"Doctor Who" season 9 is going to be the most epic yet

So I'm not allowed to disagree with someone's take on a TV show I watch regularly?

Strange, I don't remember saying that.
I'm a very plainspoken person, if I meant that, I would have said it.

I wasn't aware that posting "there is no accounting for taste" in a language I was forced to endure for three years required a law degree.

As for disagreeing with someone else's take, please do. But allow the other person the same privilege.

Tough life......

It wasn't as excruciating as algebra.

What was fascinating is that we began with Caesar’s conquests in Gaul (the idea being that Caesar’s language was more plainly written than some of the third-year stuff). The majority of the teachers were nuns, and most of them were of Irish descent.

I didn’t quite appreciate the irony until decades later when I was researching the Celts for a project and realized that it was equivalent to someone of Native ancestry teaching from the writings of Custer (assuming Custer ever wrote anything) because of the simplicity of his writing style.

Caesar’s goal was to clear Europe of “pagans” and expand Rome into the thereby emptied lands. We might all be speaking Latin if he’d had his way. Unfortunately for him, he misjudged the character of the “Gauls,” thinking that because they had no central government, they’d be easy to destroy.



ETA: Actually, Andrew Jackson might be a better example than Custer...

Actually, it's a beautiful language, and your rambling doesn't dissuade me.

Anyhow, I believe this thread needs to get back to the Tardis.....

Caesar's is a soldier's language. It's purposeful. Cicero's OTOH, has more flourish to it. Neither, however, is much appreciated by the average adolescent. But I wish every kid in the English-speaking world had a course in Latin and Greek roots. It would help immeasurably in understanding their own language.

But, yes, let’s get back to the Tardis. Hey, I know! A discussion of “The Fires of Pompeii.” It will bring us back to Capaldi’s first appearance and, as he said at Comic-Con, he was so thrilled to be cast in a show he’d watched since he was six years old and thought “That’s it. That was my big moment,” only to find himself playing the Doctor, and we can pull it all together from there.

Awkward misspelling whilst making a language jibe moment.

I suppose a matte could be a coffee made using my jizz instead of milk. In which case the taste is the least of your problems.

We kind of are all speaking Latin. And the "if Custer had ever written anything" bit marks the whole, huge, defining difference. It doesn't diminish the brutality that they brought us what we now recognise as civilization, but neither is the reverse true.

The rock and roll angle was that it was straight out of "Back to the Future."

There are surely more interesting ways touch on modern music in a time travel show, and for an example off the top of my head, have their trips to the past change the musical present in ways they don't notice until much later in the season. Clara is a school teacher, so what if every time she came back she heard the kids listening to and raving about some new artist, not realizing that the "new" artist is the result of an altered timelines. The kids would talk about some new singer she's never heard of, but for a school teacher that all seems normal. Kids are always listening to new bands who come out of nowhere, and sometimes they've never heard of bands we're familiar with. Let that play out unobtrusively over a season and see how fast viewers notice, and then turn it into a plot point when Clara (or whoever the companion is) realizes that none of her students have ever heard of The Beatles, The Who, Van Halen, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, U2, the Kinks, AC/DC, Elton John, Madonna, Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, or Beyonce. So she insists the students are wrong and starts searching for the albums and artists she's told them about, but the albums simply don't exist. Perhaps rock and roll doesn't even exist in the altered timeline. Everybody might be listening to modernized Lawrence Welk crap. So she looks up famous British singers in the phone book and visits a few them (cameos!), and they're accountants or lawyers or bar owners. So the Doctor has to go back and figure out what happened.

^I like it.

Hrm... That brings up the obvious question. What happened?

My first thought was that maybe someone like Weird Al wanted accordion music to stay on top, or perhaps some musician with a bizarre hatred of rock, but that would probably mean they'd have to have their own time-travel device.

So suppose instead that Clara accidentally dropped her iPod back in the late 1950's or early 1960's, and it was loaded with "top hits of the 60's, 70's, 80's, etc, along with everything else she listened to. Somebody found it and decided to become the world's greatest music producer by releasing each of the hits a couple of years before the original artist (who often can't even be rightly identified from an iPod's song information). So the world of rock and roll had crappier versions of all the same top hits, but played by second rate performers, with almost all of the money going to the "producer" who found Clara's iPod. So the Doctor and Clara have to figure out when the hit songs first started appearing under the wrong artist's name, and they have to do it purely by memory, along with uncovering the name of the big record producer in the altered timeline so they know a who and when.

THIS I can't dispute.

Well, I'm not sure if it still applies, but when the show came back the BBC was locked into a deal with the Terry Nation estate that required them to use the Daleks regularly in order to retain the access rights.

Blogtor Who have released a spoiler-free review of ep 2 "The Witches' Familiar". Sounds like the tension holds up, we get some some good intense dialogue, and Moffatt will again have some fans gnashing teeth by making big, bold changes to the show.

New trailer for ep2 up on the Beeb website... Not sure if it's region-locked:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p032vfsh

This season and half of last remind me of the 70's/80's episodes in which it looks like a cheap production. It might be the style of film they are using which looks almost like HD videotape. Maybe it's more frames per second than before.

In any case, I was pretty much bored during this one. I just don't like Capaldi's version of the Doctor. Feels like he hates himself all the time. It's a drag.

OK, since people didn't seem to like the idea of a thread for each episode, let's crack on with S9x03 "Under the Lake"...

I liked it.

The ep or having a separate thread?

