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newnumber6Spoilery of course. Non-spoilery reaction preview? Mixed.
Well, that was okay.
I don't seem to have liked it as much as others on my flist and in some of the discussion forums, although there are a few who seem to share some of my problems and dislikes.
The good:
Parts of the Master's performance, particularly the gasmask scene. Other parts, not so much, but those will be described below. The phone conversation also, generally speaking went well.
A few nice moments, and the Doctor being on the run, plus Martha's worries about her families. The Doctor facing someone who's as smart as he is and prepared for his contingencies is also nice.
UNIT gets a mention! I was kinda hoping Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart would get some kind of namecheck (isn't he, in the semi-continuity of the novels, have supposedly gotten de-aged at some point so he could conceivably still be around).
I liked the Gallifrey flashback, even though some of what the Doctor said about it didn't ring true.
The bad:
The Master. He just didn't feel proper. I can enjoy the Master regenerating with a bit more of a (perverse) sense of humor, and being a little sillier, but this went way beyond that. And I get that they were trying to make him a 'dark reflection' of the Doctor, so because Tennant can be remarkably silly at times, it would sort of make sense from a storytelling perspective to have The Master the same way. But again, okay in theory, way too much in practice.
I think the gasmask scene was a good mix, especially since it seemed to have a real sort of point to it, where he explained that he was doing it because they only joined his side when it seemed the wind was shifting towards him. That strikes me as the kind of thing an intelligent Master would do - reward loyalty, but punish people who won't give it. And I could sort of see the idea of him maybe allowing himself the luxury of humor with people he plans on killing in the next 30 seconds anyway. But his acting silly in front of the US president, or dancing when his plan came into effect, were just too much. Beyond that, the story, as professed by the Doctor, that the Master's the way he is not because he genuinely believes he should be in charge of the galaxy, but because he "looked into the time vortex and went insane."
Y'know what? For me, insanity is rarely interesting from a storytelling perspective, especially for a villain. You can treat them like a force of nature that must simply be dealt with, or you can make their insanity of such a singular type that it's distinctive on its own, but neither of those seem to be here. They just made him mad. And to take a character like the Master and just say "he's been insane since he was a child", meh. Give him proper motivations, please, they're cheap. Even the whole 'Sound of Drums' thing didn't sit right with me, or at least that he heard them since he was a child. I'm fine with him hearing them since he was Yana, or since he was regenerated to fight in the Time War.
We haven't seen his Master Plan yet (no pun intended), but it doesn't strike me as someone who wants to control everything, but rather someone who just wants to destroy everybody and be gleeful doing it.
His companion. She didn't strike me as anything so much as a little dim and insane, and we all know what I feel about insane. No sense of any motivations.
Laser screwdriver? Feh.
How they got out of the cliffhanger? Meh. There's an art to the cliffhanger, and from my observations, to be satisfying, the cliffhanger has to work itself from some clever trick. To me "waving your sonic screwdriver at Jack's magic but not working time travel device for a few seconds until it works" is not satisfying. If it were the middle of an episode, perhaps, but for a cliffhanger I wanted something more. Hell, even a clever way of holding off the 'future people' while the Doctor fixed the device would have been okay.
I didn't really care for the flying carrier, specifically because the first contact was supposed to be public. Which means the carrier would also be made public at that time. Seems to make more sense to have it on an actual ship or something where media could be invited freely.
For that matter, I'm getting a bit annoyed at the mass body counts in the present day stories, whether they wind up reverted or not. Torchwood had that lame one at the end. Now we've got supposedly 10% of the world's population dying. It really kinda interferes with the 'the present is really the present' feel to have so much happen in the 'now', if it doesn't get reverted, and if it does, then it's cheap. If you want to kill millions of people, do it in the future, or an alien planet.
Also, a lack of foresight, especially with respect to Jack. It would seem a number of times a good plan for him would have been "let himself die to stall for time" or something, and what's with telling Martha to teleport away, rather than attempt to go with her? It'd be one thing if the Master didn't know of his revival gimmick, but since he does his chances of being able to help the Doctor on the spot are much lower.
Incidentally, I'm still wondering exactly how the Time War works out, in terms of consequences and logistics. Does Gallifrey simply not exist anywhere in the past, present, or future anymore? Or could one, theoretically, go back to Gallifrey before the Time War, except that doing so would create a time paradox that they always seek to avoid. If the Doctor went back to, say, the last time he met, say, the Meddling Monk, could he see him there? Or has he been wiped from history entirely? And if so, how does that possibly work, and what status the rest of the Doctor's adventures that involved Time Lords?
