The Power of the World Enough and the Widow and the Widow and the Daleks
Some are quite feasible to the point where I would have sworn I had seen it. Others, not so.
Some are quite feasible to the point where I would have sworn I had seen it. Others, not so.
Really wish they wouldn't show the regeneration scene in the damn trailer. Even for a second.
But it looks a lot like Tennant's, even down to destroying the TARDIS
I wonder if that's an intentional callback to the vortex they used in the S5 promo stuff:
Looks great either way
Vortex looks quite good!
I wonder if that planet in the background is Gallifrey? It's definitely not earth.
The vortex has only appeared once outside of the title sequence in the Moffat era before now- The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe.It feels like it's been a really long time since we've seen a proper vortex effect. When was the last time we saw a literal representation of the vortex before this? The series 7A title sequence?
Think it's the glass people's planet, other areas shown in the trailers seem to be on the same planet which don't look GallifreyanI wonder if that planet in the background is Gallifrey? It's definitely not earth.
The vortex has only appeared once outside of the title sequence in the Moffat era before now- The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe.
Danny was fine. The Doctor's aggressive assholishness towards him in The Caretaker put me off Capaldi and stopped me watching until I came back for the finale that year.
Thank goodness he got better
The Doctor was an aggro dick to Danny, absolutely, but the show doesn't do Danny himself any favors by portraying his utterly reasonable reactions to Clara's adventuring (and lying about said adventuring) as irrational or an imposition on Clara herself.
Basically the entire season was written from her perspective, and while I like Clara and think her arc is one of the most compelling things Who's produced in years, I found the way the show handled Danny just utterly idiotic.
It works for me. I could both enjoy Clara's adventures and recognise the tension they introduced into her blossoming relationship with Danny. Particularly good is Danny's identification of Doctor Who as a member of the officer class he, an NCO, grew to loathe in Afghanistan. Doctor Who's tone deaf insistence on calling Danny "P.E.", long after it ceases to be excusable, is particularly good in delineating the fault lines of this three-way relationship.
During the phone call between Danny and Clara in Flat Line while she's attempting to escape from the first floor bedroom, a lot of the humour derives from imagining what Danny makes of what he's hearing.
Oh I watched that last night too, just felt like my post was long enough as is. :lolI thought Last Christmas is important for S8 to bring a conclusion to the ending of Death in Heaven. Without it, you just feel terribly empty.
Danny really is an ass. It's a shame, because there was material there to pull out of that character. The idea of someone who's essentially okay with Clara's adventuring but fed up with her lying about it is a valid character concept and they could've done something interesting with it. But instead, they basically wrote him as being unreasonable and naggy while Clara, who is very clearly in the wrong for almost the entire season, is somehow portrayed as being correct. They never really seem to love each other, and Clara's reaction to his death is so extreme and violent that (even though Jenna acts the hell out of the dark turn) it doesn't really feel earned.
The worst aspects of Danny can be summed up in the graveyard scene in Death in Heaven, where he first begs Clara to turn on the inhibitor chip that will kill his emotions. Then, he tells the Doctor that in order for him to look into the Cybermen's hivemind to find their plan, he'll need that inhibitor chip turned on... and proceeds to mock the Doctor as callous and heartless for even considering to kill Danny's emotions in order to understand the enemy. He casts this hypothetical as proof of how shitty the Doctor is, when it's the very thing he was just asking Clara to do literally minutes ago!
I really loved that callback to Danny's very accurate criticism of Doctor Who as an officer, someone whose job is often to order soldiers to their deaths. It also recalls, among other things, the words of Davros in the Crucible: "The man who abhors violence, never carrying a gun. But this is the truth, Doctor. You take ordinary people and you fashion them into weapons." It's a fascinating trait, a consistent weakness in Doctor Who's character, and a criticism to which he can never muster an adequate rebuttal.
Overall, this is Danny's most endearing quality. He sees Doctor Who in the most unsentimental light, and foresees the horrible implications for Clara. Yet his own burning need to make the world better overcomes his misgivings. I have not the kind of stoney heart that could fail to admire him, as I admire similar noble qualities in Rory Williams.
