Lord Woodlouse wrote:
Completely evil? I'd not go that far. There was a certain justice in what he did, for all it was much worse than we normally see him. But I felt it was something the Doctor could very well do if angered enough.
The Doctor is a fan of claiming that there's objective evil. And in this instance, what he's doing is probably at least as bad as what the cybermen do... Of course, if the commentry on the BBC website is to be believed, he merely left them there for an indeterminate time. Given the number of people they killed, that 'very long time' might even be less than they'd get in an American court...
Besides anything else, who knows if these creatures are as vulnerable to sensory deprivation in the same way a human is?
I would imagine so, otherwise, why bother with the needlessly unusual punishments?
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Lord Woodlouse wrote:Meh, I loved it. I like seeing the Doctor's darker side.
Correction: His absolutely black, sadistic, completely evil, Valeyard side.
Completely evil? I'd not go that far. There was a certain justice in what he did, for all it was much worse than we normally see him. But I felt it was something the Doctor could very well do if angered enough.
Besides anything else, who knows if these creatures are as vulnerable to sensory deprivation in the same way a human is?
I wouldn't say justice, I'd say revenge. The doctor was given a look at a world where he could have been happy, had children, settled down and died a happy man, and either a) if the family had not been chasing him, he'd never have known that he could be anything other than what he was, or b) that he could have stayed hidden and lived the life, but was forced to give it up because of them. I'm sure he could have just let them die at the end of their 3 month life span and been done with it, but he chose to go that extra lightyear in terms of punishment level.
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Interesting. Multiple sharp eyed people have said they saw someone at the memorial who looked like one of the Saxon goons we saw a few weeks ago (The woman who was monitoring Martha and her mums calls)
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In the end the doctor simply gave them what they sought...
"Prodesse Non Nocere." "It's all about popularity really, if your invisible friend that tells you to invade places is called Napoleon, you're a loony, if he's called Jesus then you're the president." "I'd drive more people insane, but I'd have to double back and pick them up first..." "All it takes for bullshit to thrive is for rational men to do nothing." - Kevin Farrell, B.A. Journalism. BOTM - EBC - Horseman - G&C - Vampire
Keevan_Colton wrote:In the end the doctor simply gave them what they sought...
Showing them that eternal life isn't all it's cracked up to be?
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Keevan_Colton wrote:In the end the doctor simply gave them what they sought...
Showing them that eternal life isn't all it's cracked up to be?
Yep, I'm attending to some D&D stuff and its a classic in that...wish to live forever and promptly get turned into a statue or something equally unpleasant.
"Prodesse Non Nocere." "It's all about popularity really, if your invisible friend that tells you to invade places is called Napoleon, you're a loony, if he's called Jesus then you're the president." "I'd drive more people insane, but I'd have to double back and pick them up first..." "All it takes for bullshit to thrive is for rational men to do nothing." - Kevin Farrell, B.A. Journalism. BOTM - EBC - Horseman - G&C - Vampire
Tithonus Syndrome is far too often done in Dr Who. Hell, they had a flavour of it the other week in that one with the regeneration machine.
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NecronLord wrote:Anyway... Since when did the Doctor torture his defeated enemies with eternal sensory deprivation?
Even the 4th Doctor did something similar, trapping Sutekh the Destroyer in a pretty featureless time corridor loop until he died of old age in Pyramids of Mars. That guy was in there for thousands upon thousands of years.
Keevan_Colton wrote:In the end the doctor simply gave them what they sought...
Showing them that eternal life isn't all it's cracked up to be?
Yep, I'm attending to some D&D stuff and its a classic in that...wish to live forever and promptly get turned into a statue or something equally unpleasant.
Exactly what happened to Time Lord President Borrusa in The Five Doctors...
Parallax wrote:Even the 4th Doctor did something similar, trapping Sutekh the Destroyer in a pretty featureless time corridor loop until he died of old age in Pyramids of Mars. That guy was in there for thousands upon thousands of years.
He didn't do it out of spite when he could have done otherwise, though. Letting Sutekh out would have resulted in Sutekh casually burning the Doctor to death (at best) and destroying the Earth.
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I think they did overdo parts too, though the annoying inability of anyone there to KILL THE FUCKING ALIENS was more a niggle than the "Talk more about your feelings while England burns, love" thing.
The ending was chilling showing how The Doctor can be very dark. It reminded me of the Culture's way of dealing with people. Sure, when you're nice to them, they'll fall over themselves to be nicer still back. But you know what they say, you don't fuck with the Culture. The Doctor was just showing his brand of Special Circumstance style retribution, regardless of whether anyone could see it and take heed (course, the Time War is a pretty big event to display that and no one seems to care).
It's fascinating to think that without his Time Lord-y ness, the Doctor has the same weak pacificism but lacks the magic powers to win anyway. His reaction at the end is perhaps simply compensating for his earlier cowardice, which would have doomed many, many people to death. He hid his power of plot contrivance in the watch.
Still, I dug the awesome earth 20th Century stuff. It was neat that having quit, no normal person would want to return to the life. Responsibility sucks.
Also, badguys copying over people + Doctor copying over himself = hilarious. The Last Temptation of Christ! And his watch will so become a recurring villain!
Big Orange wrote:PS: Have I got thread title and voting system right this time?
PS, no you didn't. What the hell is 'Dr. Who'? Is that like 'Dr. Seuss'? I will await threads about BS. Galactica.
