Rate and Discuss 6.7: A Good Man Goes To War

[Zbigniev Hamson]

What a nice man.

[FlyingBeastie]

I don't really see why that would be so important to you, or relevant, but the obvious answer seems to be "now". As it usually is in any Doctor Who that doesn't have an onscreen caption to say otherwise.

I take it as the writer not caring. Just as Moffat has been critisized for his lack of characterization cos he wants us to just jump in along for the ride, I've noticed he doesn't really care all that much about setting either.

Make fun of RTD all you'd like with his Apple/Apple 6 billion 1/2 centuries, but at least he took the time to establish a setting. Cos that helps your audience really immerse themselves in what's going on, and frankly, I don't know where I am in this episode. And if I dunno where I am, then I just start pointing out how the BBC reuses the same sets cos this warehouse/engine room place looks pretty damn familiar only it's being lit green.

When is stormcage? Cos River showed up. For someone who likes to mess with time, he seems a tad lazy establishing when things have actually happened.

[Perry Vale]

Make fun of RTD all you'd like with his Apple/Apple 6 billion 1/2 centuries, but at least he took the time to establish a setting.

Ok, answer me this? 'When' is the Doctor's visit to the planet of the Ood at the start of 'The End of Time' set then?

[FlyingBeastie]

- since Doctor Who, returned the Doctor has become a much darker character a man who would destroy a whole planet and his own people would think nothing of killing a few thousand Cybermen.

Nine couldn't bring himself to kill the Daleks in Parting of the Ways, that was the whole point of his Doctor.

Ten at least we see after Rose's "death" in "Runaway Bride" that he becomes more ruthless and vengeful with the spiderbabies and throughout the course with Martha and Donna his wrath lessens to a point, and we discover he can't be without a companion otherwise he begins to abuse his power as we saw in "Waters of Mars".

I mean, even Davison's Doctor at the end of the Myrka serial standing on the deserted vessel surrounded by dead bodies goes, "There had to have been another way."


So I don't buy this whole genocide/murderous rampage angle cos there hasn't been any development for this Doctor to make me believe it. It's literally come out of nowhere. Cos Smith does bumbling and awkward very well, so when he starts killing Cybers or ordering the genocide of the Silents by the hand of the humans (again, on not even so much as a hunch that they're "Doing something bad" when he's barely had 20 seconds of screen time with one of them before he goes to that other TARDIS) it's jarring cos I don't see any menace, moreover, I see no reason for it cos Moffat hasn't really mentioned the Time War- so why is The Doctor so pissed and vengeful?

Again, going back to Smith's performance, I don't buy it even from him as an actor.

And yes, his companion has been taken from him, but you know what? He doesn't know who's taken Amy. Or for what purpose.

And just because the Cybers have been monitoring everything in that quadrant- why is it that suddenly Cyber tech is superior to Timelord tech? Why couldn't The Doctor do his own spacey-wacey monitoring to find Amy? Why did he need to assemble an army at all? He could've wandered around as a headless monk and then snuck Amy out- sure it's a Star Wars ripoff, but the episode already ended up being one anyway.


This really just goes back to the fact Moffat has somehow lost his knack for strong characterization.

[SiHart]

Why's the Doctor so pissed off and vengeful? Because they've taken his companion, his pregnant companion and he wants her back. Because they've taken him for a fool and replaced her with a simulated version. Because, despite what you mention above, the Doctor over the last few years has become the kind of vengeful god... or did you not notice that was what the episode was actually about... about a Doctor who is willing to use whatever means necessary to get the better of his enemies.

[FlyingBeastie]

Ok, answer me this? 'When' is the Doctor's visit to the planet of the Ood at the start of 'The End of Time' set then?

"Planet of the Ood" took place sometime in the 42nd century, right around the time "Impossible Planet" occurred. And that setting at the beginning of "End of Time" took place 100 years after "Planet of the Ood".

[Si Hunt]

I have a question!

How did the Doctor suddenly turn off the TARDIS force field at the end? Surely the whole making of his "darkest hour" was being trapped there and not being able to escape. Then at the end, he finds out who River is, dashes off and calmly switches off the force field with the sonic at the end. What?!

Si.

[Zbigniev Hamson]

I strongly suspect that most of the people voting 10 or 9 or even 8 for this will probably quietly regret doing so in the days and months ahead

It was all rather fluffy and insubstantial really. Just with nice big epic baubles to stop you noticing initially.

