Who Time!

[astrogirl2]

Just watched this week's Who.

Comments

[jhall1]

Yes, that was a lot of fun, done with wit and style. I liked the way everyone insisted on calling the Doctor "Mrs Doctor", presumably because a woman couldn't possibly be a doctor so she must just be married to one! My one real quibble is that it is hard to see why the Cybermen should entrust such an important mission to one whom they would presumably see as being defective.

[astrogirl2]

I'm hoping that will be explained next week.

[jhall1]

I wondered if it was because, had he been a full-on Cyberman, he wouldn't have been as effective as the inspiration for Marry Shelley's creation of Frankenstein's monster.

[astrogirl2]

I'm hoping for a more in-universe explanation at some point, but that seems likely, too! And it was, indeed, very effective.

[jaxomsride]

I did love this episode, suitably creepy enough for a Sapphire and Steel, never mind Dr Who. I wonder though whether the creepy girl and maid were real ghosts or another subconscious manifestation by Shelley.

Not sure how losing Shelley would have impacted history, but I was willing to go along with it if only to see how the Doctor planned to make all right again.

[astrogirl2]

I hadn't thought of it that way, but, yeah, you could totally have done this story as a S&S episode, and it would have worked!

The ghosts struck me as a little odd. I suspect they were really just put in there for the creepy vibe, but who knows.

[vilakins]

That was a lot of fun! Maybe we'll find out about the two ghosts next week, if they're not just a little aside. And now there are multiple timeless children?

Hasn't the Doctor already changed history by bringing the summer back and negating the 'year without a summer'? Besides, all of the people in that villa were very writey and would have written letters, reports, stories etc. I hope this is addressed next week, but not by wiping any more memories.

[astrogirl2]

The season finale is apparently called "The Timeless Children," according to Wikipedia, so... I guess?

And yeah, I wondered about the "bringing summer back" thing, and how much they altered things just by being there, but I think Who in general allows for a pretty big fudge factor when it comes to how much you can get away with changing things without actually changing things. Or when it comes to historical accuracy, come to that.

[neuralclone]

I've got to agree with everything you wrote: there was a lovely sense of something being "off" from the moment our heroes arrived, and it just builds from there. Jaxomsride was right in say it could have been done as Sapphire and Steel. It struck me that it was fairly light on special effects for New Who, so basically it was pulled off by the acting and the writing.

I also liked the callback to what happened to Bill in "World Enough and Time" and "The Doctor Falls". The Doctor clearly doesn't want her fam to be hurt in the same way!

Lastly, now we've seen the "lone Cyberman", I'm just wondering if we're going to get a resolution to the "Timeless child" storyline by the end of the season.

[astrogirl2]

I'm not sure if it was light on special effects or if its more that the effects it did use weren't terribly showy. Either way, it worked really well, and anything fancier would really have just gotten in the way of the story.

I'm really hoping we'll get a resolution to the "Timeless Child" thing. I'm reasonably optimistic about that. Somewhat less so about whether I'll be satisfied with it when it comes, but I am keeping my fingers crossed!

[neuralclone]

By modern standards I don't think there were many special effects. There was the walking through walls special effect, the glowing cyber-whatsit, and the cyberman recharging. Not quite at the level of shining a couple of spotlights on the floor to represent an inter-dimensional menace, but not overwhelming, either!