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[Doctor Who] He Sings, He Dances, He Has Magic Gloves

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  • Zilla360Zilla360 21st Century. |She/Her| Trans* Woman In Aviators Firing A Bazooka. ⚛️Registered User regular
    I really need to hunt down a GIF of that awesome CGI time-vortex sequence from the beginning of the episode. It reminded me of Fractal Explorer.
    Tunnelling through a networked/junctioned space-time topology.

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  • CoinageCoinage Heaviside LayerRegistered User regular
    Zilla360 wrote: »
    Fun episode. I pick up spiders with my bare hands. Ya'll a bunch of scaredy-cats. :P

    Also:
    What was up with introducing a lesbian character and then killing her so soon after, writer(s)? #KillYourGays #CocoonYourGays.
    Probably the 50 year history of the show almost always killing its random side characters.

  • Zilla360Zilla360 21st Century. |She/Her| Trans* Woman In Aviators Firing A Bazooka. ⚛️Registered User regular
    edited October 2018
    Bogart wrote: »
    the technobabble bullshit scenes
    Actually compared to previous seasons of the show, they seem to be aiming for a higher standard of actual scientific literacy here.
    This whole episode was really a (rather hyperbolic) scare story about CRISPR-Cas9 if you think about it. And all of the chemicals named were correctly mentioned in the correct contexts, like when they talked about the emissions from the underground landfill site.

    Zilla360 on
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  • KrathoonKrathoon Registered User regular
    Coinage wrote: »
    Zilla360 wrote: »
    Fun episode. I pick up spiders with my bare hands. Ya'll a bunch of scaredy-cats. :P

    Also:
    What was up with introducing a lesbian character and then killing her so soon after, writer(s)? #KillYourGays #CocoonYourGays.
    Probably the 50 year history of the show almost always killing its random side characters.

    Sometimes it is just random.

  • Zilla360Zilla360 21st Century. |She/Her| Trans* Woman In Aviators Firing A Bazooka. ⚛️Registered User regular
    edited October 2018
    And this is about as large as a spider can get IRL before they run up against the effective oxygen diffusion limit for invertebrates. We know this from studying Land Crabs.

    (Content Warning: Crab Attacking and Eating a Bird/Gull.)

    Zilla360 on
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  • CoinageCoinage Heaviside LayerRegistered User regular
    LJDouglas wrote: »
    Am I the only one who thought the solution to the latest episode was rather cruel?
    So I understand that it’s a kids show and the Doctor’s been pretty consistently anti gun since at least Eccleston, but surely it would have been more merciful to kill the spiders off quickly. You have multiple large predators, who have already killed several people, and your solutions is to lock them all up inside a small vault with 6 months worth of food so that they can have a “natural” death? The mother spider had literally grown so large that it could no longer breathe, but the Doctor berates notTrump for at least giving it a quick death.

    Felt like the morality of the episode was approaching Kill the Moon levels of advocating never ever taking a life in an circumstance. For a kid’s show you probably should aim for that message, but then maybe don’t write episodes where you advocate leaving a creature alive only to die slowly rather than at least ending things quickly. Please don’t take this as being pro-gun, I’m from the UK and about as pro gun control (oh god don’t turn this into a thread about that) as you like, but within the context provided by the episode it felt like shooting the genetically modified giant spiders would have been the less cruel option, even if it wasn’t “natural”.
    The Doctor can have a strange moral philosophy, but I did laugh out loud when the spider lady called locking them in a humane death. No that's not what humane means, they are going to die eating each other.

  • MortiousMortious The Nightmare Begins Move to New ZealandRegistered User regular
    So one particularly tense bit of that episode was not helped at all by a plastic bag in the corner of my living room crackling quietly at the exact moment something on screen did. Nearly jumped out of my skin.

    Hmm, plastic bags don't just crackle by themselves...

    Move to New Zealand
    It’s not a very important country most of the time
    http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
  • SchrodingerSchrodinger Registered User regular
    I like the new Doctor, I thought the Rosa Parks episode was amazing, but the other three episodes this season just feel rather forgettable to me. Mainly because the premises haven't been doing a lot to hook me in.