I agree with this, except for the bolded. She became an immortal time traveler. Or, if she had gotten written out as planned, just lived to a happy old age.
Your take on Danny is excellent and this is just a tangent, but damn it bugs me the way that they tried to have it both ways with Clara. They built up to a suitably tragic ending for her and as a natural consequence of her increased risk-taking, and then they handwaved it away.
I agree with you in principle, and think the idea plays better in The Caretaker, especially because of how relatively more brusque the Doctor is in that episode. My issue with Danny in Death in Heaven's graveyard scene is that he begs Clara to turn off his emotions then excoriates the Doctor in front of her for even considering turning off his emotions. What he characterizes as an act of mercy is used against the Doctor literally minutes later as proof of how cold and heartless he is. I think Danny's officer criticism would've fared better in that scene if it had been the Doctor's idea and/or Danny hadn't previously asked Clara to do exactly that.I really loved that callback to Danny's very accurate criticism of Doctor Who as an officer, someone whose job is often to order soldiers to their deaths. It also recalls, among other things, the words of Davros in the Crucible: "The man who abhors violence, never carrying a gun. But this is the truth, Doctor. You take ordinary people and you fashion them into weapons." It's a fascinating trait, a consistent weakness in Doctor Who's character, and a criticism to which he can never muster an adequate rebuttal.
Overall, this is Danny's most endearing quality. He sees Doctor Who in the most unsentimental light, and foresees the horrible implications for Clara. Yet his own burning need to make the world better overcomes his misgivings. I have not the kind of stoney heart that could fail to admire him, as I admire similar noble qualities in Rory Williams.
Wrapping up the Series 8 run of my Capaldi rewatch. I think I said I was going to keep these reviews shorter than my Hartnell marathon ones, but, well...
5. Kill the Moon
A lot of people loathe this episode, and my memory of it is that I disliked it too. But watching it again...it seems totally fine? I don't get what the big deal is, aside from some weird, dubious abortion message that I'm not really sure is actually about abortion. One thing I do remember liking about this episode three years ago is the ending, when Clara blows up at the Doctor for manipulating her in a cruel way and how she won't put up with it anymore. I loved it then and love it still now, and it's this scene that cemented Jenna as one of the best actors to play a companion for me. With the benefit of hindsight of knowing where S8 and 9 end up going, this last scene also speaks volumes about the Doctor and Clara's relationship -- more on that below!
6-7. Mummy on the Orient Express / Flatline
The Jamie Mathieson double-header is as strong as it was back when it aired. Both are excellent episodes, each starting with a great premise, populating it with strong supporting characters, fleshing out the Doctor and Clara's increasingly complicated relationship even more (as well as their own individual personalities), with some killer standout moments too. Flatline is also pretty funny and boasts some great effects. No need to elaborate any further; everyone loves these episodes, and it's a well-deserved reputation.
8. Dark Water
When I first saw this episode, I was absolutely blown away by it. Three years later, with the shock of the Missy reveal no longer really a shock (though still well-directed), it's not quite the jaw dropper it was on first watch, but it remains a compelling episode nonetheless. The middle section, once the Doctor and Clara get to 3W, sags a bit (though it's punctuated by the still creepy as fuck "Don't cremate me!"). But what really makes this episode for me is the sensational first 20 minutes, from the total ordinariness of Danny's death to Clara's dark turn ("Do I have your attention?") to the Doctor's professed-in-his-own-way love for his companion ("Do you think that I care so little for you that betraying me would make a difference?"). I mentioned above that I think Jenna is one of the best companion actors the show has had, but what this episode really crystallized for me -- after several episodes of build up across Series 8 -- is that Twelve and Jenna are the most compelling Doctor/companion pair since Ten/Donna (and maybe even better). They're both great actors, they play off each other perfectly, and they bring new depths to the Doctor/companion relationship that go way beyond the romance of Ten/Rose and Ten/Martha, or the best friends of Ten/Donna and Eleven/Amy/Rory.
