Doctor Who S30E12 "The Stolen Earth" (Spoilers)

[Darksider]

hmm. I thought tennant was confirmed to play the doctor through 2010, and they were taking a break because he had other comittments.

I wonder if there's a way to somehow stop his regeneration cycle.

I like tennant, but if the new doctor gets rid of his recent uber pacifism to a ridiculous degree, I’ll be happy.

did anyone else catch where he said he tried to save davros during the time war?

Are you fucking kidding me? He tried to save the creator of his mortal enemy!

[mr friendly guy]

I am going against the grain here (at least in comments, but not in the voting) and say I enjoyed it. I gave it a 4, but it seemed several people gave it a five.

A few good things

In no particular order
1) individual daleks taking out the valiant

2) the daleks needing humans alive.

I am sure Davros used humans to become daleks in Revelation of the Daleks, and the daleks again were revealed to have done this again in Bad wolf.

Nice to see them using what works, and a way to get cheap "recruits". It also explains why they didn't just use more firepower. And its also nice to see them take out military installations first.

3) the paint gun thing
How the Dalek just shrugged it off. I thought it was a nice touch

4) Richard Dawkins appearance - come on, I am a fan of his science and atheist writings. Granted this would come lower down the list of good things, but its a nice touch.

5) The epic feeling.
The bad guys don't just want to conquer the planet, they need to steal it for some purpose along with 26 other planets.

6) A nice tie in with previous things mentioned, ie pyrovillia has disappeared. Also the doctor mentioning someone else tried to steal the Earth before. I reference to either the Valeyard (trial of a timelord) or the Daleks (Dalek invasion of Earth).

7) Good cliffhanger ending. Reminiscent of how Classic Who ended with cliffhangers.


A few other explanation things
1) Mr Cooper was the alias of the alien pseudohistorian in Voyage of the Damned. You know the one who hacked like a million pounds on his credit card. So it wouldn't surprised me if the Mr Cooper foundation developed it from some technological know how of Mr Cooper.

It makes it more plausible that daleks can't detect the signal until its boosted up.

2) The doctor trying to save Davros.

Keep in mind that Dalek politics is a tricky business. The daleks turned against Davros, then he managed to get his own faction going, which rebelled against the Dalek emperor.

Given how the Time Lords captured lots of daleks in their genesis ark, I wouldn't be surprised if capturing him won't be a coup. Or perhaps using him against the Emperor's daleks (who I always considered the legitimate ones anyway). These are the guys who resurrected the Master because they thought he would be useful.

Its not far out to suggest that capturing Davros would be desirable as opposed to the Doctor is just a bleeding heart and needs to give Davros a chance to surrender (like he did with the Sontarans and the Racnoss). That being said if it was me, I would have felt potentially gains (ie interrogating him for info) wouldn't have been worth the risk.

3. The time war being time locked.

Presumably it means its almost impossible to alter history of the war. Another fair explanation of why we just don't change history.

A few things that could be better

1) Getting military help from the Shadow proclamation as opposed to just information. Although it would be cool if they manage to follow the Doctor into the Medusa Cascade.

Tech notes
1) so it seems Daleks have planet moving technology similar to the Time Lords Magnetron device. Cool. Although the TL device moved an entire solar system, star and all. So far the daleks have only demonstrated moving the planets and keeping the atmosphere in while providing energy through technobabble.


What could ruin it for me
1) Reset button - Please have earth traumatised with the Invasion. There should be far ranging consequences for this, not just for the Doctor, but the planets he saves.

[General Zod]

did anyone else catch where he said he tried to save davros during the time war?

Are you fucking kidding me? He tried to save the creator of his mortal enemy!

You're surprised? The Doctor's almost always gives everyone a chance to live and stop doing horrible things.

That said, I had a few qualms with this episode. The "Jesus Doctor" phenomenon from S3 seems to be back. Every phone call in the world ringing the Doctor at once is just too remniscent of when they used the Archangel satellite to rejuvenate him. The regeneration at the end felt kind of cheap and almost an after thought, so I'm not too happy with that.

Was also massively underwhelmed at the revelation of the Shadow Proclomation, though the "drums" thing with Donna was interesting (was that a distinctly different rhyhm from The Master?), and that assistant on the station mentioning the thing that was on her back from the last episode? What the fuck was up with that? It almost reeks of a possible reset button.

[Plekhanov]

A mixture of the good and moronic.