  • MichaelLCMichaelLC In what furnace was thy brain? ChicagoRegistered User regular
    Zilla360 wrote: »
    Fun episode. I pick up spiders with my bare hands. Ya'll a bunch of scaredy-cats. :P

    Also:
    What was up with introducing a lesbian character and then killing her so soon after, writer(s)? #KillYourGays #CocoonYourGays.

    Speaking of that, I just watched Arachnids... followed by Midnight, after someone commented about it here.

    Just going to spoil the connection:
    The woman that the mimic possessed was a lesbian too; or at least referenced a female ex as the reason she was on the trip.

    I mean, no shortage of red shirts around The Doctor, but just watching those back to back certainly makes it stand out.

  • Styrofoam SammichStyrofoam Sammich WANT. normal (not weird)Registered User regular
    Some of the writing choices for the last couple episodes have been...questionable.

    wq09t4opzrlc.jpg
  • skeldareskeldare Gresham, ORRegistered User regular
    Giant spider gave me real Resident Evil vibes

    Resident-Evil-spiders-507x413.jpg

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  • KrathoonKrathoon Registered User regular
    I would have been cooler if the spiders were the ones Pertwee ran into.

    The stories so far have not been real exciting.

  • BogartBogart Streetwise Hercules Registered User, Moderator mod
    Zilla360 wrote: »
    Bogart wrote: »
    the technobabble bullshit scenes
    Actually compared to previous seasons of the show, they seem to be aiming for a higher standard of actual scientific literacy here.
    This whole episode was really a (rather hyperbolic) scare story about CRISPR-Cas9 if you think about it. And all of the chemicals named were correctly mentioned in the correct contexts, like when they talked about the emissions from the underground landfill site.

    It wasn't the technical accuracy of those bits so much as the fact that Chibnall's episodes feel kinda dull when they happen.

    Take the scene where Christopher Ecclestone works out where the Slitheen come from. People firing facts at him and he comes up with the answer. The scene felt dynamic, fun and the punchline is how silly the planet's name is.

    Now take Moffat's scene in Blink where he talks about how it's a ball of timey wimey stuff. Again, funny, but it does the same job as the more ponderous and dull scenes in this episode where they figure out the WHY of what's happening. It felt like there were at least two, maybe three oh THIS is why this is happening scenes in this episode, all just the Doctor and the scientist talking to each other, which felt like the least interesting way to get the information across. It didn't feel like the episode was interested in the answer so much as it felt it had to have one, and so delivered it dutifully but not very compellingly.

    I didn't dislike the episode, but it felt a bit flat where it should have just zipped along without much pause.

    The spiders the third Doctor ran across were psychic and time-travelling, so that would have been a completely different episode.

  • Desktop HippieDesktop Hippie Registered User regular
    Mortious wrote: »
    So one particularly tense bit of that episode was not helped at all by a plastic bag in the corner of my living room crackling quietly at the exact moment something on screen did. Nearly jumped out of my skin.

    Hmm, plastic bags don't just crackle by themselves...

    I KNOW THAT!

    It’s in a chest of drawers right now. And staying there forever.

  • SnicketysnickSnicketysnick The Greatest Hype Man in WesterosRegistered User regular
    edited October 2018
    Bogart wrote: »
    Zilla360 wrote: »
    Bogart wrote: »
    the technobabble bullshit scenes
    Actually compared to previous seasons of the show, they seem to be aiming for a higher standard of actual scientific literacy here.
    This whole episode was really a (rather hyperbolic) scare story about CRISPR-Cas9 if you think about it. And all of the chemicals named were correctly mentioned in the correct contexts, like when they talked about the emissions from the underground landfill site.

    It wasn't the technical accuracy of those bits so much as the fact that Chibnall's episodes feel kinda dull when they happen.

    Take the scene where Christopher Ecclestone works out where the Slitheen come from. People firing facts at him and he comes up with the answer. The scene felt dynamic, fun and the punchline is how silly the planet's name is.

