Doctor Who Series 8 (SPOILERS)

I consider myself to be pretty well versed in science and I let a lot of things in TV/Movies slide despite that knowledge. However, that strained even my liberal credibility. There are a whole set of disasters awaiting Earth should the Moon achieved the same mass. High tides, earthquakes, massive volcanic eruptions and the two planet would soon start closing in on each other. But ignoring even that, we've brought back rocks from the moon so we know it's not an egg. And on top of that, 100 nukes would just make a bright flash and do nothing. When asteroids crash into the moon they have the force of several hundred bombs and do nothing but leave a big crater. Again, I let a lot of stuff go, but that was too much.

I'm also really disliking this version of the Doctor. I'm actually anticipating Clara's exit as I'm finding her increasingly dull. Capaldi has no real presence or charisma. And the stories this season have insulted my intelligence and focused on character interactions that seem very forced and uninteresting. What a shame.

"And look! It laid another egg!"

Right after being BORN?!?!?!?!

Also, I finally had to turn on closed captioning for this one so I could understand the Doctor AND Disruptive Influence.

And it has the same mass and orbit as the original moon!


And it laid it in the split second we were looking away!

And the Doctor is pretty sure that the creature is unique in all the universe, because (a) there is absolutely no reason to think so, and (b) that's what laying eggs usually implies: no multiplication, no progeny.

And huge unicellular "bacteria" that look just like spiders and crawl on walls just like spiders and and spin webs just like spiders. And huge unicellular "bacteria" that have legs and teeth all in one cell. And the Moon somehow suddenly gaining a huge amount of mass, because if it were a gradual increase we would have noticed it long ago. (And where did that mass come from, anyway? Why wasn't it accreting mass before?) And water coming out of nowhere to form the amniotic fluid.

But let's be fair: I'm pretty sure the shuttle had the nukes when it slid down the crevasse. So the nukes would have gone off next to the creature.

I dunno, I've grown to like Clara pretty well this series.

And then it sailed off into the cosmos, where it'll be no tribble at all.

^^To a creature the size of the moon, the nukes would have felt like burning your hand on the stove. 100 bombs isn't really all that much comparatively speaking.

My wife complains about not understanding the Doctor but I understand what he says, it's just that it's hard to hear voice over everything else. I wish they would have chosen an actor with more personality. The scenes with Clara at school really drag down the episodes. I'm tempted to fast forward through them, missing nothing of importance.

The fook is your problem, mate?
Like I'm the only one in the world who can't understand Scottish?

The answer's right there in your post. It's the vowel sounds, mostly the "u" as in "you," which sounds like "yew." The rest of his diction's remarkably crisp (I have more trouble understanding Clara and Danny when they're playing cutesy-couple yakking too fast and cutting each other off in mid-sentence, but then I think "they're just making smalltalk anyway, not important"), and he doesn't tawk any fasta than a NewYawka, yanno?

You want incomprehensible, watch The Last King of Scotland. Forest Whitaker as Idi Amin is perfectly clear. James McAvoy seems to have something stuck in his throat.

The sad thing about this episode is the Lost Opportunity. Every culture has a mythology surrounding the moon, particularly lunar eclipses (e.g., the dragon who devours the moon, then spits it back out again), that could have been exploited.

Instead we get not non-science, but un-science. "Oh, hai, yeah, here we are on a beach - with the sun shining and a gentle breeze and the freaking breakers coming in as if nothing's happened - watching the egg hatch. How marvelous!" There are no words...

Also, what's the message? Save the Spotted Owl? Every Sperm Is Sacred? Stupid, pointless artificial dilemma that Only Clara Can Solve. Gah!

Perfect summary. That's the problem I was groping for.

No, there are plenty more ignorant people in your country. I can understand every version of accented English on this Earth. If you can't then you should be bloody ashamed of yourself.

Now that's a bold claim, waiting to be proven false. I certainly can't say the same about German, and I' not sure anyone can.

Also, this.

That will be a long wait matey.

If true, that is extremely unusual. Any explanation of how you developed this ability?

Mate, this is a laughable question. Not only have I never had a problem with a natural English spoken dialect from any part of the world for my entire life, but I have also spent 80% of my career listening to English in just about every accent and inflection that you could imagine. It is the second most spoken language on the planet. Anyone who is a born and raised an English speaker and can't understand accents...well, suffice it to say I'm not impressed.

Just for the record, this is unheard of. In linguistics, when you plot relations between various accents and dialects (and I'm assuming you mean dialects as well, since that's where this discussion started), you don't even consider that any one given native speaker could understand all; you start off asking, what dialects can't a given speaker raised in these other dialects understand? It would be like describing a species as being able to have offspring with all other species on the planet. Once you go down that route, you can hardly define "species" anymore.

Now, of course any accent and dialect can be learned, just as any language can basically be learned. But learning all of them is so improbable as to be practically impossible.

(And of course, the fact that English is spoken in so many parts of the world and so many different dialects makes it harder, not easier, to understand all of them.)

Packard, Packard, Packard...just give up.

El Chup is a humanoid Babelfish.

And he laid the moon as his egg in 2 seconds.

Well, clearly I must be a genius enigma.

I'll now wait and see how many of the learned denizens of WF queue up to confirm that.......

I'll assume you mean "Ireland/UK English." Or are you including such dialects as Cajun, Gullah, every nuance of every island accent in the West Indies, and every little backwater in the States where half the time the locals can barely understand each other?

Pederbuzorget Nanato kerd

No, I mean the whole lot.

I am genuinely astonished by every questioning response I am getting in this thread. I mean, shit, you people really can't tell English if it's in an accent or regionally dialect or, for that matter, slang? Damn, I genuinely stunned.

Don't "you people" me, bub. I'm not Forbin. I just find the hubris almost as fascinating as the "Why don't they speak American?"

Tell English as in recognize that it's a kind of English? Perhaps. Not sure, but I'd believe that some people might be able to do that. And I can't prove that you can't do what you're saying. But just for the record, it is generally assumed that many dialectic groups within a major language will not understand one another. For instance, native British English speakers will not understand true Scots unless they've learned it separately. (And native speakers of Scots wouldn't understand standard English either, only they all do learn it as a second language.) What you're claiming is not only that you can do what is generally considered impossible, and tantamount to guessing a foreign language you've never heard, but that you would expect -- wrongly, as proven by empirical fact -- that most other people can do it as well.

How about Pikey?

Good for you. But you've proven many times in the past that you aren't the all encompassing, complete language expert you pass yourself off as, despite your geek tomes.

Do you even know what that means?

You can make the claim, but you can't prove it.

Used to mean Irish Cant. Is that where you excuse yourself because it's not "really English"?

Can you please understand why I find it is so bizarre that it is so hard for you to accept that I can, so far, understand English in all forms I have heard it in?

I mean seriously, it's absurd to me that you lot are fighting against it with your "oh no you can't" posts. Yes I can. Fucking deal with it.

Oh shit, here's the bit where Maggie start's wondering why she's called a troll.