DW: Victory of the Daleks--Reaction Post
Apr. 18th, 2010 12:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amberfocusI am sort of at a loss on this episode.
My reaction to the first two were generally favorable, though they had their problems, but this one I was pretty disappointed in. I know Doctor Who likes to use sketchy science, but there was nothing even slightly plausible about airplanes in gravity bubbles in space. First off those airplanes would not have been powerful enough to even breach the atmosphere of Earth. They weren't even jet engines, for crying out loud. The pilot's would have been overwhelmed by the exhuast fumes that would be trapped in the bubbles and would pass out or lose visibility through the bubble from the smog. Even with oxygen tanks there would not have been enough air to make it from Earth to space and back again. And there was no way they could have gotten there in time. They didn't even try to make it plausible. It was like someone had the idea of, "Ooo WWII spitfires in space and lasers shooting at them," and ran with it. Or rather tripped with it. And the CGI? Seriously, did they get their budget cut? Because CGI this season so far has been horribly obvious and a terrible joke.
Honestly, I don't care if Amy wears super short mini skirts or any of the hoohaa that's been going on about that. Let's face it, they're still longer than Leela's outfit or many of Jo Grant's. But the fact that not one person in that war room raised their eyes at her short skirt felt very off to me. I mean Queen Victoria certainly commented about Rose's attire in Tooth and Claw because it was extremely inappropriate for the time period. Someone should have made a comment here. Amy does not have her own TARDIS key yet, so no perception filter, so no hiding the fact that her long, long legs were almost fully on display. Also, there seemed to be an awful lot of women in the war room. I know they participated in the war as nurses and drivers, but would they have actually been in a war room during that time period other than making tea or something? I'm not sure, but as insular as the big boys were during that time period, I have a hard time believing it. If anyone knows for certain I'd be interested in knowing.
Amy doesn't remember the Daleks. Okay, so there have been a lot of theories floating around out there and I think the one I like the most is that Amy is actually from the 1990's and not this century. There was a screen cap of Rory's hospital ID that said it was issued in 1990, and it was pointed out that the vehicles in her hometown were all older models, no new ones, so I think that's probably why she doesn't remember the Daleks stealing Earth. It hadn't happened yet. The Doctor is rubbish with time travel for a Time Lord so it's possible, especially during regeneration sickness, that he wouldn't have been paying attention to the actual date he picked Amy up on. What I don't get is when she didn't remember he didn't ask her right then when she was from. It's the first thing I would have asked.
Amy saves the day--again. Um...yeah, I mentioned I didn't want to see Wesley saves the ship becoming a recurrent theme. This is a pattern already and I don't like it. I love Amy, but this is the sort of behavior that annoys people after a while and makes people roar about Mary Sues. The Doctor should save the day, the assistant should assist, and when needed save the Doctor from his idiocy and once in a while save the ship. Also, I did not like the Doctor leaving Amy behind on Earth when he went to the Dalek ship. The safest place for her would have been the TARDIS if that was what he was really worried about. Not, as she said, London in the middle of the Blitz.
Technicolor Daleks--oh good grief, they look ridiculous and this is on a species that already looks like pepperpots and has a toilet plunger for an appendage. They didn't need help looking any more ridiculous than they already do. On a good day I don't like the Daleks as monsters on Doctor Who. I've never thought they were even slightly scary (and I've been watching since 1974 and seen most of what is available from before I was born, so that's a lot of Dalek eps) until they learned to fly and even then my reaction was more to roll my eyes than anything else. The only thing that made them even remotely good characters was the way that Nine and Ten reacted to them. Eleven let me down here. I was just...disappointed in how he dealt with all of it. It was unconvincing.
I liked the idea of the android, but not the execution of it. Look kiddies, remembering the one who got away can stop a bomb from going off. Yeah. Right. And the fact that the Doctor let the android bomb go at the end, no reprogramming, no you better come along with me (and how awesome would that have been, really? An android as a second companion on the TARDIS?). No, let's just let this bomb go swanning off and hope (because the universe is good and fair) that the Daleks won't be back to restart him in the future. Hmm...that might actually be a plot point. We'll see. Also, the whole positronic brain thing made me go "Star Trek, Data," and knocked me out of the show for a moment.