    Now take Moffat's scene in Blink where he talks about how it's a ball of timey wimey stuff. Again, funny, but it does the same job as the more ponderous and dull scenes in this episode where they figure out the WHY of what's happening. It felt like there were at least two, maybe three oh THIS is why this is happening scenes in this episode, all just the Doctor and the scientist talking to each other, which felt like the least interesting way to get the information across. It didn't feel like the episode was interested in the answer so much as it felt it had to have one, and so delivered it dutifully but not very compellingly.

    I didn't dislike the episode, but it felt a bit flat where it should have just zipped along without much pause.

    The spiders the third Doctor ran across were psychic and time-travelling, so that would have been a completely different episode.

    I do think there is a recurring thing in these episodes where "all the characters stand in a semi-circle and talk at each other about the plot" is the lynchpin and it's getting a little tiresome now. I do think that there needs to be a few more "talk about the problem while doing something else" scenes or it's going to get a bit like a presentation on the week's problem rather than something more organic.

    Don't get me wrong, I am enjoying things thusfar but the execution is not firing on all cylinders

    Snicketysnick on
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  • CptHamiltonCptHamilton Registered User regular
    It's impressive to me that they managed to make an episode about giant spiders, which actually features surprisingly competent CGI giant spiders, as boring as it was.
    Despite the spiders actually killing several people it never felt like they were really a threat. Simply closing a door was, in every instance, sufficient to stop them.

    All of the focus on 'why are the spiders here and why are they doing this?' seemed irrelevant. They're spiders. They don't need a motive to be spiders. How they got giant is a fair question, sure, but I care a lot less about that than the 'now that there are giant spiders, what do we do about that' angle. And, in the end, the solution to that was 'close the door with the spiders on the other side'.

    Also, the solution seemed like an entirely non-solution. The spiders were giant, according to their science talk, because spiders just keep growing. That implies these are all fairly old spiders, or else spiders which grow very quickly. They aren't inherently giant-sized. So presumably there are tons and tons of very small spiders who will, with enough time, grow into huge spiders. And given that there was spider activity all over town those proto-giant-spiders are presumably all over the damn place.

    If you take as a given that all the giant spiders are somehow already giant... there were still spiders all over town. Unless there happened to just be that one female spider or their spider trap drew in every spider from miles around they did nothing but clear the immediate vicinity. There should still be dozens or hundreds of giant spiders wandering around the city doing spider things.

    PSN,Steam,Live | CptHamiltonian
  • klemmingklemming Registered User regular
    It didn't do this to every spider, it did it to one spider, who passed it on to her children.
    Giant spider has large spider babies, so they didn't start from half an inch long.
    They all presumably stayed in the one nest, so they did take care of all the spiders.

    Nobody remembers the singer. The song remains.
  • CptHamiltonCptHamilton Registered User regular
    klemming wrote: »
    It didn't do this to every spider, it did it to one spider, who passed it on to her children.
    Giant spider has large spider babies, so they didn't start from half an inch long.
    They all presumably stayed in the one nest, so they did take care of all the spiders.
    They clearly didn't all stay in one nest because they left one trapped by a wall of vinegar in the apartment building across town.
    And if one spider wandered that far it seems like rather a stretch to say, "Just the one spider wandered off. All the other spiders stayed right here."

    I mean, if they're going to try to approach the spiders in a real-world science sort of way: spiders are not hive-dwelling creatures. They're highly territorial. They're also born in enormous broods. If there was one relatively juvenile spider old enough to go make a territory some distance away from the hotel there should have been tons of them all over town.

    PSN,Steam,Live | CptHamiltonian
  • klemmingklemming Registered User regular
    klemming wrote: »
    It didn't do this to every spider, it did it to one spider, who passed it on to her children.
    Giant spider has large spider babies, so they didn't start from half an inch long.
    They all presumably stayed in the one nest, so they did take care of all the spiders.
    They clearly didn't all stay in one nest because they left one trapped by a wall of vinegar in the apartment building across town.
    And if one spider wandered that far it seems like rather a stretch to say, "Just the one spider wandered off. All the other spiders stayed right here."

