Doctor Who, Season Nine

[Aractus]

Well the finale was indeed a huge cop-out. Without wanting to spoil it for those who haven't seen it, we were really promised in the trailers that the Doctor his returning to Gallifrey, and it would have given us a chance to see it in all its glory, but what we instead got to see was part of the wastelands, and only a handful of high-ranking Gallifreyans. I wasn't that impressed with Ashildr's character either, and Moffat never resolved the question as to why Missy (the Master) put Clara in touch with Doctor Who to begin with. It was nice to see the use of the classic-era console room, however I would have much preferred it if the device was labelled what it is: a type-40 time-travel capsule. It annoys me to no end to hear Timelords refer to it as "TARDIS", it's a TTC!!

I did like the penultimate episode though.

[Aractus]

Okay, here are some screenshots of the classic console room, which is the sole redeeming feature of the finale. They are more-or-less spoiler-free except that they show Clara (thus they're in hide tags).

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Here is the current console room:





And here's the classic console room:

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As you can clearly see, the classic console room looks about 100 times better than the current 12th doctor one!

And as a spoiler there's one thing that really annoyed me about the episode (SPOILERS):

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I didn't like that the Doc got his TARDIS back in the end. It would have been much more interesting to leave him without it, much like what happened to the Fourth doctor in the entirety of S12. Well yes he still had the TARDIS in some episodes, but we never saw the interior. It'd be nice to give us a break from it, and then return to that stunning classic-era console room instead of the bloated design of the current one.

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[Esquilax]

I'm beginning to suspect that this writing team, Moffat particularly, doesn't understand that their audience is comprised of thinking human beings. The earnestness with which Clara's several minute death sequence was presented, when they have done the same thing with literally every other principle character in the series since Moffat took over as showrunner, often multiple times, only to reverse it, only makes sense if they just think the audience is stupid. You don't spend that much time on an emotional death scene if you think your viewers have been conditioned by year upon year of "deaths," that don't stick not to take such things seriously anymore.

I knew from the moment she died that Clara wasn't going to stay dead, and lo and behold, she comes back to life for the final episode. This has happened with Amy, with Rory, with Eleven, with Rory, with Rory, with Clara (twice!), with Eleven again, with Twelve, with Missy, with Osgood, and with Twelve again, and yet every time we're expected to just take the death with po-faced seriousness, as though it's a real thing that'll definitely happen this time. Just keep going back to that well, guys. Nobody will notice the pattern, because we're all drooling imbeciles. Just make up more space words to write around it!

The only death that was remotely permanent was Osgood, and that was only the case because they literally had a spare!

[Aractus]

Yeah he's an idiot and he blatantly lied when he said (spoilers):

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“Literally I have nothing in mind for Clara, she’s vanished from the fictional universe forever. But I think what she’s going to do by the end of this series will shock, horrify and surprise you, in roughly that order.” - his exact words at the Lucca Comics & Games panel

Yet she's floating around with Ashildr for God-knows how long in a TTC, while both of them are "immortal".

Moffat has really screwed up on the immorality front. At least Jack became the face of Boe overtime, yet we're meant to believe that the artificial device keeping Ashildr alive keeps her in a perfectly-preserved state perpetually. I'm not buying it - it's impossible. Human beings still need energy to function, every living thing does, and if those metabolic pathways are inhibited in anyway from the device then she's not going to stay in perfect condition for 4.5 billion years.

And he screwed up with Gallifrey as well. The Doctor emerges 4.5 billion years into the future, and at this point all the Timelords who once knew him would be long-since dead. Yet all of the Timelords know him and have known him before! It just makes no sense whatsoever. And now we know that Gallifrey survives until the end of time as well, so no he can never play the "Gallifrey in danger" card again.

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The classic console room though is absolutely gorgeous. It just goes to prove they've never improved upon the original design seen in "An Unearthly Child". I just wish they'd bring it back permanently and get rid of the Smith era console rooms permanently. I never liked any of them, I did like the Eccleston-Tennant one though.

[Cyberman]

Yeah, the proper console room was a beautiful touch. I wonder how much pull Capaldi had over using it?

On the Gallifrey thing: I got the impression that the planet had been placed in the future deliberately so it wouldn't be found, including all the Timelords who knew him. I'd have to watch it again to confirm that.

Jumping back a little to Heaven Sent, which I watched again this morning: on the whole I thought it was a really cleverly done episode, some great dialogue (see, Moff? You can do it if you try) and of course Capaldi shows again why he was born to be the Doctor. It was almost perfectly self-contained, but for a few niggling nitpicks which could have stood one more rewrite.

