Well said. I was finding it too hard to explain, with my limited knowledge, so I gave up

ukaunz wrote:

I was trying to explain that different incarnations of the doctor can show up in the same time and place, and can even meet each other. However the same incarnation can show up in the same time and place as himself (like in "Father's Day") but they shouldn't interact with each other, is this right?

Mixed messages, I would say. In "The Day of the Doctor" we first see three incarnations of The Doctor interact and eventually all of them, if only via monitor. I'm not familiar with old Who, so I don't know how it was handled then. But with RTD's Who the philosophy seemed to be that The Doctor really shouldn't travel to the same place and time he'd been before, even if it was another incarnation. It's still the same Doctor, I mean...
The way I see it, Moffat just ignored this and did his own thing, and so we got 10, 12 and the War Doctor together in one room.
 

Interesting...! Although during the first 30 seconds, another Sherlock moment... "Something or other"... reminds me of something...
http://veritypodcast.tumblr.com/post/129349295879/non-ukians-watch-the-doctors-meditation

I agree with everything you say in your spoiler. At the same time, I'm a bit worried about what may come next...

Russell, the spoiler is not really about the first episode, it mainly has to do with... Jenna.
Anyway, I just finished watching the premiere and oh my... I don't I like it very much.

Spoiler »I liked the fact that we saw The Shadow Proclamation once again - I think it even was the same actress as in S4 - and the Ood. For a moment it felt a bit like RTD's Who again there. But apart from that... once again, not enough of the Doctor - and when he finally appeared (apart from the beginning of the episode) it just felt totally wrong to me. Even considering the fact that Clara actually states that he normally doesn't behave like this... it felt wrong. Very cool and all that, yes, but I just couldn't connect to it at all. And this basically goes for the whole episode, I'm afraid. Once again Moffat is giving us some huge revelation (about Davros and the Doctor), and once again it just feels to me like he's showing off.
Nevertheless, and this might sound absurd, I like Capaldi's Doctor very, very much. At this point Capaldi might be the only reason why I'm still watching DW, to be honest...

Last edited by SolarSystem (September 19, 2015 10:39 pm)

Spoiler »Capaldi is confirmed as my favourite Doctor, even though he didn't come in till late in the show.  I did think his entrance was silly, but it still made me laugh, particularly after the comment about looking for an anachronism.
 
I agree, that anachronism-moment made me laugh, too. It just dragged on for too long.

Spoiler »I do like that Moffat is a fan and I think that comes across.  However, I do think he maybe does a bit too much of rewriting the classic stuff, putting his own mark on it.  Now, if anybody watches any of the original Dalek episodes, they'll have to bear in mind this episode and the choice the Doctor had with Davros.  And that kind of thing seems to happen a lot.   Maybe it's a good thing: I don't know.  It makes me a bit uncomfortable.   One of the reasons I wasn't so keen on Clara is that Moffat seemed to be making her too important to the Doctor - all incarnations of the Doctor.

I totally agree with everything you're saying here. There is nothing wrong with a fanboy imprinting his own ideas onto something, after all that's what Mofftiss are doing with "Sherlock" very convincingly.
With DW however I can't help but feel that it's not just about imprinting your own ideas onto a show that has been in existence for over 50 years anymore. To me it feels more and more as if Moffat is usurping everything that is the universe of "Doctor Who" in order to turn it into something like "Doctor Who according to Steven Moffat". Almost everything he does is having consequences for what we've known about DW up until now - and I'm not sure I like that. Everything has to be more important, more awesome, charged with more meaning than ever before. It feels a bit self-important to me, to tell the truth.
And yes, Clara is one of the 'things' that is charged with meaning to the extreme. Not just meaning to the Doctor, but meaning to the whole show. She is not a 'normal' companion, I think that has been obvious from the get-go, and I'm not too happy with it. Like I said when we were talking about S8, it sometimes feels like the "Clara Oswald Show". It's certainly nice to have a clever companion and a companion that means a lot to the Doctor - and I mean, we've had this before, Rose certainly meant a lot to Ten, but on a completely different level. A more natural level, if you know what I mean. With Clara everything is so... heavy with meaning.

Last edited by SolarSystem (September 20, 2015 5:09 pm)

Oh.  My.  Goodness.  That ep!  And just nodding at everything you guys said about!  Very well put, already. 

Spoiler »At first I was super excited... I think that's partly the feeling you get with just seeing a favorite again, live on the screen, and just taking it all in without too much criticism.  Add in the wide-eyed 'whoah' moments with Davros and Missy at first (and how delightful she is to watch!) and how they were nicely integrating canon stuff, and... yeah, was excited. 

