Doctor Who: Cold War -- Thoughts and Impressions
So, I did my first podcast tonight*! It's a local Doctor Who podcast called 'Earth Station Who' that I usually listen to, with what is probably a smallish listener-ship (so I won't be 'famous' or anything). It should be available for listening by Friday or so, so I will definitely post a link once I get it (for anyone who wants to hear me being a total Doctor Who nerd).
Anyway, I watched 'Cold War' a third time today before the podcast, making notes about my thoughts and impressions (some of which I chatted about on air and some not), so I thought I might as well park them here as my review since I'd taken the time to jot them down.
Doctor Who: Cold War -- 07x09
Things I liked:
+ The cinematography - it was a pretty, pretty episode. The cast also looked pretty, especially Jenna in the military coat and Matt with his hair all wet (I kind of wish he would have kept the Elvis glasses on as well, those were fun!)
+ On a related note, I liked the base-under-siege setting in the submarine. It was very much a call back to the Troughton era for me, which made sense with the Ice Warrior and the reference to H.A.D.S. (Hostile Action Displacement System) from 'The Krotons'.
+ The Ultravox and Duran Duran references - I'm a child of the 80s and was 10-years-old the year this was set, so those songs were a big part of my adolescence.
+ The guest actors! I especially love David Warner (Prof Grisenko), but I've also been a fan of Tobias Menzies (Lieutenant Stepashin) since he was in 'Rome' and Liam Cunningham (Captain Zhukov) since he was in 'Outcasts' (a guilty pleasure SciFi show that I think I was the only person on Earth who liked it).
+ I did really like the bit with Skaldak breaking through the ice in the pre-credits sequence. Poor, Piotr! Quite obviously not a mammoth in that ice! I mean, the Ice Warriors are huge, of course, but not that big! Also, no more Lego hands!
+ I liked that the Doctor used his sonic for finding out an engineering-science-y way of dealing with the submarine sinking with the lateral thrust vs. it just being a magic wand.
+ I liked that you could hear the dialogue of Skaldak pretty well. The sound mixing hasn't always been perfect recently, so I worried for the traditional hiss-speak of Ice Warriors going into the episode.
+ Still not sure what I think about the 'bio-mechaniod cyborg' aspect of the Ice Warriors introduced in the episode, but I did like seeing Skaldak out of his armor and the remote-control armor was admittedly pretty cool on the whole.
+ Gatiss tends to deal with more Father/Son relationships in his stories, but this time - with Skaldak - he dealt with a Father/Daughter one. It made me interested to know more about female Ice Warriors, as I'm pretty sure we've never encountered one before in canon. I bet they are totally kick-ass!
+ I loved Clara talking with Skaldak, but I especially loved how the Doctor told her that she wasn't being tested. You could see she was trying to impress him, but he's learned from that and I think he was trying to steer her from that. I also liked later how she said she was afraid and how it all had gotten very 'real'. That's not a side of a companion we've really seen very much. Clara is a pragmatist, but also a realist and I think it all became a bit much for her in that moment. I liked seeing that.
Things I didn't like or fell flat for me:
+ I'll admit my hopes weren't high for a Gatiss episode. He seems to fall flat in writing Doctor Who episodes for me, which is sad because I think he's a really cool guy.
+ If the TARDIS was gone, why did people still understand each other? I get the Doctor supposedly speaks all languages, but the Russians, Clara, and Skaldak don't.
+ I still don't know what happened to Clara in the beginning when she was unconscious. I think she fell and hit her head when the sub shifted, but I've watched it a few times and I'm not clear. Still, it gave me a bad taste in his mouth as one thing Gatiss generally done is sideline the companions in his episodes and even tends to separate them from the Doctor for a chunk of the episode (which he does in this too). I'm starting to think he cant write women, because he always sort of plays down their parts in his stories. Even Clara, who usually has pretty sparky dialogue with the Doctor, was a dull-ed down version of herself here.
+ 'Sovereign of the Tharsisian caste, vanquisher of the Phobos Heresy' - I thought I was watching an RTD episode for a moment. It's a bit poetic, yes, but it just didn't work for me. *shrug*
+ Skaldak was hiding in the walls, but I'm not sure what sort of walls are in a submarine that you could hide in. And don't even start me on firing guns in a sub - nothing good can come of that.
+ I liked that it sort of had this whole 'Alien'-thing going on when Skaldak was out of his shell, but I just didn't feel the dramatic tension as much as I should have. With Gatiss being a big horror nerd, I expected more from him, but the plot mostly just sort of hung there lifeless.
+ I had to laugh with the Doctor's lack of history knowledge when he told Skaldak that 5000 years ago, humans were just coming out of caves. Um, no. How about the Mesopotamians, Minoans, Egyptians, etc?
+ The denouement was a bit weak, especially because I think we're meant to think that Clara singing a bit of 'Hungry Like The Wolf' reminded Skaldak of his daughter and made his disarm the warheads. I saw another great theory online (calapine, maybe?) that I'm sticking with where that the last time we encountered Ice Warriors on Peladon, they were on 'our side' and so when Skaldak beamed back up to the ship and told them what he was about to do, they stopped him and gave him a good talking to: 'Don't be stupid! We're allies with them now!' or something.
+ Also, I'm still not really sure how they're going to get to the South Pole. The Russians sure aren't going to be able to get them there.
On the podcast, I gave it a 3/5 stars. I thought of going lower, honestly, but overall, I was entertained (just having an Ice Warrior, upped the rating for me), even if I haven't enjoyed it as much on rewatches when I think about the glaring plot-holes.
