View Poll Results: How would you rate Cold War?

Voters
22. You may not vote on this poll
  • 10: Boiling

    2 9.09%
  • 9: Baking

    5 22.73%
  • 8: Flaming

    6 27.27%
  • 7: Humid

    8 36.36%
  • 6: Warm

    1 4.55%
  • 5: Tepid

    0 0%
  • 4: Lukewarm

    0 0%
  • 3: Frigid

    0 0%
  • 2: Bitter

    0 0%
  • 1: Freezing

    0 0%
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  1. #51
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    Enjoyed it more a second time this morning (maybe coming to it with lowered, rather than heightened, expectations helped?) but still think the setting of 'marooned, sinking, nuclear submarine' was almost totally wasted.

  2. #52
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    Finally catching up with this.

    Cold War! The Ice Warriors are Cold, they like War, they haven't been used since before the Cold War started (!) and here they are 20 years after it arguably wound down. Seems obvious really. Though given recent epsiode title choices, I'm surprised it wasn't called Ice Warriors On A Submarine.

    The opening is like the first three episodes of The Ice Warriors compressed into two minutes. There's an isolated group of people, the world is on the brink of destruction, they've got a block of ice with something green in it, that thing is alive, it's a killer!

    From then on you've got more chaos as the Doctor and Clara arrive and do some stuff. I got a bit lost at this point. Due to technical issues I'm watching these episodes in stereo rather than 5.1 and it makes a huge difference to the audibility of the dialogue. In 5.1 the music envelopes you while the dialogue is directly in front; but in stereo, you get everything mashed into the front two speakers and it all gets a bit messy. So I'm not really sure how the Doctor averted the initial crisis.

    There was a really good bit where Clara gets knocked out underwater and it goes all slo-mo and she sees the sonic screwdriver... it all seemed like this scene was going to have more significance. It's also the first time we're really seeing things from Clara's point of view. This is a real key issue for me, that for the past 3 or 4 episodes we've been seeing Clara from the Doctor's perspective. Bells of St John focussed on the Doctor looking for Clara, rather than how Clara's life was turned upside down by the Doctor. In many ways, I feel that I don't really know Clara. She's more of a blank slate to me than any of the other New Series companions. It's especially annoying because Jenna-Louise is brilliant.

    From then on it's Dalek-With-Ice-Warrirors. The realisation of the armour-less Martian was superb, especially the scene with the glowy eyes in the dark. I wasn't too convinced by the rubber hands though. Skardak was by far the most interesting character in the piece, which helped.

    And then in the end they all get beamed aboard Starship Mars. And even in the 80's, it's going to be phenomenally hard for the Doctor to retrieve the TARDIS from the south pole! He could have another 6 adventures on the way.

    One last thing - Was the captain supposed to be Hugh Bonneville's grandson or something? They couldn't be more similar if they tried.
    Pity. I have no understanding of the word. It is not registered in my vocabulary bank. EXTERMINATE!

  3. #53
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rob McCow View Post
    So I'm not really sure how the Doctor averted the initial crisis.
    Oh, the usual method involving the geranium and the fishcake...

  4. #54
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    And the bowl of petunias thought, "Oh no, not again", which I thought was telling.

  5. #55
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    @ Tim

  6. #56
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    My favourite so far, and for me MG has done an almost perfect job in portraying the Ice Warriors. It might be cliched, but they are all about codes and honour and vengeance and stuff like that; they're not a shambling monster, they are characters in their own right.

    No problem with the shell suit or the long fingered hands (who says his fingers don't start at say the elbows of the suit), and loved all the added extra (remote control, computer linkages), and the helmetless shot was great too. Here's hoping they come back.

    The crew were a bit one dimensional (the Captain clearly having watched lots of Hunt for Red October), but I disagree about David Warner - I thought he worked quite well, especially with Clara (and surely the line about Ultravox splitting up was to get her to laugh, and think about something else).

    The other big bonus for me was Clara - I think she really came forward as a proper person this week, and definitely leapt out of Amy's shadow. Her doubts about waht she had achieved, and her reaction to the dead sailors felt real. And it was nice that it was the TARDIS team (not one or the other) that saved the day.

    So how come the TARDIS translation system is now working properly, even when it spent most of the story half a world away ?
    Bazinga !

  7. #57
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    Re-watching this today. I notice they used the word "bloody" twice. Whatever would Mary Whitehouse have thought??

  8. #58
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    She might have thought Mark Gatiss was a bit, sniff, dim.
    Last edited by Andrew Curnow; 27th May 2013 at 9:53 PM. Reason: Dithering over 'dumb' or 'dim'...

  9. #59
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    The Cold War is often used as the dividing line between "recent" and history, but i think that the Cold War is becoming too distant to be "recent". Try telling Baby Boomers that though...

  10. #60
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    David Warner did an AV Club "Random Roles" interview recently where he talked about various films he's been in: http://www.avclub.com/article/david-...andits--258139

    And he said this about the series:

    DW: All these professors! Yes, that was very nice to be eventually asked to be in Doctor Who. At one stage, when I was younger, people thought I might play the next Doctor. You know how rumors go ’round. But that never happened, and that was fine. But the writer, Mark Gatiss, has been responsible for Sherlock as well, and I’ve been a friend of Mark’s for a long time, because he was in a group called The League Of Gentlemen. I knew he wrote scripts, but I never, ever said to him, “Ooh, I’d like a part in your next script!” I never do that. So it was a lovely surprise to get a message from Mark saying, “I think we’ve got a part for you in an upcoming Doctor Who.” So of course I went in immediately and wanted to do it. I just wanted to be part of it, you know, because I’m kind of lucky to be in the Star Trek group, so be in Doctor Who as well… I like doing all that, even though I’ve done other things. So it was really great when the old professor turned up.

    AVC: So what was your Ultravox knowledge going into the episode?

    DW: None whatsoever! [Laughs.] I had to ask people, “What is this about? ‘Vienna’? Hungry like the what?” I don’t know anything about that, I’m afraid. I was a Beatles man, and that’s about where it stopped for me.

    AVC: Beyond the one episode of the show, you’ve also done quite a bit of Doctor Who narration.

    DW: Yes, Big Finish Productions are great. As I’m sure you know, they’ve got the rights to write different stories, and they’ve actually got some of the people who played the Doctor doing them, like Peter Davison, Sylvester McCoy, and Tom Baker. They all do these audios, and then they’ve also got other actors, because The Doctor can be anybody. So I’ve done four or five of those, and I love it. I love doing audio.
    "RIP Henchman No.24."

  11. #61
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    So I’ve done four or five of those, and I love it. I love doing audio.
    Four or five... hundred? Off the top of my head:
    2x Unbounds
    A dozen Sapphire & Steel
    At least 4 as "Cuthbert"
    Narrating an early adventure

    Hmm, maybe that's not too far off?
    Pity. I have no understanding of the word. It is not registered in my vocabulary bank. EXTERMINATE!

  12. #62
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    Some people don't like to boast about size - it's the quality that matters!

    So I'm told...

    Quote Originally Posted by Leah Betts View Post
    The Cold War is often used as the dividing line between "recent" and history, but i think that the Cold War is becoming too distant to be "recent". Try telling Baby Boomers that though...
    Time is relative, lunchtime doubly so.

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