And as for the crack at the end when the TARDIS vanished, (uses valley girl 80's voice) like oh, my gosh, SM, subtlety is so your middle name. I would never guess, not ever, that the running theme throughout season five is the giant crack that you keep inserting unobtrusively into each episode. Let's see, the one in Amy's wall, which was okay, because it was the plot of that episode really, but the one on his scanner in the TARDIS, the one on Space Ship England and the one in the war room had so darn much attention drawn to them it was like being hit over the head with a cricket bat. Okay, maybe the one on the scanner wasn't quite as obvious but it did stay on it for a few seconds, but the other two were not in any way subtle. I liked the subtley of Bad Wolf being woven through series one, and Torchwood through series two. I don't remember the exact theme of season three other than "Ten is Emo and missing Rose," but I'm sure there was one to do with Harry Saxon (or maybe that was just it, mentions of Saxon and posters and stuff). Season Four of course was, "She is Returning," which was not so sledgehammery, though more obvious than the previous three seasons. But this is just blatant which makes it no fun.
After watching this episode, do you know what I want to see at the end of season five? I want to see the shower scene from Dallas where Pam wakes up and finds Bobby showering and realizes the last year was all a dream. I want to see Ten waking up after Waters of Mars and realizing that it was all just a dream (he went to dream with the Ood, after all) and that he was shown a possible future of what might happen if he cocks things up. (Or Ten2 waking up in Pete's world to find Rose in the shower and telling her all about this crazy dream he just had). Barring that, please, please, please let the next few episodes be better. I want my excitement back. I want better written episodes. I think Matt Smith can do this, but he needs better material. I'm not even sure David Tennant could have saved this episode. Heck, I'm not even sure Christopher Eccleston could have saved this episode.
I think I'll go watch Rose now and remember how it's supposed to be done.
My reaction to the first two were generally favorable, though they had their problems, but this one I was pretty disappointed in. I know Doctor Who likes to use sketchy science, but there was nothing even slightly plausible about airplanes in gravity bubbles in space. First off those airplanes would not have been powerful enough to even breach the atmosphere of Earth. They weren't even jet engines, for crying out loud. The pilot's would have been overwhelmed by the exhuast fumes that would be trapped in the bubbles and would pass out or lose visibility through the bubble from the smog. Even with oxygen tanks there would not have been enough air to make it from Earth to space and back again. And there was no way they could have gotten there in time. They didn't even try to make it plausible. It was like someone had the idea of, "Ooo WWII spitfires in space and lasers shooting at them," and ran with it. Or rather tripped with it. And the CGI? Seriously, did they get their budget cut? Because CGI this season so far has been horribly obvious and a terrible joke.
Honestly, I don't care if Amy wears super short mini skirts or any of the hoohaa that's been going on about that. Let's face it, they're still longer than Leela's outfit or many of Jo Grant's. But the fact that not one person in that war room raised their eyes at her short skirt felt very off to me. I mean Queen Victoria certainly commented about Rose's attire in Tooth and Claw because it was extremely inappropriate for the time period. Someone should have made a comment here. Amy does not have her own TARDIS key yet, so no perception filter, so no hiding the fact that her long, long legs were almost fully on display. Also, there seemed to be an awful lot of women in the war room. I know they participated in the war as nurses and drivers, but would they have actually been in a war room during that time period other than making tea or something? I'm not sure, but as insular as the big boys were during that time period, I have a hard time believing it. If anyone knows for certain I'd be interested in knowing.
Amy doesn't remember the Daleks. Okay, so there have been a lot of theories floating around out there and I think the one I like the most is that Amy is actually from the 1990's and not this century. There was a screen cap of Rory's hospital ID that said it was issued in 1990, and it was pointed out that the vehicles in her hometown were all older models, no new ones, so I think that's probably why she doesn't remember the Daleks stealing Earth. It hadn't happened yet. The Doctor is rubbish with time travel for a Time Lord so it's possible, especially during regeneration sickness, that he wouldn't have been paying attention to the actual date he picked Amy up on. What I don't get is when she didn't remember he didn't ask her right then when she was from. It's the first thing I would have asked.
