and think she was awesome right from the start though. Also long coat! \o/
-Eleven's version of being patient is tremendously productive.
-Rory's dad Brian, all alone in the Tardis for four days, watching a box because the Doctor told him to. Awwwww! And later, Brian's Log! And then even later, asking Eleven about the other people who traveled with him and just GAAAAAAH! I ADORE BRIAN!!!
-The boxes coming to Earth, apparently doing nothing at all, getting humans to just accept them as part of their lives and not even notice them anymore. Ubiquitousness as a strategic maneuver. I LOVE IT.
-"The first face this face saw." Aw, he imprinted. Like a baby chick. That's... certainly a better experience than Six's first companion had. O.o
-Countdown. Why do the cubes offer any kind of warning of the imminent attack? They've got the intel, why not just attack? Unless their intent was to get people to stand closer or handle them and try to figure out what it's doing. Or get particularly silly people to stick their faces right next to it. Naming no names.
-And again, the lifts are either carnivorous or portals to somewhere else. If you're in an episode with Eleven, never go near the lifts.
-"So, here you are, depositing slug pellets all over the Earth, made attractive so humans will collect them, hoping to find something beautiful inside. Because that's what they are. Not pests or plague, creatures of hope, forever building and reaching. Making mistakes, of course, every life form does. But! But they learn. And they strive for greater, and they achieve it. You want a tally. Put their achievements against their failings through the whole of time, I will back humanity against the Shakri every time. " Yeah, I'm just gonna put that quote here.
-Brian, telling his son and daughter-in-law to go do what they can while they can do it, and he'll stay home and water the plants. Oh Brian. *smishes*
[Doctor Who 7.05]
Doctor Who 7.05 -"The Angels Take Manhattan"
-I knew about this one and Amy and Rory getting angeled in it long before I watched it. The internet kind of exploded everywhere when it aired, so what can you do, right?
-Love that it's the more classical angels (for the most part), not the talking, moving, strangling, get stuck in your eye angels from that Series Five episode.
-The Statue of Liberty being an Angel particularly made me laugh because shortly after Blink first aired, there was a photocirculating on the internet of the Statue of Liberty with "Don't blink. Blink and you're dead." on the bottom. I'm thinking Moffat et al saw that and went, "Heeeeeyyyyy...."
-Eleven tearing out the last page of books because he hates endings is so very Eleven.
-Bouncing off 1938. ALL of 1938? Or just New York? Or the western hemisphere? Because if he can still land anywhere else on the planet he can mail things to Rory and Amy when they get sent back. Set up a mail drop somewhere, he can take a messages to their families, etc. If not, then it's a good thing he got the business with the widow and her family done earlier this season and that thing with Hitler and the robot double done last season, etc if he can never ever go to 1938 anywhere again. But I'm getting ahead of myself by quite a lot. Trouble with doing these piecemeal after watching.
-Don't read ahead because now that they know it's going to happen it becomes fixed and must. YES. Thank you. Collapsing the probability wave, observer effect, whatever you want to call it. Doesn't make up for the rampant ontological paradoxes and this could be seen as a kind of paradox as well but hush, I'm enjoying a moment of time travel mechanics here.
-"China. 221 BC." I SEE WHAT MOFFAT DID THERE.
-Baby angels are just far too unnecessarily creepy. And I'd like to know exactly how the captured angel got damaged. They aren't simple stone when frozen, they're quantum-locked which is insanely more durable than stone.
-That blank Rolls Royce plate on the Tardis feels like a reference to something, but I'm not certain what. Time Flight? O.o
-"Chapter titles." Which gives 'Death at Winter Quay' and 'Amelia's Last Farewell' and provides a very clear example of why I personally consider titles to be spoilery, so thank you Doctor Who. :-)
-Somehow, making Eleven believe for a second River's changed the future even though she hasn't seems crueler telling him outright that the same future is still on track. Hope is a fine thing when there's hope to be had, but false hope just makes the truth hurt more. Not hurt in the same way as a broken wrist, or being left in the grip of a monster by your spouse and told to sort it out yourself, or having to apologise for breaking your own wrist to save your life, but that's potentially a rather large different kettle of fish I'll not be getting into. Also in that kettle of fish is the mother daughter chat that includes "never let him see the damage and never ever let him see you age." More than likely due to personal issues but yeah. Moving on.
