Be Excellent To Each Other

I particularly liked the way the human and Zygon versions of science-girl figured out who the other was, but decided to keep quiet in the name of peace and finding the best solution

Christmas special news
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/doctorwho/ar ... e-Revealed

Found this on Youtube while looking for clips of current Who, to see if they'll fit a music project I'm doing (think radiophonic). I give you anime John Pertwee.

The Day of the Doctor is the most watched drama program this year

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/doctorwho/ar ... ma-in-2013



The Time of The Doctor will be on Christmas day at 19:30 (for one hour)

http://www.doctorwhonews.net/2013/12/ti ... 50008.html

And a few very short clips in part of the new BBC 'Christmas' trailer

Short behind the scenes of Night of the Doctor

I would have thought that more people would have tweeted about it. That figure seems low but I'm guessing that they wouldn't be able to catch everyones tweet if they didn't use a hashtag or specific words.

Christmas trailer

Background on the title sequence over the last 50 years

http://www.artofthetitle.com/feature/do ... le-design/

Sherlock meets the Doctor.

That is really amazingly well put together

Extended trailer (american)

Strax's view on all the Doctors

The door won't be the only thing from episodes past. Moffat wraps up most of the loose ends of his era to date on Wednesday. Little spoiler for you...

I really liked this.

More Doctor Who recoveries on the way. Zambia rumoured to be the source. So you can look at what was sold to Zambia and start guessing.

It made sense and tied up lots of loose ends!

But it was so desperate in its attempt to justify all the mad, breezy, 'tell you later' balls of the previous two series that you didn't really care and despairingly wished for Moffat to stop writing Who, now, please.

So.

The Silence - a breakaway cult dedicated to stopping the Doctor from answering the big question of his name and bringing the Timelords back through a crack in the universe caused by his exploding machine by going back in time and exploding his machine.

So they can time travel then?

So why didn't future Silence-selves go back in time and tell them not to try blowing up his machine?

River Song, an assassin created by the Silence-Church to, again, stop the Doctor from answering the question. Yet despite it bringing him and her ultimately massive pain, he seems cool with that. Because the sleek technomatrix cleric who instigated the plot is a sassy tech-savvy sexy female of the Moffat mould with, yet again, an implied history with the Doctor. Oh, that's alright then.

Silence Must Fall, the big attempt to stop the Doctor answering the big question and restarting the Time War. But aren't the daleks genocidal? So why are all the races happy with them bopping around in space? If they aren't galaxy ending threats anymore what's the harm in the Time-War if it'll be a localised Timelord vs Dalek problem?

Why don't the daleks take over the universe whilst the Doctor is stuck there?

Why are people still wearing floppy scarves and hats when under attack? Won't helmets work better? How do they eat?

Why don't the daleks nuke the site from orbit?

Why does Clara Oswald glibly write off the survival of an entire village of people so the Doctor can keep merrily jaunting around the universe with her? Selfish much? I thought she wasn't in love, why did she try to go back? At every stage Clara seems to say, "Screw 'em. Let's bop off some place else!" And even after all the trauma everytime she seems back to normal chirpy self, as long as TEH DOCTOR is there. And if he isn't - mope mode.

I liked Handles though. And that bit with the Sontarans. And Matt Smith did well, as usual.

But please. Moffat. STOP. ARGH.

Couldn't have put it better myself.

What a load of shite.

Edit: The Christmas special, not NervousPete's writeup, which I completely agree with.

God you lot like to suck the fun out of what is a family teatime jaunt. I loved it.

I'll miss the bow tie and fez, but roll on Capaldi.

I thought it was pretty good. Looking forward to Capaldi.

Aside from anything, you need (NEED) to make the Christmas special a totally standalone story. That's why last year's was great.

You're going to get a bunch of people who don't watch any Doctor Who dipping in for one episode.

This episode was a confusing mess, and I've watched pretty much all of the Matt Smith run. Presumably it was totally incomprehensible for any casual watchers.

Last year's Christmas special was far better.

Agreed with it being incomprehensible for casual viewers, but this was Smith's goodbye, so fuck 'em, frankly.

See that's fine by me, but it shouldn't have been a Christmas special.

Gallifrey juice pouring out of crack stops people lying, including the Doctor. Major plot point, telegraphed for whole series of the show. Unless Moffatt needs a throwaway line for Smith to say to Clara, in which case he can lie to that kid bat having a plan.

It's just annoyingly lazy writing.

Just ......... awful.

A pity that they couldn't get Moffat to generate into something suitable. A slug perhaps? ANYTHING so that he couldn't continue to infest Who with his atrocious production 'skills' (hah!) and writing.

I thought last year's was better and felt more Christmassy, but I did enjoy this one, and Smith's final few lines were quite poignant.

If all the fiddly timey-wimey plot writing of the last two series were building up to a story that tried to be emotionally true and make every dilemma resound with laughter and loss, fear and joy, then yes, I'd applaud the fact that I needed a flow-chart to work things out.

But it wasn't. Not one character changed. Nothing was learnt. No one was saved. No one was punished. No one found any true answers. The mysteries were purely for the sake of mysteries. There was absolutely no satisfaction to be had for anyone not a cryptic crossword fanatic. I felt NOTHING.

In essence, it was like a patch release. An update to a story to fix previous gaps. All we're left with is a massive journey that builds to... what? A regeneration? That could have happened if he'd been run over by a bus. It needs to mean something.

