Pizza

Finally a good episode. What happened to all the fans here? They've vanished. That can't be a good sign for the show.

diditagain

In the overnight ratings, Flatline was the lowest-rated episode on BBC America since near the end of S6. Here is a summary of the S8 ratings (number of viewers for the premiere of the new episode on Saturday from 9-10pm, except for episode 8-1, which aired from 8:15-10pm):

Episode 8-1: 2.189 million
Episode 8-2: 1.225 million
Episode 8-3: 1.140 million
Episode 8-4: 1.126 million
Episode 8-5: 1.030 million
Episode 8-6: 0.957 million
Episode 8-7: 0.940 million
Episode 8-8: 0.974 million
Episode 8-9: 0.754 million

And here are the S6, S7 and S8 averages:

S6A (7 episodes): 0.822 million
S6B (6 episodes): 0.720 million (S6 overall: 0.775 million)
S7A (5 episodes): 1.131 million
S7B (8 episodes): 1.071 million (S7 overall: 1.094 million)
S8 (9 episodes): 1.148 million

Timber

Yeah, I bailed. It just isn't doing it for me this season.

The Valeyard

I caught up on all my TV shows this weekend before watching this week's episode. A stellar episode this week. Great moments of humor and some very creepy monsters. This was the first full Capaldi episode that I watched with my family. Besides my oldest son, the rest of the family just doesn't care for him. My youngest daughter is especially upset that Matt Smith is gone. He was the only reason why she watched "Dad's show."

Wonder why the TARDIS looks like the Pandorica when it's in Siege Mode?

And yes - The Misty "story arc" is absolutely intrusive to each episode she pops up in. Reminds me of how badly Season 5's arc was handled.

benedict

Although I like the acting/characters, I've not been especially enamoured of the plots for most of this season.

This episode struck me as Doctor-lite but it wasn't a bad tale.

However, I'm waiting for some kind of reveal along the lines that

Jay G.

They already did that plot with the "Space/Time" two parter short for Comic Relief:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uStWeeEVQAc

When Clara called the Tardis at the beginning of "The Bells of Saint John," she says she got the number from some woman in a shop. At the end of "Deep Breath," The Doctor theorized that whomever placed the advert in the paper that lead both of them to the restaurant may be the same woman who gave Clara the number for the Tardis, with the explicit motivation of putting and keeping Clara & The Doctor together.

So it's not really a "retcon," since they had put the initial mystery (the woman in the shop) in the very first episode Clara became a companion.

Missy has mostly only shown up at the very end of an episode; only once did she briefly appear in the middle of one. So it can't be very "intrusive."

And different strokes and all, but I thought Season 5's arc (the crack in time and space) was the best story arc of any season so far.

Jay G.

I think that was deliberate. They've tended to have one Doctor-lite episode per season. Apparently it helps them to film two episodes at the same time (called double-banking).

http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Doctor-lite
http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Double-banking

"The Crimson Horror" was Doctor-lite for Series 7, and "The Girl Who Waited" in Series 6 pulled the same trick as this episode and stuck The Doctor in the Tardis alone for the majority of the episode.

Jay G.

Here's an article describing how the "seige mode" prop was made:
http://www.rubbertoereplicas.com/#!t...eige-mode/c70e

You can buy a replica of it here:
http://www.rubbertoereplicas.com/#!p...mode'-cube

Note that the replica is probably the only one of the Tardis that is "life size."

The Valeyard

They're "intrusive" (and I'll add - "To me") because they feel tacked on. Almost like someone said "Shit! We need to drop in this season's arc! Quick! Put it at the end."

The cracks in time for Series 5 were handled in the same manner ("Quick! Put a crack on the hull of the space ship to remind everyone about the cracks!"). It didn't help that the story arc wasn't fully wrapped up until 3 years later in Time of the Doctor. The Series 5 finale was lacking without the details.

So far (again, to me), the best arc for Doctor Who has been the Master/Saxon arc from Series 3.


Edit to add:

Thank you for the links. I want that! I still think it looks like the Pandorica.

Jay G.

I can see this, although I don't agree with it.

Disagree with this, the crack was fully integrated into a number of episodes. In "The 11th Hour", it was the way Prisoner Zero escaped to Earth. In the Angel two-parter, it's revealed that the Angels were seeking out crack to feed off its temporal energy. And while the crack wasn't well integrated into "Cold Blood," the fact that Rory got sucked into it played out into the next few episodes with Amy's forgetting of him.

Granted, there were a few times where the crack was shown without The Doctor or others noticing, but given it was just a crack, it was often just placed in a shot instead of requiring its own scene, like the Missy segments. These weren't any more intrusive than the phrase "Bad Wolf" appearing in Series 1.

Bleh. Nothing about the Mr Saxon arc mattered until the finale. In many ways it was similar to the Missy arc, with the only real references I remember tacked on to the end of an episode:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Story_a...Revived_series


Well, they're both cubes with circles on each (visible) side. The design of the circles are different though, and the Pandorica was stone, while the siege mode cube looks like metal.