Amy saves the day--again. Um...yeah, I mentioned I didn't want to see Wesley saves the ship becoming a recurrent theme. This is a pattern already and I don't like it. I love Amy, but this is the sort of behavior that annoys people after a while and makes people roar about Mary Sues. The Doctor should save the day, the assistant should assist, and when needed save the Doctor from his idiocy and once in a while save the ship. Also, I did not like the Doctor leaving Amy behind on Earth when he went to the Dalek ship. The safest place for her would have been the TARDIS if that was what he was really worried about. Not, as she said, London in the middle of the Blitz.
Technicolor Daleks--oh good grief, they look ridiculous and this is on a species that already looks like pepperpots and has a toilet plunger for an appendage. They didn't need help looking any more ridiculous than they already do. On a good day I don't like the Daleks as monsters on Doctor Who. I've never thought they were even slightly scary (and I've been watching since 1974 and seen most of what is available from before I was born, so that's a lot of Dalek eps) until they learned to fly and even then my reaction was more to roll my eyes than anything else. The only thing that made them even remotely good characters was the way that Nine and Ten reacted to them. Eleven let me down here. I was just...disappointed in how he dealt with all of it. It was unconvincing.
I liked the idea of the android, but not the execution of it. Look kiddies, remembering the one who got away can stop a bomb from going off. Yeah. Right. And the fact that the Doctor let the android bomb go at the end, no reprogramming, no you better come along with me (and how awesome would that have been, really? An android as a second companion on the TARDIS?). No, let's just let this bomb go swanning off and hope (because the universe is good and fair) that the Daleks won't be back to restart him in the future. Hmm...that might actually be a plot point. We'll see. Also, the whole positronic brain thing made me go "Star Trek, Data," and knocked me out of the show for a moment.
And as for the crack at the end when the TARDIS vanished, (uses valley girl 80's voice) like oh, my gosh, SM, subtlety is so your middle name. I would never guess, not ever, that the running theme throughout season five is the giant crack that you keep inserting unobtrusively into each episode. Let's see, the one in Amy's wall, which was okay, because it was the plot of that episode really, but the one on his scanner in the TARDIS, the one on Space Ship England and the one in the war room had so darn much attention drawn to them it was like being hit over the head with a cricket bat. Okay, maybe the one on the scanner wasn't quite as obvious but it did stay on it for a few seconds, but the other two were not in any way subtle. I liked the subtley of Bad Wolf being woven through series one, and Torchwood through series two. I don't remember the exact theme of season three other than "Ten is Emo and missing Rose," but I'm sure there was one to do with Harry Saxon (or maybe that was just it, mentions of Saxon and posters and stuff). Season Four of course was, "She is Returning," which was not so sledgehammery, though more obvious than the previous three seasons. But this is just blatant which makes it no fun.
After watching this episode, do you know what I want to see at the end of season five? I want to see the shower scene from Dallas where Pam wakes up and finds Bobby showering and realizes the last year was all a dream. I want to see Ten waking up after Waters of Mars and realizing that it was all just a dream (he went to dream with the Ood, after all) and that he was shown a possible future of what might happen if he cocks things up. (Or Ten2 waking up in Pete's world to find Rose in the shower and telling her all about this crazy dream he just had). Barring that, please, please, please let the next few episodes be better. I want my excitement back. I want better written episodes. I think Matt Smith can do this, but he needs better material. I'm not even sure David Tennant could have saved this episode. Heck, I'm not even sure Christopher Eccleston could have saved this episode.
I think I'll go watch Rose now and remember how it's supposed to be done.
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Date: 2010-04-18 10:37 am (UTC)After watching this episode, do you know what I want to see at the end of season five? I want to see the shower scene from Dallas where Pam wakes up and finds Bobby showering and realizes the last year was all a dream.
I made a similar observation in the comments to my reaction post of The Eleventh Hour which led to
Enjoy....it's a hoot! :D