This is the episode that made me realize how acutely toxic the Doctor and Clara's relationship really is. They have a great deal of love and respect for each other, but mask it in an often caustic way (the Doctor because of a personality reboot, Clara because she wants to prove herself this Doctor's equal) that means needing to hurt each in order to continue demanding that love and respect from one another. They love and disappoint and need each other in equally great and terrible ways, and bring out the best and worst in one another. Now knowing where things go in Series 9, the way the Doctor and Clara's relationship evolves in Series 8 is set up perfectly for the hybrid prophecy that comes later -- which at first, back in 2015, felt a bit sprung on me as a viewer, but now looking back feels like a natural evolution of how the Doctor and Clara regard each other.
Oh, and I forgot to mention Michelle Gomez, but after three years of Missy, what's left to say? Her performance is a total revelation and hands down one of the best characters to emerge not just under Moffat's watch, but in the entire modern show, period.
9. Death in Heaven
If my initial impression of Dark Water was amazement, my initial impression of its conclusion was disappointment. I've never liked this incarnation of UNIT or Kate Stewart, who always seems quite useless every time she appears. And the first half of this episode just feels overall confused: we bounce around from Cybermen marching in the streets to Return of the Living Dead rain clouds hanging over the world's graveyards to the Doctor as president of Earth to all the stuff happening on UNIT's plane, and it just doesn't really all gel well or feel like it's moving forward in a way that makes sense.
But I do like this episode more than I did the first time, and that's largely because of the way things come together in the graveyard, in two specific ways: Clara and Danny's (almost) final goodbye, which is really touching even if, upon rewatch, I've discovered Danny is really annoying and kind of shitty; and the other being the Doctor and Missy's last confrontation. I had completely forgotten about Missy's motivation of raising a Cybermen army solely for the Doctor's benefit, and the way Doctor reacts to and rejects her offer works so well into the arc that has spanned Capaldi's entire run: Is this Doctor a good man? It's not just the Doctor coming to grips with a new incarnation that he declares here is neither good or bad, just an idiot with a blue box and a screwdriver, but it's also paralleled down the line in Series 10. In this finale, Missy wants to show the Doctor that they're the same by trying to corrupt his soul; in the S10 finale, it's the Doctor who wants to show Missy that they're the same by trying to redeem her soul. Rewatching these last two episodes has given me a whole new appreciation for the way Capaldi's Doctor has really evolved as a character over the last three years, in a way that Tennant and Smith's Doctors never really did. Tennant and Smith's run had arcs, but they were plot-driven; Capaldi's major arc is character-driven, and it has given me a renewed appreciation for what Moffat and Capaldi have done with this character.
The episode also ends on a great note, that works so well because of how fucked up the Doctor and Clara's relationship is, where they each lie about how alone they are because they think the other one is better off without them. The Doctor thinks Clara has Danny back and they're going to settle down, and Clara thinks Missy had told the truth and pointed the Doctor back home finally. But Danny is still dead and Gallifrey is still gone, and so the Doctor and Clara separate once more, sacrificing their own happiness for each other's imagined happiness.
You know, reading this and recalling the backend of S8 as well as having recently rewatched S9 myself, I genuinely do think 12+Clara is one of the best Doctor/companion pairings of the show. Like, I prefer Bill as a companion, but Clara's dynamic with the Doctor is never not fascinating, mostly because it's so completely twisted and broken. They are terrible for each other but also desperately need each other. It's very rare to have a show where both leads are, by design, not great people making not great decisions.
Also, screw what everyone else thinks, her ending is perfect on pretty much every level.
Even without Eccleston, this photo makes me incredibly happy.
https://twitter.com/emmafreud/status/941265578064531456
Forgot this was today...! Still sad that even for charity Eccleston declines to show his face, but hey - £600,000 raised ain't bad going at all.
What is it with all the Eccleston hate? Stop acting like completely batty, self-entitled fans for just a minute.
I mean, I know knee-jerk overreactions are sort of your MO in these Doctor Who threads
Apology accepted. I apologize for insulting you.I apologize. I assume that you now understand my intent was not what you took from it given that you didn't reply to the rest of my lengthy explanation.