Yeah, The Doctor going to have a bit of explaining to do.
I really enjoyed the episode.
Daagar
1642
I did really like the cracks plotline as well, and agree that it is missing a bit. However, the preview of the xmas episode confirms the next companion I believe, and guess what? It has ties to earlier shows in the season (trying to be non-spoilery here). I’m hoping like someone suggested earlier in the thread that these ‘loose’ episodes are going to be all tied together in the next half of the season.
And on that note though… WTF?! NO EPISODES TILL XMAS?!! As someone who watched all previous six seasons via netflix, the wait is just insanity.
Finally watched “Dinosaurs On A Spaceship” - fun episode, but I wonder how much money it cost to make with all the CGI? Seems like the effects are getting more elaborate each season; hope it doesn’t end up hurting the show at some point and then they have to scale back ridiculously (or yikes cancel it!).
Also, been watching the Doc with my 9 year old daughter for the past year (she is definitely hooked and will watch certain episodes over and over on Netflix) and don’t care much for the sexual innuendo which seemed dialed up to 10 (for this particular show) on this episode.
Editer
1644
Well, that was a bittersweet sendoff for the Ponds. But handled in a pretty cool way.
Took about 5 minutes to explain it to my son when it was over, though. Damned timey-wimey stuff.
I hope Moffat gives the Weeping Angels a time-out after this. Each time he brings them back, they become less & less interesting and more like generic “monsters of the week.”
Other than that and arbitrary timey-wimey BS which has come to categorize all too many Who stories, I still think the Ponds got a hell of a bittersweet send-off. sniff I just have something in my eye…
They’ve been in 3 stories in 5 years.
They’ve been in 3 stories in 5 years.
One of which was a two-parter. And there was no indication that they’d be coming back at all after Blink, any more than the other one-show monsters. And surely you’d admit Blink was their best outing by far. Though I will confess that the scene with Amy locked in the trailer with the angel on the monitor was proper good.
It is a pretty fucking big stretch to call a monster that shows up every 2.5 years overused.
Bear in mind Dr Who has been going since 1963, so 2.5 years is not very long. Nor very many episodes.
And each time they’ve come back, they’ve been less interesting than the time before, which is why I want Moffat to quit while he’s ahead, before he actually runs them into the ground. Particularly since he seems to feel he needs to add a new “gimmick” to them every time they come back. Sometimes less is more, y’know?
Yeah, that’s the issue. Blink is one of the greatest episodes of television of all time, and part of that is because, at the time, the Angels were utterly petrifying and mysterious. But they were defeated, or at least foiled. And then in series five, they were defeated again, and thus became a little less scary. And now they’ve been defeated again, more or less. Each time they lose a little more of their mystique and become a little less threatening. It’s not quite as bad as with the Daleks, where they’ve gone from unstoppable (don’t mention the stairs) genocide machines to almost comic relief.
roBurky
1654
They do seem to have paid less attention to their defining features in each appearance. People were looking away from imminently dangerous angels all the time in the last episode. The angels themselves also weren’t making efforts to avoid mutually observing each other and getting trapped, which was an important consideration for them in Blink. If the script has both the angels and their opponents ignoring what makes them unique, they pretty much are being turned into generic monsters.
hepcat
1655
I’m in the camp that believes the Angels are now used up as monsters…at least in their current incarnation. They were great in Blink because they were a mysterious, frightening one-off monster. That works once…maybe twice if you’re a good writer. After that, you need to explore their story more or it’s just the same thing over and over again.
The only way I could see them becoming interesting again is if they did something unexpected and new instead of having them act as a Freddie Kruger or Michael Myers stand in for a PG audience. Maybe communicate with them? Learn about their origin?
To be honest, I feel they should never have brought them back after Blink. At least not as the focus of an episode, anyway. That was such a perfect episode. Leave on a high note, and all that.
Off topic, I just started reading the Doctor Who/Star Trek: The Next Generation crossover comics, and it’s pretty good so far. :)
This.
“Blink” was cool because they made such a big deal out of “Keep your eyes on them; don’t blink; they can’t move while they’re being observed,” and then they stuck to it. That episode is an example of the show being extremely consistent in its internal logic–so much so that we as viewers are disappointed when inconsistencies crop up later.
I’m typically always ready to forgive a television show–Doctor Who especially–for this kind of handwaving. But the angels’ first appearance literally trained us to watch for behavioral minutiae. The fact that we can ignore those behaviors in seasons 5 and 7 makes them much more similar to every other monster–plodding along, chasing the heroes, giving away their plans, and so on.
It’s like Moffat saw audience response to them and assumed it was due to the admittedly cool visual effect of having a stationary object “strobe” around (which, Lord knows, they’ve done a TON of) and not because they were new, scary, internally consistent monsters.
That said, I thought the angels in the fall finale were more of a return to form than the ones in season 5.
Non-angel-related and somewhat spoiler-filled episode thoughts:
I loved Matt Smith in this one. Between his tantrum when he read the last few chapter headings, his “What the hell are you doing?” on the rooftop, and the very end of the episode, he was dynamite to watch. He really came across like someone who was going nuts at the thought of losing (yet more of) his best friends. It was hard to keep from tearing up at the end.
I was happy to see some story threads picked up and moved along, like the database removals, River going by her Professor title, and the whole thing with the regeneration energy.
I’m greatly looking forward to the Christmas special, partly because I want to see how Jenna-Louise Coleman ties back into “Asylum” but mostly because I want to see more Jenna-Louise Coleman.
All of that inconsistency was there in Blink, the Angels move super fast or really slow depending on what fit the story. We just notice it more after seeing three episodes with them in it. I’ve used Blink to get people into Dr Who so I’ve seen it several times and it is just as easy to nitpick once you’ve seen it a few times and know the rules.
I think they’re just a monster that really only works once.
Kyle700
1659
Yeah, it seems like they just gave up the “angels cannot look at each other” thing. A little bit odd. When the Statue of Liberty came up though… I just rolled my eyes. What the heck is up with that? Are you telling me that not a single person happened to have the Statue of Liberty in eyesight? In ALL OF NEW YORK?
I did enjoy the 2nd angel plot though. If only they would keep them more consistent…
If we’re nit-picking, there were also a lot of times in this episode where people didn’t bother to look at the angels at all. E.g., when The Doctor arrives on the scene and greets River Song, that scene would have played out so much better is she had been desperately staring at the angel grabbing her wrist, trying not to blink while carrying on a conversation with The Doctor.
More than ever, in this episode, The Angels moved when it was convenient for them to do so.