[FlyingBeastie]

Why's the Doctor so pissed off and vengeful? Because they've taken his companion, his pregnant companion and he wants her back. Because they've taken him for a fool and replaced her with a simulated version. Because, despite what you mention above, the Doctor over the last few years has become the kind of vengeful god... or did you not notice that was what the episode was actually about... about a Doctor who is willing to use whatever means necessary to get the better of his enemies.

Again, everything you just mentioned, I would get if they actually devoted screentime and allowed Smith to actually act all of that out.

Cos Vastra telling him off seemed well out of place, and he had this look on his face like, "Hang on, I'm sure there's a scene missing here that she's reacting to..." One minute she's all, "Look, no blood was shed!" next scene she's like, "You're a horrible bastard."

[brandynigma]

And just because the Cybers have been monitoring everything in that quadrant- why is it that suddenly Cyber tech is superior to Timelord tech? Why couldn't The Doctor do his own spacey-wacey monitoring to find Amy? Why did he need to assemble an army at all? He could've wandered around as a headless monk and then snuck Amy out- sure it's a Star Wars ripoff, but the episode already ended up being one anyway.


This really just goes back to the fact Moffat has somehow lost his knack for strong characterization.

These two comments back to back would be laughable if I weren't slapping my head so hard after reading them.

The characterisation of the Doctor's actions are what you almost hit head on here. He's become so angry and full of his own hype that rather than sneak in and just get the job done, he's got to make a point of bringing these people down for daring to cross him. The Doctor's hubris, hinted at so many times before and seen to a lesser extent in Series 2, is coming back to bite him in the arse. His ego has become his Achilles Heel.

To criticise this as poor characterisation is to criticise the First Doctor trying to brain a caveman with a rock. At that point, we might as well reboot the series in the style of the Muppet Babies, where the heroes are all sweetness and light with no flaws. This is a bad idea that not even Eric Saward was daft enough to do (although he did, at times, go too far in the opposite direction!).

In so many ways, I have realised that I prefer RTD's take on Doctor Who to Moffat's, but it's in the same way that I prefer dark chocolate to milk. It's still all tasty, but sometimes it makes me queasy.

Doctor Who should never be comfortable and cosy, but it should also never be alienating. Moffat is treading the balance finer than any showrunner from the programme's past. It means I don't always approve of what is happening, but I enjoy the journey to see where it's going.

[SiHart]

I strongly suspect that most of the people voting 10 or 9 or even 8 for this will probably quietly regret doing so in the days and months ahead

It was all rather fluffy and insubstantial really. Just with nice big epic baubles to stop you noticing initially.

Possibly! I get taken in by stuff like that and then reassess it all later. I think I'd probably be better off voting on these things later rather than doing it snappily after the episodes air!

[Jason Thompson]

Well that was fun, in a 'switch your brain off and enjoy the ride' kind of way.

The episode plowed through 45 minutes nicely, with plenty of incidence to keep you watching. There was a lot of good stuff in there. The Sontaran nurse was very amusing. The scene with the three regulars in the delivery room was very nicely done, and Rory's reactions were so believable for a man who had had time to think of how he would play it when he finally returned their daughter to Amy, but found the actual moment more than he could handle without a little tear. The Doctor speaking baby was quite fun too. The return of old monsters and guest elements such as Avery and Danny Boy was great fun, but might have worked better had we not already had the 'get every costume out for a finale story' business only a year ago. The 'Captain Runaway' business was nice too, and I liked Smith's performance in that scene.

The idea of the Doctor being known as a great warrior makes good sense, but it is surprising to find a group of humans considering themselves to be at war with him, since he has a very long history of helping humanity. Still unexplained is how they managed to engineer a situation in which a baby would be conceived aboard the TARDIS in the first place, or, if they just took advantage of it, how they knew the child would have Time Lord capabilities as a result.

The one thing that really irritated me about this episode while watching it were the (too) many occasions in which the dialogue was written, delivered and edited to suggest the child might be the Doctor's. To be honest that came across as no more than baiting, since Moffat knew that many viewers would absolutely hate it if he were to make the child the Doctor's. That level of immaturity from the writer is a bit insulting, frankly.

The biggest thing this episode suffered from, however, was the hyperbole that preceded it. There have been frankly more impressive episodes. The cliffhanger wasn't that much of a surprise, and the Doctor rushing off without saying anything to the parents of the baby he was heading off to find was a bit clumsy and rushed. When previewing anything like this, if you build it up to the level this one has been it can almost only be a disappointment on some level. To be honest the cliffhanger last week as Amy dissolved into a puddle of goo would have been much bigger than this one was. We actually seem to have had a resolution and a pause for breath for the story to pick up again in a few months, rather than an actual cliffhanger.