I actually read the last book of the Sandman, The Wake, before I read the rest. I'd picked it up in a library. Despite not knowing the characters it made sense. Because it was universal and it was true. Moffat's Doctor Who universe is becoming like an exclusive club, where the only people who count are super-cool in some way and have the gift of the gab or are whacky. The only human character outside of the Doctor seemed to be Rory. (Amelia having blown it with the terribly written baby plot debacle.) It's no longer the ordinary meeting the extraordinary and finding something beautiful or terrifying.

And Clara Oswald is a terrible character. I can't remember, is she truly human or was she created? Who's this family of hers? Who IS she? I still have no idea.

Ugh.

Yeah, that too. Double-Bah!

And by the way, I wouldn't insist on such grand emotion-truth-revelation etc. things from Doc Who and would be perfectly happy with Troughton-style fun, but since the Beeb wants to position Doctor Who at the mythic-epic end of the storytelling spectrum that's where I'm judging it from.

Still, at least Gattis's M. R. James adaptation was fun.

And wait, the Silence as a Confessional? Wouldn't that just mean that you'd forget you'd given confession and then go back in again and give confession and then forget you'd given confession and go back in again and give confession and forget...

Also: when Clara first encountered The Silence, said: "Wait, why did I just forget that", and I couldn't help but think "YOU DIDN'T YOU REMEMBERED IT OR YOU WOULDN'T ASK THAT QUESTION /CAPS LOCK".

If you guys think it’s worse than that terrible Xmas episode with Catherine Tate and the spider creature then you’re brain wrong. Some of you have short memories and complained so hard at how bad RTD was.

Yes, clearly there to tell people just joining the series or irregular viewers as to what their schtick is.

Also, it appears that the Silence cannot turn their powers off, which must be inconvenient. How do people hire them?

"Thanks for the interview Mr Silence. You nailed it."

"Hrrrughuuuulll!"

"We'll call later."

"Hurrrglhurr."

*Door closes*

"Well, Mr Silence didn't even bother to show for the position of deacon. Huh, well his loss."

Nothing is as bad as that Runnaway Bride episode, I admit. Except maybe the Christmas Titanic story. (Though that was used to superb effect for the Turn Left episode. (Or was it Turn Right?)

From a family perspective we enjoyed it & great to see Amy appear. Just disappointed about the long wait for the new season.

Appalling nonsense making no sense to man nor beast...I am very old and a massive Who fan but I think I am done with it.

Yeah, made no fucking sense at all that. I sat through it all is the best thing I could say about it

I'm sure Capaldi will be great but the cast are rarely the problem with this show.

I was disappointed.There were some good setpieces and the main cast were a joy to watch as ever, but the whole thing just seemed to drag. If I hadn't known it would end with a regeneration (oh, and, solving the 13 limit with a puff of fairy dust was just lazy) I wouldn't have stayed the course.

The Christmas special was beyond awful. Completely terrible beyond belief. Incoherent, badly scripted, acted with the subtlety of a low-rent pantomime, all the worst elements of modern era Who in 60-ish minutes of excruciating badness. Felt so embarrased watching it with family members. (Worse, it took away an hour of my life that I could've spent playing more Super Mario 3D World.)

Well, the 7 people in our house that watched it, loved it. Including one sister in law, who has only ever seen the relaunched Docotor Who at Christmas with us and 2 reluctant teens who think they are getting too old for Doctor Who

Malc

I... I reckon I'll have to watch it again. It really made very little sense to me.

I thought it was excellent, and y'all are all joyless fools.

Yeah., there were a few plot holes, but so what? There are plot holes in damn near everything (I watched Die Hard 2 recently and it is awesome, but plot holes everywhere!).

Lots of fun, some fantastic lines, quality acting, some great touches, like Gallifrey being afraid to come out but being willing to at least help, I really enjoyed it.

I'm glad the Internet wasn't around for pre-reboot who. Everyone would have hated it.

I couldn't take my eyes off the tartan mini skirt.

I'm not talking about nerdy nit-picking for inconsistencies. There were more holes than plot, to the extent that I spent most of it genuinely confused about what was meant to even be happening. Pathetic. If pre-internet Dr Who had all been as shit as that then it would never have got past one series.

Have you actually seen the first series of Doctor Who? It IS a wonder it ever got recommissioned.

I'm actually quite surprised that it generally seemed to make sense to me. Sure, it's illogical but within the illogical extent of the logic it makes sense. Or something.

I was probably too distracted by the Tasha Lem character who was far too many kinds of super hot.

I just liked lots of the little touches, like Matt Smith looking like the first Doctor, that he was going to die of old age, that his final speech was almost instantly rendered potentially hollow by Capaldi, Clara blurting out why she followed the Doctor, the linking back together of all of Smith's moments as Doctor, the opening scenes with the calamitous entrances, etc

It made little to no sense. Why was the doctor there at all? To protect the town was the reason given, bit that got blown to shit. Why, when the daleks where beating the hell out of everyone didn't he recall galifrey? Why didn't he do it any way? The desperate inter weaving of Christmas into a finale just weakened the whole thing. Why were the other enemies fighting the daleks? Went were the silence people? Just why? They never made sense and this didn't help.

All that said, I thought smith was excellent.

Why did the townspeople not say at any point, "Look, you alien fuck - you're the reason our town is getting besieged and blasted to shit. Why don't you just fuck off?"

He was there to save the lives of the people in it, which he did for centuries. Which is a lot of saved lives. He didn't recall Gallifrey because then it would restart the Time Wars, which he had gone to extraordinary lengths to stop (see Anniversary Special for details).

Calling it Xmas was entirely unnecessary and just a tie in due to it being when it was, I guess.