    I mean, if they're going to try to approach the spiders in a real-world science sort of way: spiders are not hive-dwelling creatures. They're highly territorial. They're also born in enormous broods. If there was one relatively juvenile spider old enough to go make a territory some distance away from the hotel there should have been tons of them all over town.
    That one was explicitly following the woman for Reasons (pheromones, I think). And if they're highly territorial, that suggests the rest should have stayed at the hotel, which they did.
    And looking for real-world science in Doctor Who doesn't seem like a great way to preserve your sanity.

    Nobody remembers the singer. The song remains.
  • CoinageCoinage Heaviside LayerRegistered User regular
    It's undeniably sloppy, but I can't get worked up about it when just last season we had the "resolution" of Lie of the Land.
    Maybe the offspring are sterile because of science chemicals and people without the Doctor's weird ideas can squish the stragglers, whatever who cares. I saw the conflict as "how do they get out of the hotel without dying" not "how can British government deal with some stupid giant spiders that aren't even aliens"

  • CptHamiltonCptHamilton Registered User regular
    Coinage wrote: »
    It's undeniably sloppy, but I can't get worked up about it when just last season we had the "resolution" of Lie of the Land.
    Maybe the offspring are sterile because of science chemicals and people without the Doctor's weird ideas can squish the stragglers, whatever who cares. I saw the conflict as "how do they get out of the hotel without dying" not "how can British government deal with some stupid giant spiders that aren't even aliens"
    I mean...walk?
    They were at the front door. It was webbed over but they made no attempt to get rid of or penetrate the webbing because The Doctor wanted to hang out and figure out why the spiders were trying to eat people.

    The episode just never made it feel like there were any stakes or much danger for anyone capable of closing a door.

    PSN,Steam,Live | CptHamiltonian
  • KrathoonKrathoon Registered User regular
    Coinage wrote: »
    It's undeniably sloppy, but I can't get worked up about it when just last season we had the "resolution" of Lie of the Land.
    Maybe the offspring are sterile because of science chemicals and people without the Doctor's weird ideas can squish the stragglers, whatever who cares. I saw the conflict as "how do they get out of the hotel without dying" not "how can British government deal with some stupid giant spiders that aren't even aliens"
    I mean...walk?
    They were at the front door. It was webbed over but they made no attempt to get rid of or penetrate the webbing because The Doctor wanted to hang out and figure out why the spiders were trying to eat people.

    The episode just never made it feel like there were any stakes or much danger for anyone capable of closing a door.
    The rich guy could have just left them there.

  • Andy JoeAndy Joe We claim the land for the highlord! The AdirondacksRegistered User regular
    Coinage wrote: »
    It's undeniably sloppy, but I can't get worked up about it when just last season we had the "resolution" of Lie of the Land.
    Maybe the offspring are sterile because of science chemicals and people without the Doctor's weird ideas can squish the stragglers, whatever who cares. I saw the conflict as "how do they get out of the hotel without dying" not "how can British government deal with some stupid giant spiders that aren't even aliens"
    I mean...walk?
    They were at the front door. It was webbed over but they made no attempt to get rid of or penetrate the webbing because The Doctor wanted to hang out and figure out why the spiders were trying to eat people.

    The episode just never made it feel like there were any stakes or much danger for anyone capable of closing a door.
    They didn't try to penetrate the webbing because it would have been futile. Stronger than steel, tougher than kevlar, remember?

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  • Zilla360Zilla360 21st Century. |She/Her| Trans* Woman In Aviators Firing A Bazooka. ⚛️Registered User regular
    It annoyed me that
    nobody tried to McGuyver up a flame-thrower to burn through all of the webbing.

    Kitchen Lighter + Duct Tape + Aerosol deodorant can. Or flammable bug spray.

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  • BogartBogart Streetwise Hercules Registered User, Moderator mod
    I dunno, a flamethrower in a hotel feels like maybe now you’re in a hotel that’s full of spiders and also on fire.