Sadly the ratings are very low this series, averaging about 4 million on overnights so far. Whether this is the effect of the rugby or shifts in viewing patterns overall, I don't think it's limited to Who (everything seems to be down on live viewing, so maybe it's increasing reliance on stuff like iPlayer?), but just hope the BBC don't jump into any rash decisions (there's a Mirror article about a ratings-based decision to have a year of "specials" in 2016 and bow Capaldi (and Moffatt?) out at the end of it). Of course, that might actually have been the plan before this years' figures were in...

Be a shame if this was the case as, in accordance with the thread title, I actually think this year is shaping up to be one of the strongest yet. Returning to the two-parter format for most (or all) of the series really gives time for stories to develop.

According to Blogtor Who, episode 4 will in some way reference or share connections to the following ten stories:

For confused foreign scum, one of those is a minisode filmed for the BBC Proms (a live musical event).

Blogtor Who is a cunt.

The Ep.
Much much better than the openers. I agree with what someone said up thread about it being the best entry since Flatline.

I've realised that I don't mind Who under Moffat, it's just Moffat's own
scripts that I am tiring of, which is a shame because it makes me sad
that my favourite monsters, The Daleks, were wasted on the opening
outing. This week we were refreshingly free of the overused Moffat
tropes and the episode was all the more enjoyable. No tiresome gurning
forced onto Capaldi. No silly gimmicks. An interesting plot with
elements of mystery and suspense.

Some minor complaints, namely that this is the second cliffhanger this
series already where we're made to think a lead character is dead, when
we know they aren't. I'm also really not caring for the whole "sonic
glasses" nonsense. I hope they don't become a thing....and finally I
found the whole "deaf girl is the smartest" to be patronising to
disabled people in a "look, you can be special too!" sort of way. But
overall none of these really got in the way of the overall story and
drama and so I can overlook them easily.

So, for me I felt this episode returned to the strength of the pre-Death
in Heaven series 8 and I am pleased about that. Next week also looks
interesting and a nice change of tone. I'll give this one 7/10

Btw, is one of the set dressers a Star Trek fan? I've noticed little
hints here and there this season, such as the Cardassian style computer
displays in Colony Sarrf's shuttle and "1701B" printing on a door in
this.

The UK ratings have struggled a bit, but the US ratings were at record levels. I don't think the show is quite as much at risk as is being made out by the, as usual, overreacting fans. Plus, I think the show got a bounce of interest during and surrounding the 50th, and inevitably there will be a climb down from that. I do, however, think there is some mileage in some viewers getting tired of Moffat's continued obsession with recycling his own tropes and failure to provide adequate explanations and payoffs to his own plots.

Same here, but the show has a fascinating history.

It's interesting that in Trek's absence from TV, Dr. Who has never been more popular here in the U.S.

Good conclusion. I knew the Doc was gonna cheat time but figured it had something to do with the fake-out "gone back along my own timeline 30 minutes" thing.

I thought it was a solid two-parter. The monster of the week looked kinda stupid, but the episodes contained a genuinely intriguing mystery and I like it when Doctor Who reminds you it's a show a about time travel. The opening monologue clearly foreshadowed what was to come.

And yes, I did google "bootstrap paradox."

Hmm...enjoyed this one tremendously, but need to go back and re-watch. Some of the timey-wimey stuff eluded me the first time. Also got distracted by the alien's name. It's been overused in contemporary media, IMO, and has taken on a completely different meaning than its ancient forerunners.

Still, a strong sense of menace, and I found myself wondering about the location. Yes, obviously, the dam is CGI, but was/is there an actual mockup of a Soviet village somewhere in the UK?

Not sure about Soviet, but there is definitely a mockup of an East German town (the thinking during the Cold War that we'd be fighting to stop a Soviet advance across the German border). It's seen in Top Gear (Clarkson drives two powerful convertibles through the town whilst British Army snipers attempt to inflict as many hits using a laser tag system as possible).

Other good news, ratings are 0.7 million higher on overnights than last week. The effect of major sporting events does seem to have taken a toll on the previous three eps. I'm also willing to blame lower figures on the late UK start time... It's a family show but much later than 19:30 start and younger kids will be in bed, so families may choose catch-up services.

To think it used to be on before 18:00 when I was a nipper...

I love the little easter eggs the production crew are putting in this series - there are a lot of freeze-frame bonuses. Last week it was Clara's cue cards for the Doctor to read out when he needs to avoid being insensitive... one of them reads "I'm sorry, I should have known you didn't live in Aberdeen", which is a nod to his accidentally dropping Sarah-Jane Smith off there when she finally stopped traveling with him... she actually lived nearly 600 miles away in Croydon.

Last week we also heard Clara say that the reason the Doctor doesn't have a radio in the TARDIS (beyond his going mad after two weeks of Peter Andre's "Mysterious Girl" being at the top of the charts) is that he disassembled it to make a clockwork squirrel... this week, check out what is sitting on top of the amp as the Doctor plugs in his guitar...

Also, Prentiss the Undertaker has business cards that read "May remorse be with you".

I love this show.

Pretty enjoyable, and nice use of a paradox. Thought the Fisher King looked a little crap (someone had a nice design idea, but the result was more gah than Geiger), and had already figured out who was in the suspended animation box (which can be read in two ways )

This is much better fare than last season.

Only real complaint is yet another "will the Doctor die" (no, he won't, BBC Worldwide have an xmas party to pay for after all) moment, but at least this time it was part of the flow of the story, not the actual tale itself.