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Post by Riff on Apr 16, 2006 14:31:45 GMT -5
Yeah, that's right up there with "this ship is unsinkable" and "at least it can't get worse". ;D Brainshare!! And eetah! It so got out. Now they're in for it. How do they know it isn't this incident that starts the final Time War? Or all the Time Wars? I mean, maybe everything is circular, ya know?Could be. I was wondering about that. Of course, I've seen the last two episodes in the season, and I still don't know what happened. Even if you did, you're not allowed to say.
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Post by Riff on Apr 16, 2006 14:36:06 GMT -5
It fixed itself. And now it knows everything. "The Daleks survive in me." That can't be good. Stop shootig and run away! They're dispensible but the Dalek isn't?! ?! ?! They should shoot this guy first and then get the Dalek! Holy crap!!! They solved the whole "stairs stop them" pertty dang effectively! (Heeeeeee on the scene - have them say all the things fans have said for years and then . . . make them eat those words! ;D ;D ;D ) Damn. I liked that soldier on the stairs. I think I know how to fight one single tin robot. You stupid stupid man. Did the Dalek give something/put something in Rose when she touched it?
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Post by Riff on Apr 16, 2006 14:43:24 GMT -5
Not dead!!!! They just think she's dead. Because of us. What? I feel your fear. Daleks don't fear. Oops. Took DNA from the wrong person, Dalek, baby! It's infected. It's good. It might kill itself because of Rose's DNA. Or, the infection could have other repercussions, that end the Dalek. Lock and load. Hee! Wow! It's in the bunker. You tortured me. He wants to kill the Collector. I can't say I blame it. I want freedom. Poor little soldier of tyranny. Don't we all, at one point or another? There it goes. Going to levitate right out of there. Bye, bye, little Dalek? How does it feel? You kinda feel for the little guy, stuck in that suit. Ah, now we see the octopus within. Rose. She's right, you know. He's no better than they are at this point. Rose changed it. It's mutating. No longer a space octopus. It's going to die because of her DNA. But it needs orders from her. She did it. She accomplished what weapons couldn't. Wow. ;D Perhaps the most dreadful thing about the Daleks is that they were once like us. For more information, see this excellent article: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalek
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Post by Riff on Apr 16, 2006 14:57:05 GMT -5
They are dead because of us. Oh!! She contaminated it. Woah. The woman you love. Weapons. Broken. Broken. Hair dryer. Why didn't I kill you? What am I? A Dalek with existential angst - I love it!!*laughs* Me, too. I think Sherman came up with the idea because, if any being knows who and what is, it's a Dalek. But if you take that certainty away, you get angst aplenty. ;D He explores this in more detail in his audio play Jubilee. Committing genocide against one's entire people probably leads one to become a bit gloomy.
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Post by Riff on Apr 16, 2006 15:04:50 GMT -5
Could be. I was wondering about that. Of course, I've seen the last two episodes in the season, and I still don't know what happened. The big one, where Gallifrey, Skaro, the Nestene's planet, the Gelph's planet, etc, were all destroyed, apparently happened in the Eighth Doctor's manifestation... so it's sorta behind him in the loop, and all the paradoxes and disjunctions have been resolved at this phase of the loop.... Or something. The BIG Time War that he's been speaking of this season? apparently was not covered by any shows: this is the first everyone is hearing about it. Or so I understand... anybody got anything else on it? Heh. I like Goddard. a LOT. The Time Wars are new to the mythos. In "Rose" it's implied that the Doctor has recently regenerated, so it seems likely that it was the Eighth Doctor who fought the Time Wars. It may well be that the cataclysmic end of the War was what caused the regeneration (though none of the other Time Lords had the chance to do this, it seems). You may be interested to know that, in the almost-canon of the novels and audio plays, Romana is the President of the High Council on Gallifrey. The writers of the TV series have confirmed that she was the president when Gallifrey was destroyed (again - it's already been destroyed once in the novels).
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Post by Riff on Apr 16, 2006 15:06:53 GMT -5
Well, that's what she said, but I got a different vibe from her. Maybe it's just me, and you are probably right. Hey, I didn't say she wasn't ambitious as all hell! I just think she's gonna be a leetle less insane than whatsishead was. She's happy as heck that she got the Klingon-type promotion, and she's gonna make the best of it: but I rather like her, myself. Of course, I may be completely on crack. Or there may be another reason for you to leap to her defence.
