Doctor Who Season 8: Difference between revisions
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*''[[1971]] [[June 19]]'' | *''[[1971]] [[June 19]]'' | ||
(First watched 2024-11-09, -, -, -, -) Interesting to see the beginning with the Doctor mocking non-scientific things as impossible, when "Hey, impossible non-scientific things are happening!" was the basis of much of the [[Doctor Who Series 14|most recent series]]. But for all that, he sure recognized _something_ from the archaeological dig on TV that he knows is dangerous. A bit irresponsible to not tell the other UNIT folks _any_ details before he goes running off with Jo. Aaaaaand there's the Master... summoning something in a ritual? What won't that guy get up to. | (First watched 2024-11-09, -10, -12, -13, -15) Interesting to see the beginning with the Doctor mocking non-scientific things as impossible, when "Hey, impossible non-scientific things are happening!" was the basis of much of the [[Doctor Who Series 14|most recent series]]. But for all that, he sure recognized _something_ from the archaeological dig on TV that he knows is dangerous. A bit irresponsible to not tell the other UNIT folks _any_ details before he goes running off with Jo. Aaaaaand there's the Master... summoning something in a ritual? What won't that guy get up to. | ||
During the ritual the Master said something like "Doing my will is the whole of the law", which made me laugh. I'm well familiar with "Do as thou wilt is the whole of the law", and that is a fun play on it. | |||
The uhh... living Gargoyle or whatever looks pretty silly with his tongue perma stuck out. They also wisely kept the effects budget down by only IMPLYING a creature that's dozens of feet tall, but never showing anything more than footprints. | |||
So what the archaeological dig was getting into was... a spaceship, or at least a sort of spaceship hangar with a very condensed spaceship. I wonder what the Doctor recognized from outside that made him realize this. | |||
So for a hundred thousand year the people of Earth have been being manipulated by daemons who are the basis of many religions and superstitions, and who may decide to wipe out the Earth if whatever their plans are don't come to fruition... and the Doctor never thought to bring that up in the last decade we've been watching him!? | |||
Technical guy is a Sergeant Osgood. Definitely the naming of the Osgood from the 50th anniversary and after is a reference to this, though Google tells me that an in-universe connection beyond that is more iffy and contradictory based on various non-TV sources. | |||
The Doctor being attacked by a bunch of evil Morris dancers? That is 200% on brand Doctor Who, love it. Though I don't really get the Doctor (and friends) tricks to get him out of that situation. So they fake him having magical powers to claim he's a powerful wizard... but they were already planning on burning him as a witch, so how is that any different? Except wizards they apparently don't want to piss off with attempted burning. | |||
Incredibly British of the Brigadier to refer to a living gargoyle as "chap with the wings there". | |||
The ending... meh. Azal the super Daemon was defeated by being shocked at Jo trying to sacrifice herself for the Doctor? It felt like a bad Star Trek resolution, either of the "Kirk blows up computer with illogic" or "alien race impressed/confounded by Humanity" type. Not that Jo's offer made much sense to begin with. I mean, it's not just that they were looking for any old killing where one death could take the place of another. When person A wants to kill person B... they want to kill person B! | |||
The shooting location of this serial worked out nicely. Having like an entire small village to be used as extras? Gave more scope than the average story. | |||
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Latest revision as of 12:24, 17 November 2024
SPOILERS TOTAL. You've been warned.
055: Terror of the Autons
(First watched 2024-09-06, -08, -11, -15) Finally, the The Master appears. In a TARDIS that properly chameleons itself. And not only him, but another Time Lord shows up in an invisible TARDIS just to tell the Doctor that the Master is there, and then do nothing about it.
The green screen effect was pretty bad in at least the first episode. Searching around I see it's kind of famous for that. I also found shots of this episode where the backgrounds looked much better, which I'm supposing are from a Blu-ray remaster or something.
Jo Grant is very different from Liz Shaw. Not a competent scientist, but some sort of... screw-up given a nepotism post and keeping her job with the Doctor because he can't work up the courage to fire her quickly. But she does seem to have some weird skills like lockpicking.
The story depended on the Nestene consciousness being out of UNIT's hands for the Master to steal. So uhh... what the hell was the Brigadier thinking, just loaning it out?
Episode 2... a chair ate a dude and a doll killed a dude. They really are going beyond the "Autons = mannequins" that we saw last year, and that's been most common in their 21st century appearances.
Episode 3... now some sort of evil plastic flowers are being spread and the Doctor is being strangled by a phone cord. I really am enjoying the variety of plastic menaces.
Aside from the greenscreen stuff on the non-remastered version, maybe the least convincing effect are the masks. Like, the Master was disguised as the telephone installation man. He looked perfectly like another regular dude. UNTIL they needed a close-up of him removing the mask, at which point it looked like a horribly fake mask.