The Time Lord Psychic Container aka Hypercube has a replica variant edition that has a similar Gallifreyan symbol on one side:
http://merchandise.thedoctorwhosite....hic-container/

And then, there's the cubes from The Power of Three that were featureless, but of the same dimensions.

I guess they just like cubes.

Nickee

I always have the closed captioning on when I watch TV and during the scene where Danny calls Clara, the first thing he says, according the CC, is "What's up, bitch?"

I was kind of taken aback by the word "bitch" appearing in a Doctor Who episode but according to Gallifrey Base what he actually said was something about a bench.

But I rewound it and the CC definitely says "What's up, bitch?"

diditagain

Whoever BBC America hired to create the CC messed up. I saw that in the CC and thought that's what I heard (reinforced by what I was reading in the CC, no doubt). The UK transmission and BBC iPlayer have "got our bench" in the CC, which is what I heard when I listened to the scene without CC.

I think the person who created the American captions probably thought they heard "What's up, bitch," decided the script was wrong, and went with what they heard.

Jay G.

Yeah, the line was "I got our bench," although some people say the "I" is missing. It seems like the CC writer didn't double-check their work.

The Valeyard

Episode 10 of 12


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Baron Of Hell

Didn't care for this one. I did like the idea that the forest was here to help. I think the mother and the sister at the end should have been cutout. There wasn't enough to do that storyline justice. There was a point at the start of the show where riding hood said she was being chased but nothing ever came of that. The last thing i didn't care for was the lack of people running around. They are in a major city and only run into the forest burning people.

Still this episode was better than the moon one.

chuckd21

Why did I figure this out 40 minutes before The Doctor did? That's really dumb writing.

wmansir

I thought this was much worse than Kill the Moon, for several reasons:

1. KtM had much better setting/sets. This episode was basically set in the forest. They say it's london, but besides a statue or two there is nothing else to indicate it, particularly missed were the buildings, infrastructure, and several million people that make up a large city.

2. KtM had characters with agency. Both episodes had a similar theme of nature takes care of earth, despite human actions to the contrary and both stories were resolved without human intervention in the process, but the key difference is that in KtM the characters had the option to do something.

In this episode everyone, the Doctor included, was helpless. One might argue that preventing humanity from undertaking defoliation efforts was an action, but they didn't do nearly enough to establish that those efforts would have had any effect. I know left to my own devices I imagine those efforts being pitiful in the face of the entire globe being overrun by plants. It's not like humanity has trillions of gallons of weed killer stored for swift emergency deployment.

3. In KtM, Clara doesn't condemn a group of children to death because they will miss their parents if they aren't killed alongside them. "I don't want to be the last of my species" was a nice line, but the setup felt very forced and out of character for Clara.

4. KtM had Giant creepy killer spiders. In this episode we have zoo animals that run from a flashlight and are quickly dismissed as a concern by everyone.

5. Much less "magic" in KtM. That's really saying something considering how horrible the science was in KtM. Forest of the Night is straight up nature/fairytale magic and nonsense from beginning to end and just about every point in between.

6. Humanity will be inspired by this event to explore the universe Vs. Humanity will forget because they like war or something and ignore strange occurrences ... unless it involves the moon hatching a space dragon.

7. KtM doesn't have a message encouraging people with serious mental health issues to avoid medication. I understand that overprescription of psychiatric medication for emotional/behavior issues is a serious concern, particularly for children, but auditory/visual hallucinations and delusions are symptoms of serious mental health issues. I don't know what the writer's intent was here, but as someone who has had a close family member hospitalized after going off their antipsychotic medication I cringed during this episode.

wmansir

There are a couple of references in this episode to the Doctor being the last of his kind, but didn't he undo the destruction of Gallifrey and the Daleks?

Rex Power Colt-Robot Man

You mean the whole subplot of finding Gallifrey in the pocket universe that has never once been mentioned this year?

This makes up, what, the 3rd sentient forest story since the relaunch? Vashta Narada, the Smith Christmas special and now this. Keep spinning those wheels Moffat and crew.

Timber

No, it's still in a pocket universe or something like that so The Doctor is the only person that knows it's there. He was supposed to be looking for it but I guess they didn't think that was an interesting enough story.

wmansir

Thanks for the info. I reread some summaries of the ending of Day of The Doctor and I guess I just forgot or missed that part of the timeline change.

Shazam

I think when he's by himself cavorting the universe that is in fact what he's doing - looking for Gallifrey.

Superman07

This whole season has come off very flat. I do like the more laidback tone and conversations over running all over the place. However there doesn't seem to be too much purpose aside from the Doctor and Clara trying to discuss his goodness or good v evil.

I saw a portion of finale trailer. 1) looks like it could actually be epic, and 2) I hope Clara wasn't aMelody Pond Mark II.

Kdogg

I like the new Doctor. I like Clara. I even like Pink. But I feel so meh about this season. Usually they grow on me pretty fast but this one is running in place.

Xiroteus

I wondered the same thing.