So, fun but deeply flawed, a common factor in most finales since 2006, I think.

[FlyingBeastie]

These two comments back to back would be laughable if I weren't slapping my head so hard after reading them.

The characterisation of the Doctor's actions are what you almost hit head on here. He's become so angry and full of his own hype that rather than sneak in and just get the job done, he's got to make a point of bringing these people down for daring to cross him. The Doctor's hubris, hinted at so many times before and seen to a lesser extent in Series 2, is coming back to bite him in the arse. His ego has become his Achilles Heel.

To criticise this as poor characterisation is to criticise the First Doctor trying to brain a caveman with a rock. At that point, we might as well reboot the series in the style of the Muppet Babies, where the heroes are all sweetness and light with no flaws. This is a bad idea that not even Eric Saward was daft enough to do (although he did, at times, go too far in the opposite direction!).

In so many ways, I have realised that I prefer RTD's take on Doctor Who to Moffat's, but it's in the same way that I prefer dark chocolate to milk. It's still all tasty, but sometimes it makes me queasy.

Doctor Who should never be comfortable and cosy, but it should also never be alienating. Moffat is treading the balance finer than any showrunner from the programme's past. It means I don't always approve of what is happening, but I enjoy the journey to see where it's going.

There's been no consistency, even taking Moffat's series independent of the previous ones. If there was, then we would've seen The Doctor blow up the Atraxi on day one.

Instead, we have everything being done for the sake of "coolness" on a whim. Maybe ya'll find it awesome to see a whole Cyber legion being blown up cos Moffat is playing into the whole "what the fanboys want" for a squee factor, but to the casual viewer at home? They see Cybermen, wonder if it's going to be a Cybermen episode, and see that:

A. Not only is it not, but

B. The Cybermen were destroyed for no real reason because they weren't even involved in any level of Amy's kidnapping

In fact, try replacing any race of creatures with the Cybermen and blow them up.

Would The Doctor still have blown up the legions if they were, say, humans? And not any old humans, but a sort of militaristic stock of humans who don't take kindly to strangers randomly boarding their ships to sabotage them. Y'know, sensible folk who aren't 2D video game characters.

We get the Cybermen are traditional "bad guys", but to blow them up for the sake of getting directions (which, yet again, no one has brought up the point of the whole Timelord tech v Cyber tech) is getting into the whole Darth Maul territory. He's bad for the sake of the plot.

How do we know those legion ships didn't have Cyber factories in them with hundreds of thousands people being converted into Cybermen? And the Doctor could've saved them?

Gee, we'll never know, cos it seems our protagonist kills people because they either seem they're doing something bad, or in the past have done bad things so blowing them up is probably for good measure because they're bound to get up to something wicked later on.

[Perry Vale]

"Planet of the Ood" took place sometime in the 42nd century, right around the time "Impossible Planet" occurred. And that setting at the beginning of "End of Time" took place 100 years after "Planet of the Ood".

So, making assumptions that the viewer has seen two stories from previous seasons, and disregarded that they saw an Ood in the previous adventure set in 2059, and are showing concurrent 'visions' to present day 2009 with Lucy Saxon, isn't an example of lazy writing?

[SiHart]

There's been no consistency, even taking Moffat's series independent of the previous ones. If there was, then we would've seen The Doctor blow up the Atraxi on day one.

Perhaps not, because the stakes against the Atraxi weren't as personal. When people hurt you it's easy to strike out and do things you might not do any other time.

[FlyingBeastie]

So, making assumptions that the viewer has seen two stories from previous seasons, and disregarded that they saw an Ood in the previous adventure set in 2059, and are showing concurrent 'visions' to present day 2009 with Lucy Saxon, isn't an example of lazy writing?

Nope.

Ood were established as seeing through time and space in that episode.

[SiHart]

Well there's no arguing with that

[FlyingBeastie]

Perhaps not, because the stakes against the Atraxi weren't as personal. When people hurt you it's easy to strike out and do things you might not do any other time.

Blowing up Earth and humans and even himself wasn't personal?

[SiHart]

No. Not to the same degree as kidnapping your pregnant companion and replacing her with a Flesh copy behind you back, no.

[Jason Thompson]

Apart from me being wrong on the whole "rape" thing,

Not only were you wrong, you were unwilling to even consider the alternatives presented, and were frankly quite rude with it. I assume we're just supposed to gloss over than, however...