-"Who's that?" Aaaaand boom, observer effect. Too late.
-"Paradox poisons the well." And damn I wish I'd been further along on that Supernatural/Doctor Who crossover I started years ago with the Weeping Angels, because now it's going to look derivative when I get to a certain point. Not directly derivative but still.
-Feed off their time energy over and over. Since the Angels feed on your potential future *handwave* something, this actually does work, them feeding off the same people, sending them further and further back, because as soon as a person is sent back and starts living in the past, they develop a whole new potential future, from wherever their new now is, the same range of potential choice and future exists again. So the Angels send them further back and steal that future too. It's quite an economical resource, self-renewing time energy, though it really sucks to be one of the batteries for a Weeping Angel. Stuck in a hotel, going further and further back in time with no escape.
-And the rooftop with Rory and Amy. "You think you'll come back to life?"/"When don't I?" I hate to admit, but Rory does have a point there. He's practically a Winchester as far as death's revolving door goes. That said... Well. It's one certain inescapable way to make a paradox, but holy crap. I can see why the internet exploded after this episode. Also, having people jump to their death off high places for the good of the party while their friends watch on in helpless horror is apparently another thing Moffat likes doing.
-Watching the rooftop scene and Eleven and River showing up I knew what was coming, and that this was a permanent-feeling traumatic loss that would be not permanent, but be followed by a more quiet permanent loss, so the "OH ELEVEN. *flail*" went a bit off the charts.
-And then the graveyard, and the gravestone, and all the ow. Interesting to get a view of a person disappearing from Angel attack. But yeah. Ow. Particularly because of the emotional roller-coaster for everyone, particularly for Eleven, where he's just got them back when he watched them die, and now he has to watch them go where he can't follow. Although really. New York 1938 might be locked off, but go to Chicago 1938 and catch a freaking bus or something. Except Eleven doesn't do endings, so he won't.
-And then he does do endings. Because Amy wrote him an afterword. And now he has her glasses. And he should never be alone. AND THEN OH GOD HIM GOING TO TELL LITTLE AMY A STORY SO SHE DOESN'T LOSE HOPE COMPLETELY BROKE ME. I'd managed to hold it together until then but that just shattered everything completely.
P.S.
.....And then there's "P.S.", that I only found about well after watching the episode, while looking up episode titles just now. I'm putting it here rather than at the end, because here is where it belongs.
See, this is a bit they'd intended to do at the end of Angels Take Manhattan in some way, but ended up not being able to film it. Which is really sad, because it's important and adds an extra and (in my opinion) much-needed bit of closure for the episode and the Ponds and one character in particular who I'd been a bit irked about not having closure.
So, instead of full filming, they did up a bit of a slideshow animation with the scene storyboards and some voice-over work by Arthur Darvil, and put it online so anyone anywhere can see it. Because the BBC is cool like that.
It's here.
Go watch it if you haven't already. I'll just be sitting here, waving my hands around and making sad sad dolphin noises.
[Doctor Who 7.X2]
Doctor Who 7.X2 -"The Snowmen"
-Kid being harassed about not playing with the other kids. He's an introvert, back off and leave him alone. If they'd have let him do his own thing and not been jerks about making him go out and be social, maybe all this evil snowman business wouldn't have happened. Harrumph.
-Richard E. Grant! Ian McKellan! \o/
-I must admit it took me far too long to realize that Eleven wouldn't recognize Oswin's ancestor (I thought at the time) because he'd never seen Human Oswin.
-I don't know whether it's a good thing or a bad thing that that guy was more scandalized at Vastra being a woman than her being a Silurian.
-Jenny and Vastra and Strax (who Eleven now knows is alive, so yay) all need to keep showing up. Though I'm not sure what Strax was planning to do that involved laser monkeys.
-I was wondering what Torchwood was doing during all this, since they were founded in 1879, and this is 1892 (?), but I imagine they're still getting set up, trying to figure out what to do with the Rift they've just identified in Cardiff and getting their staffing issues sorted out. And Jack won't join up for another 7 years.
-The one word answer thing is clever, but I don't know how realistically applicable it is. That said, I called Vastra's using a bajillion words to explain something to Clara long before Clara said 'Words.' And then 'Pond' made me facepalm my glasses crooked.