Much of the idiocy flew very quickly but some bits were dwelt on and jumped out at you such as Martha saying 'we can use project indigo yet sir, it's not been tested, we don't even know if it works' and Jack shouting 'don't use project indigo, it's not safe!!!'. When the place is being stormed by frickin Daleks who are killing everyone in the building, what is using an experimental teliport more dangerous than certain death now?

[Vympel]

My reaction?


[Clive Owen, Extras]Oh fuck off, that's mental![/]

[Stark]

How the christ can they fuck up shit they've ALREADY DONE?

Reuse the cyberman conquest of Earth... except make it boring and use TERRIBLE CG (even the CG explosions on the PS2 cutscene... I mean the 'action scene' looked terrible). Force the story along with false dilemnas, even though it wasn't necessary, castrate the Doctor and use the spooky mysterious Shadow Proclamation as a fucking exposition sounding-board, and then have the heroes on conquered Earth have a motherfucking point-to-point video conference where they USE ADDRESSES.

The Valiant shot pretty much sums up the whole episode; Daleks fighting a flying aircraft carrier should be instant win, but it was a 3s shot, it looked like shit, nothing was happening in it, and then it's gone. I'm glad they kept it around so long!

[Stark]

Oh, NL, I think the reference was actually to the Dalek Invasion of Earth; I got the impression the whole 'someone else tried that once' was supposed to be a link to the Daleks, and they did try to *giggle* replace the *giggle* earth's core with *giggle* oh I can't do it...

[NecronLord]

Oh, NL, I think the reference was actually to the Dalek Invasion of Earth; I got the impression the whole 'someone else tried that once' was supposed to be a link to the Daleks, and they did try to *giggle* replace the *giggle* earth's core with *giggle* oh I can't do it...

Well, it was the Valeyard who actually ganked it. The Daleks really shouldn't scare the Doctor nearly as much as the possibility that he's going to turn evil.

The sad thing is, this episode is probably still 3/6 of Davros episodes...

[Stark]

Tate-hate has a purely 'me too' vibe to it.

Yeah, they're on the bandwagon, thus instantly discrediting them!

I *loved* the utter worthlessness and zero-budget nature of the shadow proclamation. 'We're massively incompetent, don't have any time travel or awareness, and are so stupid we'll let a Time Lord we didn't even know existed just walk away'. Oh and 'we don't know our staff are psychic time-sensitives'! Clearly the biggest requirement for SP management is 'shriek' and 'disbelieve everything' and 'close all cases'.

[Flagg]

Tate-hate has a purely 'me too' vibe to it.

Yeah, they're on the bandwagon, thus instantly discrediting them!

I *loved* the utter worthlessness and zero-budget nature of the shadow proclamation. 'We're massively incompetent, don't have any time travel or awareness, and are so stupid we'll let a Time Lord we didn't even know existed just walk away'. Oh and 'we don't know our staff are psychic time-sensitives'! Clearly the biggest requirement for SP management is 'shriek' and 'disbelieve everything' and 'close all cases'.

Stark, it's the Shadow Proclamation. They don't do anything besides make proclamations from time to time.

[His Divine Shadow]

My girlfriend walked on me watching this and it made me feel ashamed. I think that sums it up nicely.

[NecronLord]

Tate-hate has a purely 'me too' vibe to it.

Yeah, they're on the bandwagon, thus instantly discrediting them!

I *loved* the utter worthlessness and zero-budget nature of the shadow proclamation. 'We're massively incompetent, don't have any time travel or awareness, and are so stupid we'll let a Time Lord we didn't even know existed just walk away'. Oh and 'we don't know our staff are psychic time-sensitives'! Clearly the biggest requirement for SP management is 'shriek' and 'disbelieve everything' and 'close all cases'.

Stark, it's the Shadow Proclamation. They don't do anything besides make proclamations from time to time.

Err. That's not what we've seen previously. Throughout this season, they were a remote power to be feared by lawbreakers.

I think Judoon would be much better at kicking ass than making eloquent proclamations.

Incidentally, according to the commentary, they were going to have more than just Judoon there, but 'every police agency in the galaxy' or some such. But the budget didn't run to that.

[Stark]

The Judoon are also incredibly stupid, unfortunately. Maybe they have killer ships? And 'every police agency in the galaxy' might have been better with a single Time Agent.

In S1, the Shadow Proclamation was so universal that the Doctor operated under it in his war guilt phase and used it's weight to bargain with aliens. Turns out they're the Keystone Cops!