So the Doctor failed to repair his TARDIS with a piece from the Master's, but in the process has also made the Master stuck on Earth. I suppose that's why he's apparently such a recurring character during this period.
The Master seems pretty wishy-washy. At the end he and the Autons essentially win, but the Doctor essentially says "...sure, but will the Autons honor your alliance?" at which point the Master is like "Oh shit, better switch sides for the moment!" Very funny that in the end the Master's big escape plan is... driving away in a very conspicuous van. And the military can't find him before he dumps it.
The Doctor seems cheerful about the opportunity to have the Master as a continuing adversary, which I'm sure is appreciated by the people who keep dying in these episodes.
056: The Mind of Evil
(First watched 2024-10-08, -09, -11, -16, -18, -20) I don't quite understand the machine in use in the prison. So it removes bad impulses from prisoners... but what's it storing? If it was just electrical imbalances or whatever there'd be nothing to store, but they talk about the device being 65% full. So is it supposed to be physically removing some sort of evil substance? That they have no better way of disposing of than just leaving it in the machine indefinitely? That's how you create deadly Doctor Who villains, dude. I also don't understand how it is using mental control to convince people to die, but they actually end up with water in the lungs and whatnot. That's going beyond the mental, unless their brain convinced the rest of their body to secrete liquid to the lungs?
Next episode, aaaand the Master's back. And so are his masks that look perfect until they look awful when he removes them.
Jo gets caught in a hostage situation... then ends it by stealing a gun and shooting it. She's crazier than I realized! Even crazier is a half hour episode that manages to have the same prison overtaken by prisoners twice in one episode, but I guess with the Master's help anything is possible.
I don't quite understand how the Master is involved in all this. Just, logistically. He's "Dr. Keller" who provided the machine that removes the negative impulses from prisoners, sure. But for him to take on this persona, make the device, get it accepted by enough people to actually start putting into practice... wouldn't that mean he's been at this for a very long time? Certainly he'd have had to start it before the events of the previous episode, even though in the previous episode he wouldn't have known he was going to NEED another plan. Maybe he's just the kind of guy who plans for failure and has 10 evil schemes cooking simultaneously just in case?
So once things started getting sorted out and UNIT thought they'd be able to remotely detonate the missile... I was surprised how gung-ho they were for that solution! I mean, sure, beats having it launched to London. But this was supposed to be a nuclear bomb plus nerve gas component? Seems like a bad thing to set off several miles outside of London, too! Luckily at the end when they do use it... it seems like the lamest-ass nuclear weapon I've ever seen, with about enough power to take down a shed. Nice story contrivance that the mind parasite needed something like a nuclear weapon to be destroyed.
I seem to be complaining or confused quite a bit, but I think this is a fair example of where Doctor Who can shine from the regular characters. Doctor/Master and Doctor/Brigadier especially have fun scenes together. Whereas the Doctor has occasionally been really down on the Brigadier when he goes for the more military solution, in this episode their interactions seemed more like mutually respectful teasing, which is more fun to watch.
So I thought the Master would be stuck on Earth throughout this season, but he now has his TARDIS repaired. I still have the impression he'll be a big part of the rest of the season, but now he's got a hell of a lot more flexibility on what to do.
057: The Claws of Axos
(First watched 2024-10-22, -23, -25, -27) Is The Master just a bit of a fool? A machine that lets him go across all time and space, and somehow lickety split he seems to have been caught by Axos and forced to make pacts with them. He's also looking to destroy all life on Earth and... what's the point of that? Taking over a world is one thing, but what's the point of ruling over a dead world?
The soldiers guarding Axos sure don't seem to pay much attention to who is entering or leaving the thing.
Scientist has a pretty impressive particle accelerator, that can just straight up accelerate things to the speed of light in a few seconds with the turn of a knob, and even has a speedometer in place for multiple times the speed of light.
Through episode 3... I can't believe the Axos plan is working. Their plan depends on the Axonite being spread around the world within 3 days. And this is done by landing on a planet with only a handful of very bad experiences meeting aliens, and immediately striking up a deal that sees this completely unknown miracle substance spread out to everywhere in the world, before anyone even knows how it works or what it's capable of? But apparently for this story's purposes humanity is greedy enough for Axonite that they'll skip every precaution imaginable.
A bit of a backhanded compliment, but I'm enjoying that with this episode they finally seem to have gone fully into the "goofy 1970s effects" look I've been looking forward to. Multiple goofy alien costumes, an eyeball on a stalk, what was supposed to be a big blob on the ground that was clearly a guy moving around inside a big piece of cloth. Beautiful in its own way.