-That whole bit about Eleven choosing isolation to avoid the return of pain is very... Yeah.
-That whole Sherlock Holmes thing, with hints of the Sherlock theme in the soundtrack, and Eleven credibly mimicking Benedict Cumberbatch's rapid-fire Sherlock make me laugh so hard I literally choked.
-STRAX: Madame Vastra wondered if you were needing any grenades?
DOCTOR: Grenades?
STRAX: She might have said help.
and
"Suggest we melt his brain using projectile acid fish, and then interrogate him."
Heh. I really like Strax. Also Sontaran creative impulses being apparently channeled into bizarre weapon design is a cultural trivia point I can really believe.
-That one throw away bit about Eleven's bowtie, and him not noticing he'd put it on. Very cool.
-"Good evening. I'm a Lizard Woman from the Dawn of Time, and this is my wife." Also Vastra. Really really like Vastra.
-"Sir, please do not noogie me during combat prep." I've already mentioned Strax, but I'll mention him again. I really like Strax. I really like Jenny too, it's just she gets a few less awesome lines and a lot more ninja badassery which is hard to quote.
-New Tardis interior, yep, which since I was so late getting to the episode, I'd already seen a handful of times. Interesting Stargate-like bit at the top, not sure what to think about the stadium lightboard display running around the walls yet.
-Nurse Strax being awesomely nurse-y. Someone in Moffat's writing room is a major fan of nurses being awesome, and that's very good.
-Clara repeating Oswin's "run you clever boy" was rather mind-blowing at the time. And still kind of is. The puzzle of Clara either needs more thought or less thinking, and I'm not sure which yet.
-Oh, and Great Intelligence, lunchbox with London Underground map, snowmen... and Abominable Snowmen in the London Underground. Eventually, in the Doctor's past.
[Doctor Who 7.06 Prequel]
Doctor Who 7.06 Prequel
Located here on the BBC's YouTube Channel.
-All I have to say is Heeeeee. She's everywhere.
[Doctor Who 7.06]
Doctor Who 7.06 -"The Bells of St. John"
-First and foremost. The title. Being the Tardis ringing. Because of the St. John Ambulance sticker. ...*FACEPALM*
-All the "I don't know where I am" screens made me sort of wonder if they put out a call for fan submissions for those. That would be cool.
-Must like a Human Resources department that waits until after you're back from vacation to kill you.
-"Can't always pass it off as a riot." *wince*
-Donations for the "magic box" so they can get breakfast. Hah.
-"Are we sure this time? Earl's Court was an embarrassment." Hahahahahaha. For anyone not familiar, there is a blue Police Box in Earl's Court in London. Go here on Google Street View to see it. Click on the double arrow to go inside. ;-)
-Find it odd that they have all the personal cameras, but not CCTV. I guess Mycroft has those sewn up.
-Bunch of incomprehensible gibberish in my notes here about creepy things and anti-gravity? No idea.
-Like the defeat by uploading the Controller person to the thing, because in the end most commonplace evil is entirely self-interested.
-UNIT! \o/
-And the Great Intelligence again, who has no problem holding a grudge. And everyone gets reset to baselines, which I suppose is better than getting fried en masse, but also has its problems.
[Doctor Who 7.07]
Doctor Who 7.07 -"The Rings of Akhaten"
-Eleven stalking Clara's parents is kind of creepily adorable. That speech about the leaf is rather interesting too. *steeplefingers*
-Psychometry and currency being items that have emotional worth is cool, and makes sense given that 3D printing is currently developing now and a lot of things will be able to be made at whim with the right equipment, programming and raw materials. Extrapolate that forward, how do you assess worth of objects if any object can be made on demand? So, emotional value. Brilliant.
-Clara Oswald is a damn good nanny. Reassuring Mary when she doesn't even have a full idea of what the situation is.
-I keep wondering why lack of atmosphere doesn't seem to be a problem for Eleven.
-Indiana Jones moment with the sonic screwdriver was cute. Goes well with the other Indiana Jones reference this episode of Clara's mum's maiden name being Ravenwood.
-The whole bit with stories and souls being the same. Oh yes. Going to mine those sections for email taglines.
-Actually, given how influenced by song the bad guy is, it makes sense that the sonic screwdriver would be like a weapon to hold them off. Sonic, you see.