1. I had just came back from seeing X-Men First Class and thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. So the fact this episode somewhat took away that high, I'm already pissed.

Well frnakly that's just petty.

he has just written (yet again) that The Doctor has committed genocide for NO REASON?

Where did the Doctor commit genocide? We saw a few ships blown up outside a window. You really do like to leap to extreme conclusions from limited information, don't you?

3. What time does this take place? Where?

Why does that matter? The history of Doctor Who is replete with stories that take place in unspecified times and places, so why is it such a big deal here? From the events we can surmise it was some time after the last couple of episodes, since it involved the Flesh.

4. Yet again, there's been no real tone or stakes set for River being in the Stormcage. Didn't she kill someone? Why can she freely go out and about wherever she pleases? Why does she even bother going back?

I agree this is getting silly now. anyone with an ouce of sense who had a prisoner who could repeatedly break out of their prison would keep moving them to a higher security prison, or keep them restrained, etc. Last year was even sillier since they had evidently allowed her to keep an item they knew she would use against them (the lipstick).

6. Actually, you know who would've helped? That Siren chick- I mean, headless monks? She totes could've wiped them out thinking they were "sick" in no time.

Now that would have been brilliant!

7. "The Doctor stopped the war and no blood was shed" (not the actual line, but something like it) Uhm, hello? Cybermen fleet = decimated. Protoblood was certainly shed (I think?).

Yes, hyperbole that rather overlooks the deaths of a monk and the soldiers the other monks killed, entirely due to the Doctor's deception.

I mean, if you're so intent on getting back at The Doctor, don't you think the element of "SURPRISE" would be the best tactic with which to carry out your plan?

Or just, you know, shooting the bugger when he turns up in front of a whole flaming army with loaded guns? This is one thing that really bugs me about the new series: the number of times we hear people/aliens swearing death on the Doctor, and then when he shows up with not a weapon on him they stand there and let him talk instead of just killing him as they said they would.

16. Anyone else getting a creepy pedo vibe now about the whole Doctor/River thing? I mean, would anyone else bone someone they carried in their hand as a baby?

You have to be kidding, right?

River is an adult when the Doctor knows her, and he hasn't 'boned' her, and every single expression of intimacy thus far has come from her, not him. Secondly, what is wrong with a romantic/sexual involvement with someone you knew as a baby once you're both adults? I have a friend who is marrying a guy she has known his entire life. Two of my friends I grew up with have got married, and they've known each other all their lives too.

[Zbigniev Hamson]

It's true. One day one of my neighbours kicked my cat, so I slaughtered and burned down the house of the neighbours on the other side, as a warning to the first neighbour. I thought it reasonable at the time.

[FlyingBeastie]

It's true. One day one of my neighbours kicked my cat, so I slaughtered and burned down the house of the neighbours on the other side, as a warning to the first neighbour. I thought it reasonable at the time.

[Perry Vale]

Well there's no arguing with that

Quite.

[Jason Thompson]

ordering the genocide of the Silents by the hand of the humans

That's the second time you've used the term genocide out of context. He does not order genocide, he sets up a situation in which the Silence inadvertently instruct the humans to kill them all on sight. However, that is not genocide because a) he warns the Silence, and b) only the Silence on Earth are under threat. He has not instructed humans to go out and kill all the Silence (which is ture genocide), and has given the Silence a fair chance to save themselves.

[FlyingBeastie]

Well frnakly that's just petty.

Considering Brian Singer was involved, and the film was one of the better Superhero films I've seen in a long time- nope, it's not.

Where did the Doctor commit genocide? We saw a few ships blown up outside a window. You really do like to leap to extreme conclusions from limited information, don't you?

Fine, replace genocide with massacre then.

Or just, you know, shooting the bugger when he turns up in front of a whole flaming army with loaded guns? This is one thing that really bugs me about the new series: the number of times we hear people/aliens swearing death on the Doctor, and then when he shows up with not a weapon on him they stand there and let him talk instead of just killing him as they said they would.

One guy who was at the viewing party, don't think he's seen DW before, yelled at that moment, "Shoot him!" Agree with you there.

I have a friend who is marrying a guy she has known his entire life. Two of my friends I grew up with have got married, and they've known each other all their lives too.

Did her mom fancy him before she was even born?

It's just sketchy for me, and I'm also over the whole Doctor/little girl dynamic. As we say in Spanish, "Ya eso hiede" (translates to: "It's so old and routine it smells already!")