Well, that was okay.
I don't seem to have liked it as much as others on my flist and in some of the discussion forums, although there are a few who seem to share some of my problems and dislikes.
The good:
Parts of the Master's performance, particularly the gasmask scene. Other parts, not so much, but those will be described below. The phone conversation also, generally speaking went well.
A few nice moments, and the Doctor being on the run, plus Martha's worries about her families. The Doctor facing someone who's as smart as he is and prepared for his contingencies is also nice.
UNIT gets a mention! I was kinda hoping Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart would get some kind of namecheck (isn't he, in the semi-continuity of the novels, have supposedly gotten de-aged at some point so he could conceivably still be around).
I liked the Gallifrey flashback, even though some of what the Doctor said about it didn't ring true.
The bad:
The Master. He just didn't feel proper. I can enjoy the Master regenerating with a bit more of a (perverse) sense of humor, and being a little sillier, but this went way beyond that. And I get that they were trying to make him a 'dark reflection' of the Doctor, so because Tennant can be remarkably silly at times, it would sort of make sense from a storytelling perspective to have The Master the same way. But again, okay in theory, way too much in practice.
I think the gasmask scene was a good mix, especially since it seemed to have a real sort of point to it, where he explained that he was doing it because they only joined his side when it seemed the wind was shifting towards him. That strikes me as the kind of thing an intelligent Master would do - reward loyalty, but punish people who won't give it. And I could sort of see the idea of him maybe allowing himself the luxury of humor with people he plans on killing in the next 30 seconds anyway. But his acting silly in front of the US president, or dancing when his plan came into effect, were just too much. Beyond that, the story, as professed by the Doctor, that the Master's the way he is not because he genuinely believes he should be in charge of the galaxy, but because he "looked into the time vortex and went insane."
Y'know what? For me, insanity is rarely interesting from a storytelling perspective, especially for a villain. You can treat them like a force of nature that must simply be dealt with, or you can make their insanity of such a singular type that it's distinctive on its own, but neither of those seem to be here. They just made him mad. And to take a character like the Master and just say "he's been insane since he was a child", meh. Give him proper motivations, please, they're cheap. Even the whole 'Sound of Drums' thing didn't sit right with me, or at least that he heard them since he was a child. I'm fine with him hearing them since he was Yana, or since he was regenerated to fight in the Time War.
We haven't seen his Master Plan yet (no pun intended), but it doesn't strike me as someone who wants to control everything, but rather someone who just wants to destroy everybody and be gleeful doing it.
His companion. She didn't strike me as anything so much as a little dim and insane, and we all know what I feel about insane. No sense of any motivations.
Laser screwdriver? Feh.
How they got out of the cliffhanger? Meh. There's an art to the cliffhanger, and from my observations, to be satisfying, the cliffhanger has to work itself from some clever trick. To me "waving your sonic screwdriver at Jack's magic but not working time travel device for a few seconds until it works" is not satisfying. If it were the middle of an episode, perhaps, but for a cliffhanger I wanted something more. Hell, even a clever way of holding off the 'future people' while the Doctor fixed the device would have been okay.
I didn't really care for the flying carrier, specifically because the first contact was supposed to be public. Which means the carrier would also be made public at that time. Seems to make more sense to have it on an actual ship or something where media could be invited freely.
For that matter, I'm getting a bit annoyed at the mass body counts in the present day stories, whether they wind up reverted or not. Torchwood had that lame one at the end. Now we've got supposedly 10% of the world's population dying. It really kinda interferes with the 'the present is really the present' feel to have so much happen in the 'now', if it doesn't get reverted, and if it does, then it's cheap. If you want to kill millions of people, do it in the future, or an alien planet.
Also, a lack of foresight, especially with respect to Jack. It would seem a number of times a good plan for him would have been "let himself die to stall for time" or something, and what's with telling Martha to teleport away, rather than attempt to go with her? It'd be one thing if the Master didn't know of his revival gimmick, but since he does his chances of being able to help the Doctor on the spot are much lower.
Incidentally, I'm still wondering exactly how the Time War works out, in terms of consequences and logistics. Does Gallifrey simply not exist anywhere in the past, present, or future anymore? Or could one, theoretically, go back to Gallifrey before the Time War, except that doing so would create a time paradox that they always seek to avoid. If the Doctor went back to, say, the last time he met, say, the Meddling Monk, could he see him there? Or has he been wiped from history entirely? And if so, how does that possibly work, and what status the rest of the Doctor's adventures that involved Time Lords?