*A friend of mine did point out the fact that I've been on the 'Poly Weekly' podcast twice in the past, but once was at a poly meet-up at DragonCon where I was randomly interviewed for a few minutes about being a poly introvert and the other was a brief spot on the 'Poly Hot Tub Cast' extra. Both were years ago though, mind you, and definitely not a 'guest' stint.
Anyway, I watched 'Cold War' a third time today before the podcast, making notes about my thoughts and impressions (some of which I chatted about on air and some not), so I thought I might as well park them here as my review since I'd taken the time to jot them down.
Doctor Who: Cold War -- 07x09
Things I liked:
+ The cinematography - it was a pretty, pretty episode. The cast also looked pretty, especially Jenna in the military coat and Matt with his hair all wet (I kind of wish he would have kept the Elvis glasses on as well, those were fun!)
+ On a related note, I liked the base-under-siege setting in the submarine. It was very much a call back to the Troughton era for me, which made sense with the Ice Warrior and the reference to H.A.D.S. (Hostile Action Displacement System) from 'The Krotons'.
+ The Ultravox and Duran Duran references - I'm a child of the 80s and was 10-years-old the year this was set, so those songs were a big part of my adolescence.
+ The guest actors! I especially love David Warner (Prof Grisenko), but I've also been a fan of Tobias Menzies (Lieutenant Stepashin) since he was in 'Rome' and Liam Cunningham (Captain Zhukov) since he was in 'Outcasts' (a guilty pleasure SciFi show that I think I was the only person on Earth who liked it).
+ I did really like the bit with Skaldak breaking through the ice in the pre-credits sequence. Poor, Piotr! Quite obviously not a mammoth in that ice! I mean, the Ice Warriors are huge, of course, but not that big! Also, no more Lego hands!
+ I liked that the Doctor used his sonic for finding out an engineering-science-y way of dealing with the submarine sinking with the lateral thrust vs. it just being a magic wand.
+ I liked that you could hear the dialogue of Skaldak pretty well. The sound mixing hasn't always been perfect recently, so I worried for the traditional hiss-speak of Ice Warriors going into the episode.
+ Still not sure what I think about the 'bio-mechaniod cyborg' aspect of the Ice Warriors introduced in the episode, but I did like seeing Skaldak out of his armor and the remote-control armor was admittedly pretty cool on the whole.
+ Gatiss tends to deal with more Father/Son relationships in his stories, but this time - with Skaldak - he dealt with a Father/Daughter one. It made me interested to know more about female Ice Warriors, as I'm pretty sure we've never encountered one before in canon. I bet they are totally kick-ass!
+ I loved Clara talking with Skaldak, but I especially loved how the Doctor told her that she wasn't being tested. You could see she was trying to impress him, but he's learned from that and I think he was trying to steer her from that. I also liked later how she said she was afraid and how it all had gotten very 'real'. That's not a side of a companion we've really seen very much. Clara is a pragmatist, but also a realist and I think it all became a bit much for her in that moment. I liked seeing that.
Things I didn't like or fell flat for me:
+ I'll admit my hopes weren't high for a Gatiss episode. He seems to fall flat in writing Doctor Who episodes for me, which is sad because I think he's a really cool guy.
+ If the TARDIS was gone, why did people still understand each other? I get the Doctor supposedly speaks all languages, but the Russians, Clara, and Skaldak don't.
+ I still don't know what happened to Clara in the beginning when she was unconscious. I think she fell and hit her head when the sub shifted, but I've watched it a few times and I'm not clear. Still, it gave me a bad taste in his mouth as one thing Gatiss generally done is sideline the companions in his episodes and even tends to separate them from the Doctor for a chunk of the episode (which he does in this too). I'm starting to think he cant write women, because he always sort of plays down their parts in his stories. Even Clara, who usually has pretty sparky dialogue with the Doctor, was a dull-ed down version of herself here.
+ 'Sovereign of the Tharsisian caste, vanquisher of the Phobos Heresy' - I thought I was watching an RTD episode for a moment. It's a bit poetic, yes, but it just didn't work for me. *shrug*
+ Skaldak was hiding in the walls, but I'm not sure what sort of walls are in a submarine that you could hide in. And don't even start me on firing guns in a sub - nothing good can come of that.
+ I liked that it sort of had this whole 'Alien'-thing going on when Skaldak was out of his shell, but I just didn't feel the dramatic tension as much as I should have. With Gatiss being a big horror nerd, I expected more from him, but the plot mostly just sort of hung there lifeless.
+ I had to laugh with the Doctor's lack of history knowledge when he told Skaldak that 5000 years ago, humans were just coming out of caves. Um, no. How about the Mesopotamians, Minoans, Egyptians, etc?
+ The denouement was a bit weak, especially because I think we're meant to think that Clara singing a bit of 'Hungry Like The Wolf' reminded Skaldak of his daughter and made his disarm the warheads. I saw another great theory online (calapine, maybe?) that I'm sticking with where that the last time we encountered Ice Warriors on Peladon, they were on 'our side' and so when Skaldak beamed back up to the ship and told them what he was about to do, they stopped him and gave him a good talking to: 'Don't be stupid! We're allies with them now!' or something.
+ Also, I'm still not really sure how they're going to get to the South Pole. The Russians sure aren't going to be able to get them there.
On the podcast, I gave it a 3/5 stars. I thought of going lower, honestly, but overall, I was entertained (just having an Ice Warrior, upped the rating for me), even if I haven't enjoyed it as much on rewatches when I think about the glaring plot-holes.
*A friend of mine did point out the fact that I've been on the 'Poly Weekly' podcast twice in the past, but once was at a poly meet-up at DragonCon where I was randomly interviewed for a few minutes about being a poly introvert and the other was a brief spot on the 'Poly Hot Tub Cast' extra. Both were years ago though, mind you, and definitely not a 'guest' stint.