• I worked out early on that the castle was inside the confession dial - to be honest, it wasn't too hard. So why would the stars be an accurate indication of time? They, like everything else, were a manifestation of the dial, akin to the Matrix reality in The Deadly Assassin. Of course, the Doctor doesn't know that until he breaks out, but it was nice of Rassilon to include that feature. Oh but wait - he was expecting the Doctor to confess his knowledge of this ridiculous 'hybrid' gimmick, at which point he could just leave.
  
  
• If every room reset to its original configuration after a length of time, what about the rooms he finds in which his previous changes are still there? The writing in the sand, the burned-out skull (nice touch that they modelled each one on Capaldi's own skull), the dirty shovel, the clothes drying by the fire...
  
  
• The clothes drying by the fire. It transpires that after every reboot, the Doctor goes through the exact set of events over and over again. So where did the fry clothes come from? Did the original iteration of the Doctor go about naked after laying them out to dry? Again, how thoughtful.
  
  
• This one really is a biggie. Each iteration, the same sequence of events play out in exactly the same way. The only difference is in room 12, where he progressively buys himself a little more time to tell his story (why doesn't this room reset itself?), which I thought was a nice touch. This means that all the confessions the Doctor makes are the same ones, over and over again. In other words, he's adding no new information that the Timelords don't already know. Maybe it's a feature of the dial, that it's programmed to open only when he gives the information they want? Maybe; but it's indicated at the end that they can hear him through the dial. Again, just one nore rewrite could sew up these things. In fact...
  
  
• Why would the Doctor go through the same actions, the same thoughts, the same discoveries etc in the same order each time? Just because he gets reset doean't necessarily mean that events must repeat unvaryingly.
  

Other than that, I rate this as probably the best of this season (no, I won't submit to the nu-Who convention of calling it "series". It's Season 52, so there.)

[Tiberius]

What always annoyed me about the whole immortality thing with Ashildr was why there weren't more immortal beings around. If it was that easy to make someone immortal, the entire universe would be.

[Aractus]

On the Gallifrey thing: I got the impression that the planet had been placed in the future deliberately so it wouldn't be found, including all the Timelords who knew him. I'd have to watch it again to confirm that.

But he's trapped in the "confession dial" for 4.5 billion years, and we clearly see that time advances since the celestial bodies are moving and Doc says it's "2 billion years" in the future at one point. I disagree that the confession-dial runs in its own timeline.

• The clothes drying by the fire. It transpires that after every reboot, the Doctor goes through the exact set of events over and over again. So where did the fry clothes come from? Did the original iteration of the Doctor go about naked after laying them out to dry? Again, how thoughtful.
  

That didn't bother me, he probably took them off and then found some other clothes somewhere else. But why was Clara's picture 6 thousand years old (the length of time he'd been in the dial)?

• This one really is a biggie. Each iteration, the same sequence of events play out in exactly the same way. The only difference is in room 12, where he progressively buys himself a little more time to tell his story (why doesn't this room reset itself?), which I thought was a nice touch. This means that all the confessions the Doctor makes are the same ones, over and over again. In other words, he's adding no new information that the Timelords don't already know. Maybe it's a feature of the dial, that it's programmed to open only when he gives the information they want? Maybe; but it's indicated at the end that they can hear him through the dial. Again, just one nore rewrite could sew up these things. In fact...
  

Yes I didn't like the fact that everything kept playing out exactly the same. Especially since the picture was aging and would have turned to dust. However, I'm willing to forgive that since it was a very well done episode.

Other than that, I rate this as probably the best of this season (no, I won't submit to the nu-Who convention of calling it "series". It's Season 52, so there.)

Well it's Doctor Who (2005) Series/Season 9. One of my pet peeves, the thread title should really say "Doctor Who (2005), Season Nine" as "Doctor Who, Season Nine" is a different season.

[Cyberman]

What always annoyed me about the whole immortality thing with Ashildr was why there weren't more immortal beings around. If it was that easy to make someone immortal, the entire universe would be.

Well exactly. Just from that story arc alone we've got Ashildr and Sam Swift - what happened to him? - and thise Mire medpack things can't have been the only ones around. A warrior race would produce the things by the millions, surely. Do they make everyone immortal? Why not pre-install them into their bodies, in that case? You'd have an unstoppable army.

[Aractus]

What always annoyed me about the whole immortality thing with Ashildr was why there weren't more immortal beings around. If it was that easy to make someone immortal, the entire universe would be.

Nah only the Doctor is stupid enough to go around making people immortal. Everyone else has more sense than that.

[Cyberman]

Incidentally, who keeps hacking all these silly typos into my posts?