-(Besides the phrase "Off you pop,") Moffat has a thing for shattering large panes of glass... hey. Just realized, the box the soul-sucking monster is in is the same box they had around the crown jewels in Sherlock 2.03. Re-use of set pieces, yay.
-"You promised!" Owwww.
-"We don't walk away. But when we're holding on to something precious, we run. We run and run as fast as we can and we don't stop running until we are out from under the shadow." Yeah. *nods*
-THE SOUL-EATING STAR DOES NOT NEED TO HAVE A FACE THANK YOU SO VERY MUCH D-:
-Spontaneous massed choruses get me, even when scripted. Kleenex everywhere. Normally. I watched this with a room full of people though and so spent a great deal of time scribbling "hold it together you sap" on my notepad while the crowd was singing. Seriously, even flash mobs involving singing and/or dance just destroy me.
-I'm just gonna quote this whole thing right here, okay?
"Oh, you like to think you're a god. But you're not a god. You're just a parasite eaten out with jealousy and envy and longing for the lives of others. You feed on them. On the memory of love and loss and birth and death and joy and sorrow. So, come on, then. Take mine. Take my memories. But I hope you've got a big appetite, because I have lived a long life and I have seen a few things. I walked away from the last Great Time War. I marked the passing of the Time Lords. I saw the birth of the universe and I watched as time ran out, moment by moment, until nothing remained. No time. No space. Just me. I walked in universes where the laws of physics were devised by the mind of a mad man. I've watched universes freeze and creations burn. I've seen things you wouldn't believe. I have lost things you will never understand. And I know things. Secrets that must never be told. Knowledge that must never be spoken. Knowledge that will make parasite gods blaze. So come on, then. Take it!"
Because yeah. That was impressive.
-I don't know when I have ever been more freaked out by a leaf. O.o
-"This leaf isn't just the past, it's a whole future that never happened. There are billions and millions of unlived days for every day we live. An infinity. All the days that never came. And these are all my mum's." Oooooooooof. Ow. Very very ow.
-You know, that "They wanted you to have it" and Clara kissing the thing he gives her is a heck of a lot less weird when I actually see it's NOT a Tardis key he's giving her but her grandmother's ring? I had this passing thought about giving her the Tardis key and all the previous doctors being 'They' and no. *facepalm*
[Doctor Who 7.08]
Doctor Who 7.08 -"Cold War"
-Things frozen in ice are never a good idea, should never be taken aboard a ship without stringent prior testing, particularly when that ship is a submarine carrying nukes, and all of the above is an even worse idea to do when you are in a Doctor Who script written by Mark Gatiss.
-Love that Mark's taken the opportunity to engage all the 'something stalking us and we can't escape' horror tropes by having an Ice Warrior get out of his armor, AND giving a pretty devastating motivation for him to do so by having him think his civilization has been destroyed and he has nothing left to lose.
-I would have thought though that the suggestion of freezing the ship to force the Ice Warrior back into hibernation would have come up, although it's pretty impossible given the enclosed atmosphere, engines and human heat sources heating the place up. Would have been nice had someone floated it as a suggestion, but even so, the submariners all know it's not possible, the Doctor would know it wasn't possible without help from the Tardis, so the only person who would ask would be Clara, and she'd come off looking like a bit of a fool asking in a crowd of people who know otherwise.
-LOVE SO MUCH THAT THE HADS SYSTEM ON THE TARDIS HAS BEEN REACTIVATED! Hostile Action Displacement System. Seriously, that can get him in so much trouble, and makes it simple to Deus Ex Machina the Tardis out of the Doctor's available options for solving any particular problem. I mean it's a very useful security system, of course. *nods*
[Doctor Who 7.09]
Doctor Who 7.09 -"Hide"
-I have to say, because I don't think I mentioned above, I really like the new titles for the second half of series 7. There are a lot of callbacks to previous title sequences, not the least of which is Eleven's face turning up in there.
-Ghostbusters references again, yay! Also the Baker Street Irregulars, the historical ones started under Winston Churchill in WWII as a spy branch and named after the fictional ones. *glee*
-It's never a good sign when someone spontaneously develops reverb while speaking. Or whispery echoes, or rumbling like an earthquake, but reverb is bad and more common.