Just use fucking abbreviations like everyone else. Stop pissing about with bullshit (on purpose) and just use the forms everyone understands. Holy shit, 'DW ep 9' is beyond your tiny brain! You think getting it wrong all the time is funny!
Admiral Valdemar wrote:The ending was chilling showing how The Doctor can be very dark. It reminded me of the Culture's way of dealing with people. Sure, when you're nice to them, they'll fall over themselves to be nicer still back. But you know what they say, you don't fuck with the Culture.
Even in Look to Windward, they don't do anything as ghastly. This is more like rounding the Idirans up at the end of the war, giving them life extension, and letting them rot in tiny individual cells.
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Excellent episode. The highlight for me was Smith's breakdown - he has a point, why does he have to give up a normal life and die so this "Doctor" can live?
The olfactory camouflage was a bit of a copout, as was the aliens not realising that their ship was about to blow up. Still, their defeat was just the background for what was essentially a character episode, something that I really appreciate. I just wish they'd gotten a bit more build-up, as they are excellent and distinctive villains. The son, especially, was a brilliant character and played very well.
The dark Doctor makes a return, which gave a nice contrast: you have the conservative, distant Smith who is nonetheless appalled by the carnage around him contrasted to the superficially chipper Doctor who has no moral qualms about dumping a defenceless woman inside a star. Tennant did a great job switching between the two personas.
The ending narration about the war was overdone - if they'd just shown the trench scene and the memorial the ending would've worked just as well.
I also thought the Doctor was almost unusually sadistic when he froze each member of the Family in permanent suspended animation then encased them in their own respective eternal prisons, but then again they were so irredeemably nasty it was not as if they didn't deserve it and the Doctor noted he was not as cuddly as he once was in "School Reunion" when he confronting the late Mr. Finch ("I used to be so full of mercy. You had one warning: that was it...").
I thought it was a mediocre episode until the end when the Doctor showed that he may look like a human but he isnt, and its stupid for his enemys to assume so.
A 5/5 for me.
And School Reunion wasnt the first time he showed no mercy, he warned us in the first Christmas episode.
"Ha ha! Yes, Mark Evans is back, suckers, and he's the key to everything! He's the Half Blood Prince, he's Harry's Great-Aunt, he's the Heir of Gryffindor, he lives up the Pillar of Storgé and he owns the Mystic Kettle of Nackledirk!" - J.K. Rowling
***
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Big Orange wrote:but then again they were so irredeemably nasty it was not as if they didn't deserve it
Bollocks and bullcrap from BO, as usual. It is not possible to earn eternal punishment for finite crime. That is, as I said, the (im)morality of Jehovah.
Of course, the writer of the episode says he thinks it's probably not eternal, which ameliorates that substantially.
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Of course, the writer of the episode says he thinks it's probably not eternal, which ameliorates that substantially.
Him visiting the girl every year is what mitigated it for me. If he keep coming back to her, he expects to find something has changed and if he expects change, he must be willing to revise his punishment.
NecronLord wrote:
Bollocks and bullcrap from BO, as usual. It is not possible to earn eternal punishment for finite crime. That is, as I said, the (im)morality of Jehovah.
What is so finite about eternally stealing life from innocent people at random? And not only were they utterly evil, they were potentially a threat to the Universe if they succeeded in possessing the Doctor. Although it is still not made clear why they supposedly have the lifecycle of Mayflies despite their potency and intelligence (unless they're weapon systems gone rogue). And giving the Family eternal life in eternal imprisonment after violently lusting for near immortality was grim irony on the Doctor's part...
What is so finite about eternally stealing life from innocent people at random?
The Family had so far killed a finite number of people. They could only have killed a finite number of people. Whatever their crimes, they didn't deserve a punishment that's eternal.
Bounty wrote:The Family had so far killed a finite number of people. They could only have killed a finite number of people. Whatever their crimes, they didn't deserve a punishment that's eternal.
Xeriar wrote:
Death doesn't have eternal consequences?
Aside from the afterlife shit in Torchwood, Death's it. Over. Done. You don't suffer any more. You're dead, you're an ex-entity, and thus cannot suffer.
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Big Orange wrote:What is so finite about eternally stealing life from innocent people at random?
Even The Master, who'd managed to kill off a third of the universe, had not killed an infinite number of people.
And not only were they utterly evil, they were potentially a threat to the Universe if they succeeded in possessing the Doctor.
So just stove their heads in with bricks. It was quite clear that he had them totally within his power at that point; remember the bit of him with 'mother of mine' in the TARDIS?
Although it is still not made clear why they supposedly have the lifecycle of Mayflies despite their potency and intelligence (unless they're weapon systems gone rogue). And giving the Family eternal life in eternal imprisonment after violently lusting for near immortality was grim irony on the Doctor's part...
And morally unjustifiable.
Last edited by NecronLord on 2007-06-03 05:07pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Mostly good. Still love the setting and the acting but the action was merely competent and the last 5 minutes were excessively sentimental. The punishment montage was odd; kinda cool, out of character compared to almost everything we've of the Doctors to date (6th Doctor might go for that sort of punishing a defeated enemy), to make sense of this I have to assume he's changed/is changing into a darker personality. WTF was that 'trapped in every mirror' though? That was just magic, it makes absolutely no sense in the Dr Who universe (even the witches from the Shakespeare episode had a minimally plausible pseudoscience justification).