[DaveJB]

Four years in, and RTD still hasn't worked out that the purpose of two-parters is NOT to have an episode where absolutely nothing happens except exposition and setup, then another episode filled with action and crap.

So... is there a chance that the next episode could salvage something from this year, or can we safely write this season off as the worst one since Trial of a Time Lord?

[Lord Woodlouse]

Journey's End trailer.

[Lord Woodlouse]

EDIT: A trailer everyone can see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CVOFGkJ9LI

[Zixinus]

How bad can this be if I have to say that I enjoyed the last episode better?

Seriously, it all went really down-hill when the Doctor denied the Shadow Proclamation's offer for help. Granted, they were assholes about it, but Christ's sake, what's wrong with this man? He's up against serious shit, wouldn't at least a squad-worth of those rhino-things be helpful? For stuff like, covering your back so a single Dalek won't shot you in the back?

[Darksider]

have there been any spoilers about who's going to play the new doctor, or is RTD going to pull some lame-ass deus ex machina reset about that too.

[andrewgpaul]

I enjoyed that,actually. I LOLed

So, it seems that the Doctor encountered Davros after Remembrance of the Daleks.

Judoon assaulting the Daleks might have meen cool; watching them get mown down by the daleks 2 seconds later, not so much.

How often did Sarah Jane encounter the Daleks? Was it just Genesis, or did she see them again? I did like how she was the only one to recognise Davros.

Did anyone else catch Confidential? There was a montage of Daleks through the years, to Killing in the Name.

[Bedlam]

[quote="andrewgpaul"]How often did Sarah Jane encounter the Daleks? Was it just Genesis, or did she see them again? I did like how she was the only one to recognise Davros.[quote]

I think she met them in Death to the Daleks and Genesis of the Daleks.

[Vanas]

Well, I missed the start, but did catch the interesting bits. It looks like the slightly worse than Time War Daleks might be due to Davros literally building the from scratch again. (But the Emperor did that too, and he didn't build cr- nevermind. Stop thinking)

Still. Mostly dreck, but with some good moments. Davros was rather good, I felt, and it was nice to see the Daleks taking the correct way to deal with the guy in the house.

[NecronLord]

I enjoyed that,actually. I LOLed

So, it seems that the Doctor encountered Davros after Remembrance of the Daleks.

Judoon assaulting the Daleks might have meen cool; watching them get mown down by the daleks 2 seconds later, not so much.

Judoon guns are more powerful than dalek ones, that we've seen. When a Judoon shoots you, you're actually cremated. When a dalek shoots you, some funky crap happens. The Doctor would be gone by now, if the daleks had Judoon guns. And these daleks appear to have no shields.

Also, oh god, that trailer...The only way that makes any sense is if they have some way of surviving the end of the universe... or the Supreme Dalek tells Davros to shut up while they try to save existance...

[Vanas]

Well, the negative flash of Dalek Gun impact is that of space-time getting it's teeth kicked in, no?

More seriously, the Daleks only seem to use enough oomph to get the job done. One setting for zapping people, one for shooting holes through nuclear bunkers and one for setting houses on fire and so forth. I'd imagine if the Daleks discovered their present level of zap-guns weren't effective enough, they'd ramp it up.
Wasn't it Davros' faction that invented the HW Dalek, as well? I'd imagine that may still be an option were they to meet some thing that they can't conventionally zap.

[NecronLord]

Well, the negative flash of Dalek Gun impact is that of space-time getting it's teeth kicked in, no?

More seriously, the Daleks only seem to use enough oomph to get the job done. One setting for zapping people, one for shooting holes through nuclear bunkers and one for setting houses on fire and so forth. I'd imagine if the Daleks discovered their present level of zap-guns weren't effective enough, they'd ramp it up.
Wasn't it Davros' faction that invented the HW Dalek, as well? I'd imagine that may still be an option were they to meet some thing that they can't conventionally zap.

As far as we've seen.

By the same standard, the Judoon could have support weapons of their own. But yes, there's really nothing to say that the Judoon don't have guns capable of killing a dalek. Rose has one, somehow.

[Vanas]

Yeah, I did wonder about that, but missed the start of the episode where I'd hoped it was explained. Davros really needs to work on the whole 'blowing the lid off' thing.


I'll give you the Judoon support weapons thing. I can imagine that as the police, they'd probably have to take down some of the insanity that lurks in the Who Universe, and may be more effective at it than UNIT.