-"Dare me." I really like Clara. Of course this means she's doomed.
-"Yes, but how does that man, that war hero, end up here in a lonely old house, looking for ghosts?"/"Because I killed, and I caused to have killed. I sent young men and women to their deaths, but here I am, still alive and it does tend to haunt you. Living, after so much of the other thing." Oh, and Eleven's not going to identify with that feeling at all. So many places in this series where there's a conversation going on and then suddenly 'oh by the way, this is about you, Eleven.' Not foreshadowing at all, that.
-Nice to see the return of the space suit from Waters of Mars. Little continuities are sweet.
-Another bit I'll just quote here:
CLARA: So I am a ghost. To you, I'm a ghost. We're all ghosts to you. We must be nothing.
DOCTOR: No. No. You're not that.
CLARA: Then what are we? What can we possibly be?
DOCTOR: You are the only mystery worth solving.
Because he's really not talking about just Clara there, is he.
-Yeah, here, guy from 1974, develop this film that has the entire life history of Earth in this single acre of England on it. Just ignore the giant dragonflies and Victorian ballgowns and the collapsing sun. This is why digital cameras were invented, really. Fewer awkward questions.
-Metebelis 3! Speaking of sweet continuities.
-The pocket universe looks a hell of a lot like Purgatory does on Supernatural. Same light quality, same desaturation, same contrast levels, same kind of portal looking thing (once it got shining), monsters lurking in the woods... I bet there were loads of crossovers when this first aired.
-"Let me in you grumpy old cow!" Heeeeee.
-And the moral of the story is that the big ugly monsters sometimes just want to be loved too, even though they keep scaring everyone away. Aw.
[Doctor Who 7.10]
Doctor Who 7.10 -"Journey to the Centre of the Tardis"
-Hooray reference material for the current Tardis interior. Hoping the flame jets that come out of the console aren't a regular thing.
-Written by the third writer of Sherlock series, I do love it when the things I like share resources.
-The salvage crew going through the Tardis with what can probably be described as a D&D mentality is hilarious. Bespoke engineering and a machine that makes machines and everything being worth incalculable amounts, and them just thinking of how to get out with as much of it as possible and not thinking much beyond that.
-Oh hell yes Tardis library. Love the liquid books. My goodness that History of the Time War book is a big one. Imagine that.
-"Good guys don't have zombie creatures, rule one basic storytelling." Heeeee. Also, stories and storytelling again. Hmm.
-Backups of the console room in prior configurations Eeeee. ROUNDELS! \o/
-The brothers tricking their other brother into believing he was an android so they can treat him like a second class citizen is seriously messed up. And again, theme of families and configurations of families and ways they work and ways they really really don't.
[Doctor Who 7.11]
Doctor Who 7.11 -"The Crimson Horror"
-VASHTA AND JENNY AND STRAX! YAY! \o/
-Any idyllic-seeming organisation that says "Join us" is one you should run away from. Particularly if they're offering to preserve you from a coming apocalypse that only they know is coming.
-"Clara's dead, isn't she?"/"...It's complicated." Again and as always, things are never good when explaining if someone is dead or not requires the use of Facebook relationship statuses.
-Ninja Jenny! Strax charging in firing and yelling about Sontar! Madame Vastra running around with a frigging sword! Just yes. That is all.
-"I'm the Doctor, you're nuts, and I'm gonna stop you." Most of fifty years of Doctor Who summed up right there.
-"You know what these are? The wrong hands." For a psychopathic mass murderer, she's rather cute.
-"Forgive me my child. Forgive me."/"Never." And, again, families and how damaged they can be yet still be survived. You'd think it was a theme or something.
-What do you do to the parasite that practically enslaved your mum and destroyed your family? *smash to oblivion*
-Heh, and Anji and her brother have busted Clara with research. Awesome!
[Doctor Who 7.12]
Doctor Who 7.12 -"Nightmare in Silver"
-Love the far-future Chess Automaton being half a Cyberman, and also having the same explanation for how it works as the real Chess Automaton, the Mechanical Turk.
-CYBERMAN SILVERFISH SO MUCH NO. D-:
-Anytime a Z platoon in fiction (the dregs and the rejects and foul-ups of a military force being assigned to the same platoon and given a post where they can't mess things up too badly) ends up saving the day, it makes me very happy. Only partially because of the Phule's Company books, mostly because of the underdog aspect and the 'proving the people who gave up on them wrong' aspect.