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Post by Riff on Apr 16, 2006 15:08:24 GMT -5
"Someone's collecting aliens. That makes you Exhibit A." Does that strike anyone else as an incautious thing to say? I mean, dude looks human. Maybe he could have passed. Passing as human. How demeaning. ;D
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Post by Riff on Apr 16, 2006 15:12:25 GMT -5
It fixed itself. And now it knows everything. "The Daleks survive in me." That can't be good. Stop shootig and run away! They're dispensible but the Dalek isn't?! ?! ?! They should shoot this guy first and then get the Dalek! Holy crap!!! They solved the whole "stairs stop them" pertty dang effectively! (Heeeeeee on the scene - have them say all the things fans have said for years and then . . . make them eat those words! ;D ;D ;D ) Actually, they've been able to levitate for years. At least since the Sixth Doctor. I think it was him. Maybe Seventh. It was the Seventh. The scene didn't look particularly impressive, of course. Maybe we all do. Apart from anything else, we have reality TV to deal with.
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Post by Riff on Apr 16, 2006 15:14:36 GMT -5
Did the Dalek give something/put something in Rose when she touched it? T'other way 'round, huh? I find myself displeased with the ending. Mostly because... the last of a race, and now even that one is dead. Plus, I was hoping for more. The story was good, but I find myself dissatisfied, all the same. That's right. They're all dead. Honestly.
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Post by Riff on Apr 16, 2006 15:18:05 GMT -5
Still trying to work through my reactions to last night's episode. Thing is...I felt like it was leading somewhere it didn't go. I still do, sort of - it's leading to something bigger, later in the season. Which has partly to do with having been told over and over how great this episode was - it was going to be nearly impossible to live up to that hype, unless the writers were Joss. Right now, I'm watching primarily to see Christopher Eccleston act - he's wonderful, and I'd sit down to watch him (to use an already-overused cliche) read from the phone book. I'm not saying, incidentally, that I thought it was a bad episode - I didn't. I really enjoyed most of it. But I guess I feel that it suffered from a lack of the action that usually makes Doctor Who fun. The writers seem to think they can do "character development" or "action" but not both in the same episode. Well, we do see a Dalek kill 200 people (not all onscreen, admittedly, but the onscreen bodycount is higher than in any other epsiode of Doctor Who). I found the combat scenes quite action-packed. Have you rewatched the ep?
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Post by Riff on Apr 16, 2006 15:18:54 GMT -5
Could be. I was wondering about that. Of course, I've seen the last two episodes in the season, and I still don't know what happened. Me, too. I have been noticing all the references to what we find out at the end every once and a while. Of course, I still can't make out what it all means. I should go read Riff's analysis. You really should, you know.
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Post by Rachael on Apr 17, 2006 0:04:51 GMT -5
Still trying to work through my reactions to last night's episode. Thing is...I felt like it was leading somewhere it didn't go. I still do, sort of - it's leading to something bigger, later in the season. Which has partly to do with having been told over and over how great this episode was - it was going to be nearly impossible to live up to that hype, unless the writers were Joss. Right now, I'm watching primarily to see Christopher Eccleston act - he's wonderful, and I'd sit down to watch him (to use an already-overused cliche) read from the phone book. I'm not saying, incidentally, that I thought it was a bad episode - I didn't. I really enjoyed most of it. But I guess I feel that it suffered from a lack of the action that usually makes Doctor Who fun. The writers seem to think they can do "character development" or "action" but not both in the same episode. Well, we do see a Dalek kill 200 people (not all onscreen, admittedly, but the onscreen bodycount is higher than in any other epsiode of Doctor Who). I found the combat scenes quite action-packed. Have you rewatched the ep? I have. The primary reason that I found the action scenes uninteresting is I knew how they'd come out, before they started. There was absolutely no chance that any of the bullets and whatnot would make an impact. So they were filler, to me, rather than suspenseful action. The only folks I was worried about (in the sense that I worried about none of the other 200 people, since they were equivalent to the XYY prison inmates in Alien 3 - they were cannon fodder) were Rose and the cute and geeky cataloger. HIM, I thought they might actually kill - couldn't be sure if he'd get away when the bulkheads came down. But the soldiers? Marked for death, all of them, the second that Dalek freed itself. Bodycount alone isn't actually what I look for in a successful action scene...and when you know how a battle has to end before it begins, it's more boring than anything else. IMO, of course.