But yes, I agree with Solar... it's fun to give us fan-loving nods to the Classics... it's fun to creatively play with the Doctor's story (and sometimes it works super)...  It's also getting a little tiring sometimes feeling like Moffat is going 'hee hee hee! they'll never see THIS [revelation/change in history] coming!' and showing off tweaking as much of "what really happened" as he can get away with.  And yes, how much 'Meaning' is attached to things.  As utterly fascinating as it was to indulge the idea that the Doctor was to blame for such 'huge' things in his past, I'm not sure how that sits with the overall canon, or feeling thrown off by his character with the anachronism bit dragging on (as fun as it was to get a moment like that!!).  So many capital-W 'why's? this time around for me.  ;P  In particular, with him 'dying'.  Really, what?  How, why... how does he know he's Dying-dying to the point of sending Missy his confession?  River gave him extra regenerations, no?!  Not to mention, like Clara said, that it felt 'wrong'.
Just getting that off chest... we'll see.  Despite his harsher regard for some things, still loving Capaldi's Doctor, though, and watching for him.

No, I didn't Liberty, but thanks!  I don't mind little stuff here and there, but passed it over for the time being because I wasn't sure how much it gave away about the season.  Just thought the shift in storytelling was interesting, but yeah… really not sure about some of the things they're throwing at us again!

How long do you like to have spoiler tags for after the episode has aired?  I can't remember how long we waited last time?  Anyway, I'll put this in spoilers for now:

Spoiler » So the Doctor had to go back in time to give Davros the concept of mercy to give to the Daleks, but the reason he knew he had to go back in time to do that was because the Daleks already had the concept of mercy, and so he worked out that he must have given them it, and therefore that he had to go back in time to do that, so that they'd have it, so that he could know that he'd gone back in time to give them it, so that .... and what if he'd accidently stepped on a butterfly?  Ah!  Time travel - best not to think too much about it. 

Anyway, I loved this episode!  Top notch performances all round.   There seemed to be quite a bit of flagging up so that you could guess what was going to happen next (oh, the Doctor's going to be in the Davros "seat", Missy's going to lie to the Doctor about Clara being in the Dalek, the Doctor's going to find out that it was he who gave the Daleks the concept of mercy and that's going to explain what he does with Davros the child), but, I quite like that - it's meant to be for children, after all, and I can be a bit slow on the uptake, so I get some satisfaction about guessing ahead of time, etc.). 

Loved the whole Davros/Doctor interaction, especially when Davros turned out to be as evil as ever (it would have been so disappointing if he hadn't been!) and the Doctor turned out to be manipulating him too (but how far ahead was the Doctor?  Had he guessed Clara was alive, etc?  Was it all an act?  He obviously seemed to know from the beginning that the Tardis would survive.  He knew about the sewers - was he planning to do what he did all along?   But then it did seem as if Missy "saved" him - what was his plan if she hadn't arrived at that moment?   I'm going to have to watch it again). 

I loved Missy/the Master in this. I liked her in the last series, but she has really come into her own in this one.   Michelle Gomez seems to play her as a scarily intelligent and amoral school bully.   Some brilliant moments, like pushing Clara into the sewer to see how deep it was, the very thinly veiled deception of the Doctor over Clara in the dalek (didn't it look as if she wanted to be caught out?), poking Davros in the eye! 

Our questions from the first episode were (mostly) answered.  It looks like the Doctor's "confession" is going to be part of the story arc for the series.  Interesting to see Clara back as a Dalek after the way we were first introduced to her (hazy as that memory is).  I wonder if Daleks will be somehow involved in her exit?

Did I glimpse Hartnell and Baker running between the pillars? 

Minor quibble: is it necessary for Steven Moffat to go back and make everything his own - to the extent that his Doctor has changed the nature of the Davros and the Daleks right from their creation?   Come to think of it, was it the Doctor using the Dalek gun and saying "exterminate" that gave Davros/them that word too?  Or did he just do it to associate exterminate/Dalek/mercy in the young Davros? 

The history rewriting in the JJ Abrams Star Trek movies annoys me too!  I think they're great to watch, but a lot feels wrong, particularly Spock (just about everybody's favourite character in TOS) and his relationship with other characters.   But I'm OT.  Thanks for your answer.  We've just started a new series and already the creation of the Daleks has been altered.   Goodness knows how much will have changed forever by the end of the series!  Although I watched the original episodes and loved them as a child, they ended up sometimes boring me (what a confession!) as an adult.  I like Steven Moffat's writing and I think he's improving on the old versions, while still paying homage to them.   But this aspect of stamping his mark on them (and it's just him, isn't it?  Not the other writers so much?) starts to cross a line by changing how we have to view those old episodes, and by setting things up in a certain way for future writers. 

Spoilers for The Witch's Familiar follow!
One issue I have with the "mercy" thing, is why didn't the Doctor think of it earlier?   The Daleks had always been aware of mercy and able to say the word - why didn't he wonder about that before the Clara Dalek said it?   Years ago?  Maybe he just didn't think about it?   But if they'd always had that concept, then he'd have thought of the Daleks as beings who had that concept and wouldn't have felt it was inconsistent when ClaraDalek said it?   River doesn't seem to think it is in this clip.

Last edited by Liberty (September 27, 2015 3:46 pm)