-And the Doctor no longer being immune to being cyber-processed is something that the Cybersphere should have been working on for a long time. There are only so many human planets to convert after all. It makes tactical sense.
-Black room acting. Have I ever said how much I love black room acting? It's one of the many things I loved about Babylon 5. Take a big black room, have the characters interacting with each other, or in the Doctor's case in this episode, with himself, against a black backdrop of nothing where displays and graphics can be CGI'd in as required, though I really love it when its just a black room, characters and selective lighting. It brings the focus closer in to the character moments, and when it's Eleven fending off the invading cyber-mentality in his head, intensity of focus on character is very necessary indeed.
-Also a character playing chess vs an altered mental version of himself. Because that particular trope will never get old. Nor the Wargames trope of lagging the system by asking it to search for an impossible set of victory conditions when you're really planning to break all the rules and tip the game board over.
-The kids really reminded me of the Sarah Jane Chronicles, and I wish they could be guest characters on it but... yeah. :-/
[Doctor Who 7.13]
Doctor Who 7.13 -"The Name of the Doctor"
-"What kind of idiot would try to steal a faulty Tardis?" Hee! It's the theft of the Tardis and Clara's there too. (And thank you all for not pointing and laughing too hard when this point was on my list for 50th anniversary prediction sort of things.) Interesting to note that either Susan was with him or some other woman since she doesn't look small enough to be Susan. (Susan's mother, the Doctor's daughter? Hm.)
-Going solely on appearances, the Whisper Men look slightly related to the Silence and very related to the Pantheon of Discord (more often seen in Sarah Jane Chronicles) which has some interesting possibilities.
-Strax going to Scotland just for the bar brawls for the win. :-D
-There are few things more disturbing than watching the Doctor break down crying and then run away.
-I felt so much for the Tardis in this episode, first the resistance to going to Trenselor, and then her sitting there at his grave, mourning, dying, so it's her grave too eventually. OH TARDIIIIIIIIIS.
-"And he will have other names before the end. Storm. The Beast. The Valeyard." And lo, in the room of the showing of this episode, I unleashed a tremendously excited stamping of feets, as observed by the others watching. Because Moffat hasn't forgotten about the Valeyard. Therefore EEEEEEEEEEE! *feet stamping* \o/
-The scars of the Doctor's existence of time travelling are really pretty. And also very ow. And it's interesting to call them scar tissue, because while scars do indicate that something was once damaged, they also indicate that something has healed. A wound that was survived. Something that was broken but has been repaired. Surgery that saves a life. All leave scar tissue. It's like meta.
-Oh and all the old familiar faces and scenes getting rewritten, including some of the Series 7 scenes where they've obviously filmed a second version of things with Eleven losing. The voices earlier as well. Awesome stuff. However, the Great Intelligence is really not living up to his name. All he has to do is find the start and keep one old man from ever leaving Gallifrey, and all the rest falls like a house of cards. But he doesn't, because Clara is already there. Soon. Time travel is a lovely thing is it not?
-And the stars are going out and galaxies are burning, and evil everywhere is suddenly waking up to find it's in charge and has been all along, and that's all well and good as consequences of the Doctor's actions being reversed or negated throughout time, but it takes Jenny disappearing, and Strax reverting to Sontaran total-war genocidal mentality and getting vaporised by Vastra (FOR ALL THE OW D-:) to really bring home a concrete example of the change.
-"Run you clever boy, and remember me." And echoes. And then she's everywhere in the old footage and "navigation system's knackered but you'll have much more fun" in the Citadel guard uniform and oh my god just flail everywhere. Of course it's all causal loops but in this case, since the Great Intelligence has gone through ripping huge holes in everything, the causal loops are kind of like sutures. Temporal surgery. Yeah. Oh just pretend that made sense, this is awesome so temporal physics *handwave* for now.
-"Everything around you is me." And there they all go running past every which way! *flailflailflailflail*
-"The name you choose is like a promise you make. He's the one who broke the promise." There is too much awesome in those two statements, both in concept of identity and set-up for character, that all I can do is flail. Even now. *Flaaaaaaaaaail*