At the end the Master has somewhat fixed the Doctor's TARDIS, but it still will only bring him back to Earth. Now, he did use it to relocate to Axos--but that was on Earth at the time. So does that mean that while he can't use it to get off planet, he could still use it to get anywhere ON the planet in a flash? Because that still seems pretty useful.
058: Colony in Space
(First watched 2024-10-29, -30, -11-03, -05, -06, -08) So though the Doctor is still exiled to Earth, since they wanted to do a far-out adventure for a change they just have him being manipulated by the Time Lords unknowingly. 500 years in the future, where colonists fear... images of giant iguanas. And the Master is mixed up in this somehow, but... so far don't know what he hopes to gain. There's a mining company hoping to scare off the colony so they can have all the resources, at least their aims are clear. Though I don't understand why it has to be either or? I mean, the Earth sustains a huge population AND a lot of mining. I wouldn't think there'd be a problem with a few small colonies coexisting with a mining operation, unless they'd built right over the motherlode or something.
The Master's plan seemed... a bit overly complicated, though doesn't it usually? So he wanted to find the superweapon of a formerly powerful civilization, which he knew about thanks to Time Lord records. And he has no better way to find the specific location than to pose as an Earth Adjudicator, mix himself up in the colonist/IMC dispute, and eventually get one side to lead him to the location of the Primitives' city? Also interesting that the Master could've picked any time or place, but it was still a time almost exactly 500 years into the future relative to the Doctor and Jo on Earth. Hell, maybe his TARDIS has a time knob that goes in 500 year increments.
Not sure what exactly to make of Jo's reaction to the smaller aliens. She'd been fine with the Primitives, but ones that are shorter and paler suddenly cause her to scream? Unsure if that's on her or the effects people not being able to pull off as extreme a look as they wanted.
The end solution wasn't totally satisfying to me for a few reasons. The superest of priests determined it was in the best interests of everybody for the weapon to be destroyed... but that could only be done by taking the city with it apparently. But why did he not take any steps to evacuate the city? These were a people who did not remember their old ways, killing them all off wasn't exactly protecting any secrets. Second, it turns out radiation from this superweapon was causing the crop growth problems of the colonists. But it seems like if you've got a very radioactive weapon and destroy it... that's if anything going to make the spread worse? But I don't know, maybe it entirely vaporized, this is sci-fi.
059: The Dæmons
(First watched 2024-11-09, -10, -12, -13, -15) Interesting to see the beginning with the Doctor mocking non-scientific things as impossible, when "Hey, impossible non-scientific things are happening!" was the basis of much of the most recent series. But for all that, he sure recognized _something_ from the archaeological dig on TV that he knows is dangerous. A bit irresponsible to not tell the other UNIT folks _any_ details before he goes running off with Jo. Aaaaaand there's the Master... summoning something in a ritual? What won't that guy get up to.
During the ritual the Master said something like "Doing my will is the whole of the law", which made me laugh. I'm well familiar with "Do as thou wilt is the whole of the law", and that is a fun play on it.
The uhh... living Gargoyle or whatever looks pretty silly with his tongue perma stuck out. They also wisely kept the effects budget down by only IMPLYING a creature that's dozens of feet tall, but never showing anything more than footprints.
So what the archaeological dig was getting into was... a spaceship, or at least a sort of spaceship hangar with a very condensed spaceship. I wonder what the Doctor recognized from outside that made him realize this.
So for a hundred thousand year the people of Earth have been being manipulated by daemons who are the basis of many religions and superstitions, and who may decide to wipe out the Earth if whatever their plans are don't come to fruition... and the Doctor never thought to bring that up in the last decade we've been watching him!?
Technical guy is a Sergeant Osgood. Definitely the naming of the Osgood from the 50th anniversary and after is a reference to this, though Google tells me that an in-universe connection beyond that is more iffy and contradictory based on various non-TV sources.
The Doctor being attacked by a bunch of evil Morris dancers? That is 200% on brand Doctor Who, love it. Though I don't really get the Doctor (and friends) tricks to get him out of that situation. So they fake him having magical powers to claim he's a powerful wizard... but they were already planning on burning him as a witch, so how is that any different? Except wizards they apparently don't want to piss off with attempted burning.
Incredibly British of the Brigadier to refer to a living gargoyle as "chap with the wings there".
The ending... meh. Azal the super Daemon was defeated by being shocked at Jo trying to sacrifice herself for the Doctor? It felt like a bad Star Trek resolution, either of the "Kirk blows up computer with illogic" or "alien race impressed/confounded by Humanity" type. Not that Jo's offer made much sense to begin with. I mean, it's not just that they were looking for any old killing where one death could take the place of another. When person A wants to kill person B... they want to kill person B!
The shooting location of this serial worked out nicely. Having like an entire small village to be used as extras? Gave more scope than the average story.