  • chrono_travellerchrono_traveller Registered User regular
    Bogart wrote: »
    I dunno, a flamethrower in a hotel feels like maybe now you’re in a hotel that’s full of spiders and also on fire.

    Sounds like a Jason Mendoza way to solve a problem, "I'm telling you, Molotov cocktails work. Anytime I had a problem and I threw a Molotov cocktail, boom! Right away, I had a different problem."

    The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it. ~ Terry Pratchett
  • klemmingklemming Registered User regular
    As the size of the fire increases, the number of problems it can't resolve reduces to zero.

    Nobody remembers the singer. The song remains.
  • ThawmusThawmus +Jackface Registered User regular
    edited October 2018
    Having now watched the episode:
    I think this might have been the worst episode I've seen in quite a while. There were some bad ones last season, but not this bad. I'm going to focus on the things I liked about it, assume that everything else was a negative, and just move on.
    • The Time Vortex hub was pretty fucking cool.
    • "I say 'Dude' now!"
    • The CGI for the spiders was pretty good.
    • They're grounding more and more solutions on actual science, which I enjoy. The vinegar prison was something I thought was clever.

    That's, uh, that's it, actually. The rest of it was pretty bad. So far for me, they're 2-2 this season.

    EDIT: My wife said last night, after watching the episode with me, that she's done watching Doctor Who. :sad:

    Thawmus on
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  • Zilla360Zilla360 21st Century. |She/Her| Trans* Woman In Aviators Firing A Bazooka. ⚛️Registered User regular
  • SteelhawkSteelhawk Registered User regular
    If I wasn't a little scared of spiders in the first place this episode would have been very boring.

    Also:
    WTF, Spider-Mom? You can bust through the floor and ceramic bathtub to eat a dude, but something silly like the double door entrance to a ballroom stops you from eating other dudes? Lame.

  • ThawmusThawmus +Jackface Registered User regular
    Steelhawk wrote: »
    If I wasn't a little scared of spiders in the first place this episode would have been very boring.

    Also:
    WTF, Spider-Mom? You can bust through the floor and ceramic bathtub to eat a dude, but something silly like the double door entrance to a ballroom stops you from eating other dudes? Lame.

    Oxygen is important!

    Twitch: Thawmus83
  • BogartBogart Streetwise Hercules Registered User, Moderator mod
  • klemmingklemming Registered User regular
    I liked the Ed Sheeran gag.
    I don't really get in situations when anyone asks me "Do you know who I am?!", but I now have a clear response for them.

    Nobody remembers the singer. The song remains.
  • ThawmusThawmus +Jackface Registered User regular
    Zilla360 wrote: »

    My favorite Q&A from that:

    4z5nmg7yrc75.png

    Twitch: Thawmus83
  • SteelhawkSteelhawk Registered User regular
    Bogart wrote: »
    I don't think that was the same spider.

    Hmm. Maybe? All giant spiders look the same when peeking between your fingers.

  • KrathoonKrathoon Registered User regular
    They need to revisit what that bandage monster was talking about.

  • BogartBogart Streetwise Hercules Registered User, Moderator mod
    Krathoon wrote: »
    They need to revisit what that bandage monster was talking about.

    I mean, I think it's pretty obvious that they will.

  • klemmingklemming Registered User regular
    I'm not missing arc words being forced into every episode whether they fit or not.
    RTD would have had Rosa be 'slightly psychic' or something so she could just mention the timeless child with no context or bearing on the episode.

    Nobody remembers the singer. The song remains.
  • Styrofoam SammichStyrofoam Sammich WANT. normal (not weird)Registered User regular
    Bogart wrote: »
    I dunno, a flamethrower in a hotel feels like maybe now you’re in a hotel that’s full of spiders and also on fire.

    Its ok, once they got out of the spider burning hotel they could just ignore the issue.

    wq09t4opzrlc.jpg
  • BethrynBethryn Unhappiness is Mandatory Registered User regular
    Chibnall should be really proud of "Grief needs Time." That's a smart one-liner.

    ...and of course, as always, Kill Hitler.
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