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Post by Rachael on Apr 17, 2006 0:11:06 GMT -5
T'other way 'round, huh? I find myself displeased with the ending. Mostly because... the last of a race, and now even that one is dead. Plus, I was hoping for more. The story was good, but I find myself dissatisfied, all the same. That's right. They're all dead. Honestly. And I remind you again, Riff, that YOU can say that, having seen all there is to see. Myself, I haven't downloaded and watched any of the new episodes, so I have to judge based only on what I've seen, not on what I might guess will come later. And yeah, if one survived, others might have, but the episode was nonetheless trying to drive home the parallels between two beings who both at least believe (as we're supposed to) that they are the last of their kind, and so it was sad more than anything else. Actually, it was as usual for me - I found the Dalek far more sad than frightening. I expect if one was in my living room, it'd be the other way around, but on my television - I see a being who kills because it has no choice, because a madman decided to make it that way, and I remember that they started out as humanoids with free will. No Dalek since at least the first generation has had a choice about what it would be, and so they're victims just as much as the people they murder. The Doctor used to understand that, at least some of the time. Before the end of the worlds.
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Post by Riff on Apr 17, 2006 4:43:14 GMT -5
Well, we do see a Dalek kill 200 people (not all onscreen, admittedly, but the onscreen bodycount is higher than in any other epsiode of Doctor Who). I found the combat scenes quite action-packed. Have you rewatched the ep? I have. The primary reason that I found the action scenes uninteresting is I knew how they'd come out, before they started. There was absolutely no chance that any of the bullets and whatnot would make an impact. So they were filler, to me, rather than suspenseful action. The only folks I was worried about (in the sense that I worried about none of the other 200 people, since they were equivalent to the XYY prison inmates in Alien 3 - they were cannon fodder) were Rose and the cute and geeky cataloger. HIM, I thought they might actually kill - couldn't be sure if he'd get away when the bulkheads came down. But the soldiers? Marked for death, all of them, the second that Dalek freed itself. Bodycount alone isn't actually what I look for in a successful action scene...and when you know how a battle has to end before it begins, it's more boring than anything else. IMO, of course. There's not much in the way of suspense to those scenes, obviously, but there is no lack of action, which was your original point. I suppose it's rather like the police station scene in The Terminator (which I suspect this was modelled on to some extent): we know it's going to kill them all, because that's what such things do; it's their nature. The scenes had two functions: 1) To show what a Dalek is for viewers new to them; 2) To show off certain new features/effects that make it seem more of a threatening "killing machine" for viewers who already know about them. Doctor Who has thrived on anonymous death over the years. The monsters have to kill, and so it is normal for there to be characters marked for death (though not on such a scale, admittedly). I find the most effective action scene the build up to the first battle, when the Dalek absorbs energy and information and then begins to open fire (randomly?) at various objects around it.
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Post by Riff on Apr 17, 2006 5:08:06 GMT -5
That's right. They're all dead. Honestly. And I remind you again, Riff, that YOU can say that, having seen all there is to see. Myself, I haven't downloaded and watched any of the new episodes, so I have to judge based only on what I've seen, not on what I might guess will come later. And yeah, if one survived, others might have, but the episode was nonetheless trying to drive home the parallels between two beings who both at least believe (as we're supposed to) that they are the last of their kind, and so it was sad more than anything else. Actually, it was as usual for me - I found the Dalek far more sad than frightening. I expect if one was in my living room, it'd be the other way around, but on my television - I see a being who kills because it has no choice, because a madman decided to make it that way, and I remember that they started out as humanoids with free will. No Dalek since at least the first generation has had a choice about what it would be, and so they're victims just as much as the people they murder. The Doctor used to understand that, at least some of the time. Before the end of the worlds. That wasn't me being spoilerish. I mean, this is the Daleks! The First Doctor helped to wipe out all the Daleks on Skaro in "The Daleks"; the Second Doctor helped them destroy themselves in "The Evil of the Daleks"; the Seventh Doctor destroyed their mothership and Skaro itself in "Rememberance of the Daleks". No more Daleks? I think the ep is actually about free will (or the lack of it), and what a terrible thing it can be. It's an interesting question: if the Daleks have no free will, then do they deserve our sympathy? Yes, they were created by a madman, but having been created, they are what they are - merciless and genocidal. Do we pity them for that, or do we see them as an irredemable threat? There is no redemption for this Dalek: "This is not life; this is sickness. I shall not be like you. Order my destruction!" As with "Genesis of the Daleks", the parallel is drawn. Davros's fantasy about creating a virus that will destroy all other forms of life is contrasted with the Doctor's agony over whether to commit genocide. In "Dalek", we see that the Doctor can move beyond what he has been made into. The Dalek can not. It's ultimate act of hatred and extermination is aimed at itself.
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